Devil's Club | the Healer's healer

Thriving in the dappled shade along creeks and streams, wetlands and forest lowlands, Devil's Club (Oplopanax horridus) is a prominent plant in the understory of our Pacific Northwest coastal rainforests. It was, and still is, a distinctly valuable plant to indigenous people of the region for its use as a medicinal herb and for ritual and ceremony.

Devil’s Club’s primary native range is the coastal PNW. It is found as far north as Alaska, it continues down throughout BC and south into Oregon. Its range extends east to the Rocky Mountains into Idaho and parts of Montana; it is also found in an isolated region of Ontario as well.

Devil’s Club is a member of the Araliacea, or Ginseng, Family. This family is also home to Wild Sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis) another medicinal plant of North America; English Ivy (Hedra helix); and the different species of Ginseng (Panax spp) used in herbal medicine.

The genus name Oplopanax can be translated as ‘protective heal-all’ and comes from the latin hoplon, meaning shield, armour, or protection; and panakos meaning panacea or cure-all. The species name horridus means rough, bristly or fierce referring to the plants appearance. Rather than implying the plant is somehow devilish itself, the common name ‘Devil’s Club’ refers to its spiritually-protective properties which ‘club devils’ (ward-off negative energy).

There are three different species in the genus Oplopanax. There is O. horridus here in North America; Chinese Devil’s Club (Oplopanax elatus), also known as ‘Nakai’, native to China, Korea, and Russia, commonly used in Russia as an adaptogen. The third species, Japanese Devil’s Club (Oplopanax japonicus) is native to Japan. Each of the three species are very similar looking in appearance, and each has traditional medicinal uses in its native habitat.

Mature Devil’s Club plants produce a single flower cluster which ripens into bright red berries by mid-summer. The berries are inedible to humans, but enjoyed by foraging bears.

Devil’s Club is a deciduous shrub with spiky arching stems and large maple-like leaves that are 10”-18” across. The plants are very slow-growing, reaching about 12ft tall. Its beige-coloured stems are generally an inch or two in diameter, woody, and completely covered in brittle spines, giving them a hairy or prickly appearance. The underside of the leaf veins, as well as the leaf petioles are also covered in spines.

After the plants leaf out in spring, a single cream and light-green coloured conical flower cluster emerges atop the mature plants. The flowers will ripen into berries which are a deep-red colour; the berries are not edible to humans but bears forage them.

After reaching a certain height, the plant’s tall spiky stem will sprawl toward the ground as it becomes too heavy to hold itself up. The plant will then begin to grow adventitious roots along the points in which the stem is touching the earth. This process is called ‘layering’ and is also found in other thorny plants such as Wild Rose or Blackberry. It is the main way the plants propagate themselves, forming large colonies made up of clones. More rarely, it reproduces itself from seeds.

The recumbent stems, once rooted, will begin to lose their spines, becoming smooth as they mature. The inner bark of the rooted stems is the medicinal part of the plant. I call the rooted stems ‘rhizomes’ for lack of a better term. This probably isn’t technically the correct botanical terminology, but it is helpful to give these structures a distinctive name that is easier to refer to than ‘mature-rooted-recumbant-stem-with-out-spines’. (I’d love some feedback on the proper terminology if any botanists are reading).

Devil’s Club has been used for millennia as an indigenous medicinal herb, and for hundreds of years in modern western herbalism. It strengthens and balances the body and mind, and has spiritually-protective properties. It has important applications in herbal medicine for respiratory infections, pain, arthritis, type II Diabetes, heart disease, weakness, and depression. Devil’s club lifts the spirit, sharpens the mind, and fortifies the body against stress.

Devil’s Club spirit medicine

You are sitting in a patch of Devil’s Club, the mossy ground soft and damp below you. You begin to absorb the sense of peace that the forest offers. There is a quiet here that isn’t silence, instead it is the kind of quiet that is found on the other side of noise. Each sound ~ the rustle of leaves, the trickle of the nearby stream, the call of a raven ~ each sound is perfect and meaningful, belonging to the landscape.

As you sit, you contemplate the way Devil’s Club grows. The growth of a plant being the way it expresses itself, a slow movement and patterning that is a type of self-expression. A personality. You observe the spiny branches and how they sprawl outward and take up space ~ a community of fierce warriors in slow motion.

As you sit and observe you wonder ‘What is it like to be a Devil’s Club and take up space like that, showing off your thorns and prickles?’

In response the plants speak the impression ‘Vulnerable’.

