How is Mimosa root bark processed?
Time needed: 30 minutes
- Cleaning the root bark
The whole Mimosa Hostilis root must cleaned and stripped of its inner root-bark while discarding the rest of the root.
Pictured below is its original after being harvested from the plant. Notice the middle core is quite distinct from the root-bark, the outer bark is much more brown.
- Removing the outer bark
The first step in refinery is to brush the outside to remove the dirt. Then the outer bark must be lightly scraped with a good knife. It is preferable to remove at least some of the outermost layer to uncover the more blackish and purplish layer underneath.
- Increasing the surface area by shredding or powdering the bark
The whole root-bark must generally be torn by hand, cut, or smashed with a blunt object prior to shredding. After the bark has been reduced in size an electric coffee grinder could come in handy to turn the bark into a fine powder. After 10 sec of grinding the bark is usually already powdered enough. However you will see that fibbers still stay present. The fibbers can be perfectly sieved out with coarse kitchen sieve by rubbing the mimosa with your hands on the inside of the sieve. The powder will simply pass trough the sieve while the fibbers stay behind. The fibbers can be discarded now.
Not that the pre-powdered bark can be used “as-is”
