Rosemary Gladstar

Considered the mother of modern herbalism in North America, Rosemary Gladstar has inspired an entire generation of herbalists and has been a driving force in herbal education. Now everyone can share in her wisdom and enthusiasm with this practical yet evocative compendium. It offers easy-to-understand information for achieving optimal health, as well as tried-and-true advice for feeling positive and energetic - naturally. Gladstar offers intensely personal and uplifting insights into her own life and the lives of her mentors and friends, giving readers a cross-generational guide to living life with true and boundless enthusiasm. Her herbal recipes address everyday ailments, ease stress and anxiety, and promote radiant beauty within and without while nurturing longevity and well-being throughout the life cycle. An herbal apothecary at the end of the book provides an A-to-Z guide to herbs and their healing uses, along with safety precautions, dosage information, and guidelines for when to seek traditional medical help.

An excellent guide for novices and experts alike, Growing 101 Herbs That Heal combines gardening, cooking, crafts, and natural healthcare into one sturdy manual. The author's care and concern for healthy plants and people are evident on every page, and there's an astonishing amount of detail in every section. Simple plant listings cover multiple pages, outlining everything from drainage preferences to the size and color of blooms. The different garden styles presented range from formal knot gardens to carefree wild gardens, with lots of choices for raised beds and containers. Organic methods for fertilizing and pest control are emphasized--time to get familiar with beneficial nematodes! Hartung If you've already got an herbal garden in place and are now wondering what to do with your harvest, look no further. Delicious recipes for breads, soups, and salads are here, along with medicinal tinctures, creams, and bath soaks, which are great for gifts or home use. There are also straightforward tips for starting an herb-based home business from your own creations. The last section is a fascinating materia medica that devotes a separate page to each herb, going into beneficial companion plants, harvesting time, market value, and home pharmacy uses. From common peppermint to the unusual yerba de la negrita, you'll enjoy the lovely pictures at least as much as the helpful information.

Heatherley

Healing Plants is a concise guide to traditional herbal medicine, written for both the beginner and the seasoned herbalist. Ana Nez Heatherley draws from her Native American and Celtic ancestry as she examines one hundred types of healing plants and herbs common to North America - from aloe and chickweed to periwinkle and yucca - citing the afflictions they remedy and offering understandable scientific explanations for each plant's effectiveness. Interweaving folklore throughout, Heatherley also gives growing tips, methods of preparing everything from a poultice to a tincture, herbal food ideas, and information on the latest research.

With a color identification section, helpful cross-reference lists, location maps, and informative sidebars, Healing Plants is the most practical book for anyone looking for an alternative to modern medicine.

Kindscher

The Plains Indians found medicinal value in more than two hundred species of native prairie plants. Unfortunately, modern American culture has not paid much attention. White settlers did learn a few plant-based remedies from the Indians, and a few prairie plants were prescribed by frontier doctors. A couple dozen prairie species were listed as drugs in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia at one time or another, and one or two, like the Purple Coneflower, found their way into the bottles of patent medicine. But in both the number of species used and the varieties of treatments administered, Indians were far more proficient than white settlers. Their familiarity with the plants of the prairie was comprehensive--there probably were Indian names for all prairie plants, and they recognized more varieties of some species than scientists do today. Their knowledge was refined and exact enough that they could successfully administer medicinal doses of plants that are poisonous. All of the species used by frontier doctors were used first by Indians. In Medicinal Plants of the Prairie, ethnobotanist Kelly Kindscher documents the medicinal use of 203 native prairie plants by the Plains Indians. Using information gleaned from archival materials, interviews, and fieldwork, Kindscher describes plant-based treatments for ailments ranging from hyperactivity to syphilis, from arthritis to worms. He also explains the use of internal and external medications, smoke treatments, moxa (the burning of a medicinal substance on the skin), and the doctrine of signatures (the belief that the form or characteristics of a plant are signatures or signs that reveal its medicinal uses). He adds information on recent pharmacological findings to further illuminate the medicinal nature of these plants. Not since 1919 has the ethnobotany of native Great Plains plants been examined so thoroughly. Kindscher's study is the first to encompass the entire Prairie Bioregion, a one-million-square-mile area bounded by Texas on the south, Canada on the north, the Rocky Mountains on the west, and the deciduous forests of Missouri, Indiana, and Wisconsin in the east. Along with information on the medicinal uses of prairie plants by the Indians, Kindscher also lists Indian, common, and scientific names and describes Anglo folk uses, medical uses, scientific research, and cultivation. Descriptions of the plants are supplemented by 44 exquisite line drawings and over 100 range maps. This book will help increase appreciation for prairie plants at a time when prairies and their biodiversity urgently need protection throughout the region.

For more than two decades Doug Elliott has wandered North America gathering roots and herbs, information and a great deal of plant lore. He has also created the extraordinary drawings that illustrate each plant in this delightful book.

Story Publishing Bulletins / Dorie Byers

We offer a wide variety of books relating to nature and native habitats, prairie establishment and backyard prairie development. Clearly written with good illustrations, these small books will answer many of the novice's questions

Story Publishing Bulletins We offer a wide variety of books relating to nature and native habitats, prairie establishment and backyard prairie development. Clearly written with good illustrations, these small books will answer many of the novice's questions.

Story Publishing Bulletins We offer a wide variety of books relating to nature and native habitats, prairie establishment and backyard prairie development. Clearly written with good illustrations, these small books will answer many of the novice's questions.

At a time when interest in herbs and natural medicine has never been higher, the second edition of this essential guide shows how to identify more than five hundred kinds of healing plants. More than three hundred new color photos illustrate their flowers, leaves, and fruits. The updated descriptive text includes information on where the plants are found as well as their known medicinal uses. An index to medical topics is helpful for quickly locating information on specific ailments, from asthma and headaches to colds and stomachaches. Symbols next to plant descriptions give readers a quick visual alert to plants that are poisonous or may cause allergic reactions. Organized by plant color for fast identification, this guide is an indispensable tool for understanding the traditional medicinal uses of the plants and herbs around us.

Daniel Botkin sets out to cover the same ground Meriwether Lewis and William Clark did in their 1804-1806 survey of the Missouri River. He maintains that their careful observations on the native species, landscapes, and human residents of that great stretch of country should serve as models for avoiding "a glamorized utopian vision of nature" and seeing the landscape for what it really is. "One of the ways our knowledge of nature has changed since the time of Lewis and Clark," he writes, "is that the field of statistics has developed, and we can state our errors quantitatively." Not so much exploring as following old paths, we can also gather data more thoroughly than did our ecologist predecessors, knowing a little better what it is we are looking for. Botkin does just that in long discussions of salmon ecology and the mismanagement of natural resources.

This resource details the medicinal and practical uses of 70 common wild plants. "This book is recommended to everybody wanting to follow in the footsteps of the early pioneers."

Hutchens

This authoritative guide based on the author's classic reference work, Indian Herbalogy of North America - is a portable illustrated companion for the professional and amateur herbalist alike.