‘Does showing off your spines feel somehow vulnerable even with all that protection and fierceness?’

Yes, because it causes you to be noticed, and to be seen is to be vulnerable.

You observe the stately Devil’s Club plants, their spiny arching stems reaching upward to sometimes twice your height. Their palmate leaves creating a luminous green canopy above your head. It is as if you are like a squirrel upon the forest floor, dwarfed by these spiny giants; your body and mind multitudes faster in movement and thought.

As you sit you begin to slow down. As minutes slip into hours, time, slowly, but somehow at the same time, suddenly, without you noticing the transition, has now shifted into the dreamtime space of the plants. It is a space the plants call you into, where time is relative and the moment and mind become one and in sync with the inhale and exhale of the green beings that surround you.

You feel your senses ignite as you gently run your finger along a stem, caressing the brittle spines with the utmost of care. (‘To be you’, you sigh tenderly, ‘how is it to be you…’) You notice the leaf scars of each year passed, each six inch segment representing one year of growth. A fierce warrior in slow motion.

Recognizing the fierceness and slowness of this plant nearly brings you to tears. To be covered in these spines, so brittle and sharp that no one can come near. With all this effort to create your fierce boundaries and hold your own there is little room for growth. For one must need openness to grow, you think. But the growth that does occur is hard-fought and so, deeply meaningful.

‘Hold the space, hold the space, hold the space’ the Devil’s Club community chants slowly, each individual syllable the vibration of at least a hundred thousand of our human heart beats. The effort is tremendous, they arch outward gracefully and clumsily all at once, poised with meaning, and awkward with effort.

As you sit you observe the way the plants, as they mature, begin to bend down toward the ground. Eventually their striving has become too much and the weight of their own determination sends their arching stems to kiss the earth. Solace and surrender.

You imagine what it is like to ‘hold the space’ endlessly day after day, all your effort supporting the external; the will of the community. You imagine what it must feel like to surrender that effort to the earth, just let it all go; to lay down your spines and allow nourishment.

You find a stem that is covered in moss and soil; it has laid down, become rooted and one with the earth. You run your hand along wiping the moss away, and observe that the stem has become smooth. The plants have surrendered their spines. They have let go of their fierceness and striving, opened to a new kind of vulnerability.

As the plants humble themselves to the earth, drawing in its nourishment, the medicine becomes more potent, more balanced, more nutritive. Surrendering allows them to be able to put down roots; and in turn these new roots can support and feed the community of fierce warriors above.

This is the secret medicine of Devil’s Club you realize. This quiet transformation that takes place along the earth, private and unnoticed, hidden under a nest of prickles. Maybe that is what all those spiny branches are protecting: our right to surrender and be kept and cared for, nourished and transformed by the earth.

You sit in the dreamtime with the plants, breathing in their exhale; movement, thought, and breath in slow motion, in sync with the plants. You feel within you the deep exhaustion of your own striving; and you feel the call of your own healing. You lay down on the damp mossy forest floor, you surrender your fierce holding. You let the earth take your spines, and feel the medicine begin to fortify within you.

The fine spines on the underside of a Devil’s Club leaf.

For me, the spirit of Devil’s Club embodies the energy of ‘the healer’s healer’. To be a healer one needs to be able to sit with pain without being undone by it. A healer needs to be well connected to the source of healing ~ the earth ~ where nourishment and replenishment can be found.

Devil’s Club has taught me so much about what it means to be a healer. How it is always truly the earth ~ our bodies ~ that do the healing. It has taught me about the power of surrendering to the process (no matter how painful or ‘spiny’ that process may be). It has taught me the importance of cultivating the ability to uphold healthy boundaries, vulnerably showing off my spines.

When we continually humble our selves to the earth, surrender our 'ego’ or superficial sense of power and identity, we can allow in true healing. And create space for others so that they too can surrender to that healing. By creating healthy boundaries, and working together in community, we are better able to hold space for the healing of others; but we must, ourselves as healers, also learn to surrender and recieve nourishment and healing as well.

There is so much more to the spirit of this powerful ally than I can write about, or I believe, even learn about in this lifetime. There is so much more I could relate and so much more I have to learn. I am grateful and honoured to even begin to be able to genuinely call this plant a friend and ally, one which I respect and do not own. I am humbled by the traditions rooted in this land and the way indigenous people have formed deep relationship with this plant over millennia. To them it is the oldest of friends. Family.

The large leaves of Devil’s Club form a luminous canopy overhead.

