Color photographs and line drawings help you identify and learn about the fascinating plants of the Pacific Northwest coast. Engaging notes on each species describe aboriginal and other local uses of plants for food, medicine and implements, along with the unique characteristics of each plant and name origins.

    "This is a book," writes Gary Snyder, "about danger: dangerous knowledge, even more dangerous ignorance." Against the greater danger, ignorance, Pendell strikes a formidable blow, as he proves himself a wise and witty guide to our plant teachers, their powers and their poisons. "Pharmako/Poeia is an epic poem on plant humours, an abstruse alchemic treatise, an experiential narrative jigsaw puzzle, a hip and learned wild-nature reference text, a comic paen to cosmic consciousness, an ecological handbook, a dried-herb pastiche, a counterculture encyclopedia of ancient fact and lore." -Allen Ginsberg poet"Dale Pendell reactivates the ancient connection between the bardic poet and the shaman." -Terence McKenna author of True Hallucinations

    In the program and book, both titled The Private Life of Plants, Attenborough treks through rainforests, mountain ranges, deserts, beaches, and home gardens to show us things we might never have suspected about the vegetation that surrounds us. With their extraordinary sensibility, plants compete endlessly for survival and interact with animals and insects: they can see, count, communicate, adjust position, strike, and capture. Attenborough makes the plant world a vivid place for readers, who in this book can enjoy the tour at their own pace, taking in the lively descriptions and nearly 300 full-color photos showing plants in close detail.The author reveals to us the aspects of plants' lives that seem hidden from view, such as fighting, avoiding or exploiting predators or neighbors, and struggling to find food, increase their territories, reproduce themselves, and establish their place in the sun. Among the most amazing examples, the acacia can communicate with other acacias and repel enemies that might eat their leaves, the orchid can impersonate female wasps to attract males and ensure the spreading of its pollen, the Venus's flytrap can take other organisms captive and consume them. Covering this remarkable range of information with enthusiasm and clarity, Attenborough helps us to look anew at the vegetation on which all life depends and which has an intriguing life of its own. He has created a book sure to please the plant lover and any other reader interested in exploring the natural world.

    softcover

    PLANTS OF COASTAL BRITISH COLUMBIA covers the entire length of the British Columbia coast, from shoreline to alpine. Includes: * 1100 color photographs * More than 1000 line drawings and silhouettes * Clear species descriptions and keys to groups * Descriptions of each plant's habitat and range * 794 new color range maps. * Rich and engaging notes on each species describe aboriginal and other local uses of plants for food, medicine and implements, along with unique characteristics of the plants and the origins of their names. For both amateurs and professionals, this is the best, most accessible, most up-to-date guide of its kind.

    Learn how to make your aquarium a work of art and a part of your home.

    There are literally hundreds of plants readily available underfoot waiting to be harvested and used either as food or as a potential therapeutic. This book is both a field guide to nature's bounty and a source of intriguing information about the plants that surround us.

    For Firekeeper, Rogers has assembled her best work, deleting some poems from the original edition and adding others. Here are such resonant older poems as "Suppose Your Father Was a Redbird" and "Rolling Naked in the Morning Dew," along with such masterful new poems as "The Dream of the Marsh Wren: Reciprocal Creation," "Born of a Rib," and "Generations."

    133 color photos.

    This remarkable volume, created to serve students, professionals, and other plant enthusiasts, covers 130 temperate to tropical families common in North America with detailed illustrations and modern referenced commentaries. Each family discussion includes a diagnosis and summary of characteristics, distribution data, important economic members, and pollination ecology. The book's most striking feature is Zomlefer's 158 original pen-and-ink plates depicting intricate dissections of 312 species. The content of the family discussions is geared to readers who have completed one introductory biology course. For readers less familiar with botanical terminology, Zomlefer provides an illustrated glossary of 551 terms with more than 300 drawings. Other important tutorial features are twenty-two detailed charts that compare pertinent characteristics of certain related plant groups and a general chart that summarizes the salient features of the families covered in the text. Both amateurs and professionals will particularly enjoy the chapter on examining, dissecting, and sketching live material.

