Passionflower Twilight Tincture

Passionflower's bloom looks as though it were designed by committee — a halo of thread-like violet filaments ringing a green crown, open for only a single day on a vine that will climb anything within reach. This tincture is drawn from the leaf, stem, and flower, a deep olive-brown liquid that carries the plant's faintly grassy scent straight into the bottle. The vine is native to the American Southeast, where it climbed fence lines long before it was formally described by any botanist, and where it was traditionally used to support a settled mind and restful sleep when the day would not quite let go. European herbalists later adopted it for much the same purpose. We harvest the aerial parts — leaf, stem, and flower together — at the peak of summer flowering, when the plant's character is most concentrated, then extract at a ratio of one to four in a forty percent grain alcohol. Nothing else goes into the bottle. Take twenty to forty drops in a little water, twenty minutes or so before bed, or whenever the mind is looping rather than resting. A vine that never stops reaching, somehow distilled into something that helps a person finally stop.