Devil’s Club in the apothecary

Devil’s Club is relatively new to the western herbal materia medica, modern applications over the last couple of centuries build upon and confirm the foundational knowledge of traditional indigenous use here in the PNW, and that of the other Oplopanax species in Asia and Russia.

Traditionally Devil’s Club was prepared as a decoction (a simmered tea) and taken internally as a panacea, a remedy for all that ails. It was used as a specific for lung infections, and with its strong antimicrobial and expectorant properties, this is one of the main modern uses of the herb today. It is known to be one of the best remedies for tuberculosis.

Devil’s Club is a strongly anti-microbial, spicy and aromatic herb that has a stimulating action on the lungs and respiratory tract. It is a very useful remedy for congested, cold, and damp conditions in the body caused by infections, and stagnation. The herb acts to improve circulation and boost immunity.

I like to add Devil’s Club as an ingredient in one of my Fire Cider recipes. Fire cider is a type of kitchen-medicine made famous by the herbalist Rosemary Gladstar. It is full of immune-boosting and decongesting herbs in a base of apple cider vinegar and honey. When I feel the signs of a cold or flu coming on, I find it super helpful to sip it mixed with some hot water in a mug.

Where sluggishness is present, Devil’s Club can be used as a carminative to relieve stomach pains, indigestion and constipation. It is detoxifying to the body and acts as a tonic and alterative, especially for more kapha-type constitutions, though it can also be helpful for pitta constitutions in that it detoxifies excess heat from the blood.

The volatile oil content is responsible for many of its actions, so you’ll want to use the fresh herb when possible, or a fresh-herb tincture. Devil’s Club also makes a very nice infused honey. Because honey is soothing to the throat, it is a great application for respiratory infections with cough.

Devil’s Club is a go-to for the treatment of metabolic syndrome. It clears excess heat, calms inflammation, stabilizes blood sugar, and strengthens the heart. It is known to be an effective remedy for treating type II diabetes. When combined with diet and lifestyle changes, regular use of Devil’s Club preparations may aid to reverse the effects of the disease.

Devil’s Club has the benefit of helping to regulate blood sugar levels and reduce cravings for sugar and binge-eating. Another native plant of the PNW, Licorice Fern (Polypodium glycyrrhiza), is also helpful for this purpose. I make a blend with Devil’s Club with Licorice Fern, Licorice Root (G. glabra), Rose (Rosa spp) and Wood Betony (S. officinalis) to help with cravings.

Like other members of the Ginseng Family, such as Panax and Aralia, Devil’s Club is considered by many herbalist to be an adaptogen. Devil’s Club may contain similar glycosides that are known to responsible for a strengthening and balancing effect on the endocrine system, while protecting against the stress response. Though scientific studies have not yet confirmed the full constituent profile found in Devil’s Club, thousands of years of traditional use as a regenerative herb have demonstrated the value of it’s adaptogen-like properties.

Devil’s Club improves well-being, and is grounding, fortifying, and energizing. It can be taken when generally stressed, fatigued or weak, or experiencing depressed states of body, spirit, or mind. I formulate it with other uplifting and adaptogen herbs like Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) and Holy Basil (Ocimum sanctum).

Devil’s Club’s can be a wonderful pain-reliever and muscle relaxant. It can be especially helpful for menstrual cramps, stomach aches, UTIs, tense cramping muscles, and arthritis. It’s anti-inflammatory, circulatory and detoxifying properties make it especially helpful as a treatment for both osteo and rheumatoid arthritis.

The herb is very useful prepared as a salve and applied topically to treat arthritis and rheumatic pain in general, which is one of its primary traditional uses. Topical preparations such as the liniment, infused oil, or salve are very useful for sore muscles, menstrual cramps, and rheumatic pain.

Devil’s Club preparations are very effective, both topically and internally for treating infections such as staph, candida, and other bacterial or fungal infections. It seems to be especially good for staph infection, I have witnessed time and time again how quickly and effectively a few applications of Devil’s Club salve can clear up the most stubborn and lingering of infections.

A basket of fresh Devil’s Club medicine.

Harvesting & medicine making

Devil’s Club is a difficult plant to just jump in and harvest straight away. Not necessarily because the plants are spiky, as you might think, but because they command so much respect with their spirit. They are special and powerful plants and it is easy to understand why they have been considered sacred by the indigenous people of the region for millennia.