    After reviewing carefully the ethnobotanical, chemical and pharmacognostical literature on the Amazonian Amrta, Ott describes more than three dozen psychonautic experiments designed to elucidate the incredible pharmacology of ayahuasca potions, ingenious amalgamations of extracts of the ayahuasca liana, depicted above, which contain enzyme inhibitors, and extracts of leaves of other plants containing DMT (like Psychotria viridis, depicted below), a potent entheogen ordinarily inactive orally. Ott boldly characterizes the discovery of ayahuasca potions by various groups of South American Indians as "one of the most sophisticated pharmacognostical discoveries of all antiquity."There follows a review of the literature on the plants containing ayahuasca-type enzyme inhibitors, and on plants which contain DMT and related entheogenic tryptamines. The resulting tables of more than 60 plants in each category document Ott's contention that there are at least four thousand possible combinations of plants which can yield entheogenic potions like ayahuasca. These are the Ayahuasca Analogues of the book's title, and Ott's psychonautic experiments include several with such "analogues," as well as with pharmahuasca -- the pure ayahuasca alkaloids in "ayahuasca capsules." A thorough index, twenty-one footnotes, nine tables and a detailed bibliography of 418 sources make this a valuable reference book, as well as Ott's personal logbook of psychonautic "travels in the universe of the soul" with ayahuasca.[Taken from back cover]

    Lois outlines the choices available, the unique characteristics and quirks of each variety, specific seeding and growing tips and much more.

    The perfect gift for naturalists and art lovers, here is an authoritative and beautiful look at marine life.

    With tips from the best of amateurs to professionals, The Alaska Gardener's Handbook is a useful reference for newcomers and experienced Alaska gardeners alike. This is the fourth book on Alaska gardening for Lenore Hedla, a veteran of 40 years of agricultural experience and writing in the far north. Richly illustrated with more than 100 color photos.

    Ranging from the pragmatic plantings of the Spanish missions through Victorian fantasies and Hollywood extravagances and culminating in up-to-the-minute drought-tolerant gardens, California Gardens: Creating a New Eden provides a thought-provoking, eye-dazzling chronicle of the state's diverse garden traditions. Offering ideas and examples that will inspire all gardeners and garden lovers, David C. Streatfield recounts how amateurs, architects, landscape designers, and nurserymen have created the gardens of their dreams. His ground-breaking text - in preparation for over twenty years - illuminates how California's ecology, economy, and the importation of exotic plants and styles have shaped its gardens and ultimately influenced garden design around the world. The various ways that landscape architecture and architecture have intertwined in the last two centuries are explored with particular insightfulness. Some of the finest architects and landscape architects of this century - Charles and Henry Greene, Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, Thomas Church, Lockwood de Forest, Garrett Eckbo, and Florence Yoch - have shaped the landscape of California in distinctive ways. Contemporary and historical color photographs by some of the country's best garden photographers are complemented by rare black-and-white archival illustrations and detailed plans. Two invaluable appendices provide biographies of the major designers and information about visiting the public gardens cited in the book.

    In the body and in small amounts, it can supplement and move the qi and blood, scatter cold, and vitalize the spirit. In large amounts, of course, alcohol is injurious to body and mind. For over two thousand years, in Chinese medicine, alcohol has been mixed with a large variety of medicinal substances to make medicinal wines and liqueurs. These medicinal wines are especially useful for the treatment of traumatic injuries, bi syndromes, and debility in the aged. However, they can also be used for a host of other problems. This book contains the ingredients, method of preparation and administration, indications, and contraindications of over 200 authentic Chinese medicinal wines. These wines are easy to make, often requiring only one or two ingredients. Thus, they do not require a huge on-site pharmacy. Many ingredients are available at health and Oriental food stores. Ninety-five percent of the rest of the ingredients listed in the formulas in this book can be obtained by mail from any number of suppliers who addresses are given inside. That makes these formulas perfect for use as adjunctive remedies for acupuncturists. In addition, patient compliance in taking these wines is high. Translated from both premodern and contemporary Chinese sources, this book is the largest and most complete on this subject in English.

    

    The book includes a two-sided color insert of dye charts produced in the American Southwest

    They are realizing that these native wildflowers, trees, shrubs, groundcovers, vines, and grasses are far better suited, and therefore easier to grow and maintain, than most of the imported plants that populate traditional landscapes. InGardening with Native Plants of the South, landscape designer Sally Wasowski offers an exciting vision of the many possibilities and advantages of 'going native.' Lavishly illustrated with more than 250 gorgeous color photographs, her book is both an introduction to more than 200 of the most familiar and easiest to find native plants of the South and a basic primer on how to use them effectively.