When I hear people tell the story of when they first harvested Devil’s Club, it is common that in the beginning felt they needed to sit with the plant a few times, or even for many months or years, or to be taken out by someone experienced and initiated into the process. This is the plant teaching them respect and boundaries from the very first meeting.

For myself it was definitely both, I felt like I needed to get to know the plant more, and also felt I need to have someone introduce me. Eventually I was lucky enough to have my friend Frazer, a Coast Salish Elder, take Harmony and I out to harvest. It was a beautiful and surprising simple experience and gave me the confidence to begin working with the plant on my own. Frazer had worked to heal his own issues with diabetes by using the medicine, and it was meaningful to learn of his own special relationship with the plant.

The parts of the Devil’s Club plant that can be used for medicine are inner bark of the recumbent stems (rhizomes) and aerial stems, as well as the true fibrous roots. The rhizomes are my preferred part to harvest because this provides a more sustainable, and also potent, medicine. I also use any true roots that come up with the rhizomes, but I don’t dig them on their own. I find the medicine in the inner bark of the spiky aerial parts to be dry and thin and inferior for medicine making compared to the rhizomes or roots. I also don’t like to harvest the aerial parts because of the damage this harvesting method can do to this very slow growing plant.

A small section of woody rhizome with lots of true-roots attached. The thin true-roots can be chopped and used whole, while just the inner bark of the rhizome is used.

Now, during scorpio season, in the fall time after the leaves have dropped off the plants, is considered the most optimal time to harvest the medicine, but it may also be harvested throughout the winter and early spring before the plants break dormancy and the new leaves begin to grow. When harvesting in the spring you’ll notice a light orange sap exuding from the cut rhizomes, as the weather warms and the plants begin to wake, the sugars begin to flow to produce this sap. This makes the spring medicine a bit sweeter and nutritive to balance the sharper spicy aromatics of the fall harvest.

To recognize the plants in fall or winter without their leaves, look for the unique arching upward growth of stems 1-2” thick and covered densely with spikes. Try not to rub against these spines with your bare skin as they can easily break off and become embedded in your skin. They are very hard to remove and are also said to harbour staph infection (use Devil’s Club salve for this). Personally, I’ve gotten spines in my hands many times over the years without any issues with irritation or infection, but everyone reacts differently, so, in short, wear gloves.

A patch of Devil’s Club in late fall after the leaves have fallen. Note how the stems don’t really grow straight up, but they arch and lean in every direction. Noticing this growth habit will help you spot them in the forest from a distance.

When locating a good Devil’s Club patch, make sure to only harvest from patches that are large and not from small pockets of a few individuals. Good and established Devil’s Club colonies can easily span many acres in size. Try to find a patch that is a solid half-acre in size at the very least, and make sure to take from only 5% of the patch or less. If you notice evidence that others have already harvested there, move on and find somewhere more remote and untouched. Take the time to hike in and harvest from individuals spread through out the area; don’t harvest along trails or along stream sides.

Once you find your patch you’ll want to ideally harvest from areas inside the patch where the plants are more closely knit and crowded together. The younger more vigorous plants are on the edges of the patch, I like to leave these to grow and flourish. The older plants are in the centre of the patch and will begin crowding themselves out over time and naturally dying from lack of space, nutrients, and old age.

You’ll often notice some of the biggest rhizomes have already started to decay along sections of the root. These are the best plants to harvest sections of rhizome from. The mature plants have grown super strong, deep true-roots by this point, so pruning a section of rhizome out will have very little effect of the plant. Additionally, pruning the rhizomes from the dense interior of the patch will encourage new growth and keep the patch healthy.

The most sustainable way to harvest Devil’s Club is to find a section of rhizome that is rooted in at least two places along the ground. You can test to see where it is rooted by gently tugging upward on the rhizome. Check that the end bit of the rhizome attached to the upward growing stem is firmly rooted in place enough to support it.

If so, you can harvest the section of rhizome preceding it between the two rooted spots (a small pruning saw, the kind that folds up and fits in your pocket or back pack, works best in my experience). When harvesting is done in this way, you can gather the rhizome while leaving the well-rooted aerial parts of the plant to continue growing.

The scent of the freshly harvested herb is warm… sweet… earthy… spicy… wonderfully aromatic. The first time you cut into a Devil’s Club rhizome it will be a highly sensory and very memorable experience! Take a moment to strip off a small piece of inner bark and chew it. Hold the flavour in you mouth and connect with the medicine. These first moments with the plants only come once!

An example of a rhizome that is firmly rooted along the ground in at least two places. In this example you would harvest the section spanning the width of my hand while leaving the root nodes in place in the ground.

Yes, it does take a lot of searching and combing around along the forest floor to find these rooted rhizomes. This method of harvesting really slows you down and requires you to be mindful and present as you crouch and bend among all the prickly stalks while following the base of the plants into the leaf litter. It is quite a different experience than simply walking into the forest and chopping down or pulling up whole plants. One of the reasons really I like this slower method of harvesting is because it makes the harvesting process intrinsically more sustainable.

Keep in mind that Devil’s Club only puts on 4 to 8 inches of aerial growth per season. This means a plant that is as tall as you may have taken a couple decades to grow that tall. If you do end up harvesting the spiky aerial parts for one reason or another, they too can be used for medicine (though the medicine in the roots is more potent and balanced).

Alternatively, the section of spiky stem can replanted by laying it in a shallow trench dug in the forest floor and covering it with 3-4 inches of soil, ideally somewhere nice and moist. If the conditions are right the stem may root and regrow. Note that any leaves on the plant should be removed before plant, as the new roots will grow from the leaf nodes and this will help with the rooting process.

As a general rule, whenever wildcrafting, you should always return to spots you’ve harvested in to check on how the plants are doing. This is going to teach you a lot about how to harvest in a good way. If you return the following year you will be able to notice any obvious impact you may have had on the patch. Have the plants healed the cuts from the root pruning? Did the aerial parts continue growing without issue? Have the pruned plants sprouted any new shoots around that spot? Did that section of spiky stem that you replanted end up rooting?

The smooth rhizomes of Devil’s Club are the most potent part of the plant to harvest. These older rhizomes can be harvested sustainably without damaging or killing any plants in the process.

Once you get your harvest home, allow yourself lots of time to process it. As a general rule, herbs may take minutes to harvest but can take hours to process. The rhizomes can keep in a cool dark place for several days, or even weeks if covered to prevent moisture loss, before they are processed. Apparently the roots were traditionally stored buried under soil for this purpose, and kept well for months until needed.

I like to process them the same day, or within a day or two of harvest. The rhizomes can be processed by gently scraping away the thin layer of brown-grey coloured outer bark and moss with a dull knife (the backside of a thin knife can work well). Any spines still present on the rhizomes are scraped away in this manner as well. The outer bark, moss, spines, etc, are be discarded, revealing the smooth yellow-green inner bark underneath.

Devil’s Club rhizome that have had the thin layer of outer bark rubbed off them with the back of a knife. This exposes the yellow-green cambium layer (inner bark).

Next the inner bark, which is the medicinally active part of the plant, can be harvested by stripping it off with the sharp side of the knife. The inner bark is tender and is very easy and satisfying to peel off. You’ll want to strip off the cambium all the way to the woody part of the rhizome. The long strips of inner bark can further be processed by snipping them into small pieces with hand pruners.

Since only the thin layer of cambium is used for medicine, each section of rhizome or stem will provide only a very small amount of useable herb. It will take many years for the plants to re-grow what you have harvested. For these reasons Devil’s Club is not a herb that should be considered for large-scale commercial production. Doing so would surely threaten the future of these very slow growing plants.

Devil’s Club can be made fresh into tincture, or infused in vinegar and honey. It makes a fantastic infused oil (wilted) and salve. The bark can also be used fresh or dried for tea; making a decoction by gently simmering the herb in water with the lid on is the best way to extract it for this purpose.

It is important to note that during the drying process many of the volatile oils are lost to the air, so preparing the herb fresh is recommended if wishing to preserve the aromatics. If drying the herb in your living space the off-gassing of the volatile oils may cause your mucus membranes to become irritated, so make sure the area is well-ventilated.

I recall a winter years ago, when I rented a single room cabin for a short while. I did a big Devil’s Club harvest that winter and laid the stripped and chopped bark out to dry in baskets around the wood stove for later use in decoctions. The volatile oils released from the drying bark infused the air around me, and to my surprise I was still wide awake at 3am feeling great, grounded, well rested and energized.

After the bark is harvested from the woody rhizomes, the resulting inner wood can be used as sticks for drum mallets. It can also be sliced into small .5-1” sections, the soft spongy inner pith carved out, and the resulting beads used for ceremonial purposes or decoration.

Freshly processed Devil’s Club rhizome bark drying in baskets. The woody part of the rhizomes remaining after processing can be used for crafts like bead making, ceremony, or decorative purposes.