Rosemary Gladstar's Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner's Guide


Rosemary Gladstar - 2012
    With Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner's Guide, Gladstar offers a fresh introduction for a new generation of gardeners and natural health and self-sufficiency enthusiasts.Thirty-three of the most common and versatile healing plants are profiled in depth to get the budding herbalist off on the right foot. Readers will learn how to grow, harvest, prepare, and use each herb. Step-by-step instructions explain how to prepare herbal teas, salves, syrups, tinctures, oils, and liniments to stock the home medicine chest. Simple recipes explore each plant's healing qualities - aloe lotion for poison ivy, dandelion-burdock tincture for sluggish digestion, and lavender-lemon balm tea for stress relief. Gladstar shows how easy it is to make safe, all-natural, low-cost healing remedies for common ailments.

Prescription for Nutritional Healing: A Practical A-to-Z Reference to Drug-Free Remedies Using Vitamins, Minerals, Herbs & Food Supplements


Phyllis A. Balch - 1990
     With more than five million copies sold, Prescription for Nutritional Healing is the most trusted, comprehensive source on dietary supplements, vitamins, minerals, and herbs. A pioneer in the field of nutritional healing, Phyllis Balch passionately and meticulously researched and compiled this groundbreaking book. Now, a generation later, her message has more relevance than ever: consume fresh foods, avoid processed foods and those high in saturated fat, and optimize your intake of essential nutrients with the right supplements. Today's well-stocked vitamin and natural-health stores can be confusing, and people need Balch's clear, concise, landmark guide. To help them make sense of the mind-numbing array of choices that are available, readers of Prescription for Nutritional Healing will: - learn the basics of good nutrition; - find out how to balance vitamins and minerals so that the body can properly absorb both; - determine how best to treat 250 problems-from abscesses to wrinkles-using herbs, nutrition, and supplements; and - get the facts on other complementary therapies, like ayurveda, biofeedback, chiropractic care, and more. Prescription for Nutritional Healing is an essential resource for every health-minded consumer.

A Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs


Steven Foster - 1990
    More than 300 color photos illustrate the plants, their flowers, leaves, and fruits. The 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 stomach aches. Symbols next to plant descriptions provide quick visual caution for plants that are poisonous or cause allergic reactions. Organized by plant color for fast identification, this guide is a tool for understanding the traditional medicinal uses of the plants around us.

The Herb Book: The Complete and Authoritative Guide to More Than 500 Herbs


John B. Lust - 1974
    The most complete reference catalog of nature's herbs ever published.

Pharmako/Dynamis: Stimulating Plants, Potions, & Herbcraft


Dale Pendell - 2001
    Pharmacognosy is the study of the composition, production, use, and history of drugs of natural origin. Pendell covers these topics and more in this volume, charting a voyage around the world of plant teachers. Through poetry, chemistry, and a generous sprinkling of arcane lore, Pendell weaves and twists the many threads of tradition into a singularly bewitching brew. Pendell's voyage is a true circumnavigation. It divulges what Gary Synder called "dangerous knowledge" that is a formidable weapon against "even more dangerous ignorance."Dale Pendell is a poet, software engineer, and longtime student of ethnobotany. His poetry has appeared in many journals, and he was the founding editor of KUKSU: Journal of Backcountry Writing. He has led workshops on ethnobotany and ethnopoetics for the Naropa Institute and the Botanical Preservation Corps.

The Herbal Medicine-Maker's Handbook: A Home Manual


James Green - 2000
    Writing in a delightfully personal and down-home style, Green emphasizes the point that herbal medicine-making is fundamental to every culture on the planet and is accessible to everyone. So, first head into the garden and learn to harvest your own herbs, and then head into your kitchen and whip up a batch of raspberry cough syrup, or perhaps a soothing elixir to erase the daily stresses of modern life.

Stalking the Wild Asparagus


Euell Gibbons - 1962
    His book includes recipes for vegetable and casserole dishes, breads, cakes, muffins and twenty different pies. He also shows how to make numerous jellies, jams, teas, and wines, and how to sweeten them with wild honey or homemade maple syrup.

Healing Mushrooms: A Practical and Culinary Guide to Using Mushrooms for Whole Body Health


Tero Isokauppila - 2017
    In Healing Mushrooms, you'll learn about the ten most powerful mushrooms you can add to your daily diet to maximize your health gains. Though some of these mushrooms, like Tremella, Cordyceps, and Reishi will sound exotic, they're all easy to source online in extract form and easier to use in recipes. Even more familiar mushrooms, like Shiitake, Oyster, and Enoki, are full of seriously healing potential--you just have to know how to use them. Packed with practical information, fun illustrations, and 50 mushroom-boosted recipes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (and even dessert!), Healing Mushrooms unlocks the vast potential of this often-overlooked superfood category and will be the go-to resource for adding mushrooms to your health and wellness regimen.

The Wild Medicine Solution: Healing with Aromatic, Bitter, and Tonic Plants


Guido Mase - 2013
    Explains how 3 classes of wild plants--aromatics, bitters, and tonics--are uniquely adapted to work with our physiology because we co-evolved with them. Provides simple recipes to easily integrate these plants into meals as well as formulas for teas, spirits, and tinctures. Offers practical examples of plants in each of the 3 classes, from aromatic peppermint to bitter dandelion to tonic chocolate As people moved into cities and suburbs and embraced modern medicine and industrialized food, they lost their connection to nature, in particular to the plants with which humanity co-evolved. These plants are essential components of our physiologies--tangible reminders of cross-kingdom signaling--and key not only to vibrant physical health and prevention of illness but also to soothing and awakening the troubled spirit. Blending traditional herbal medicine with history, mythology, clinical practice, and recent findings in physiology and biochemistry, herbalist Guido Mase explores the three classes of plants necessary for the healthy functioning of our bodies and minds--aromatics, bitters, and tonics. He explains how bitter plants ignite digestion, balance blood sugar, buffer toxicity, and improve metabolism; how tonic plants normalize the functions of our cells and nourish the immune system; and how aromatic plants relax tense organs, nerves, and muscles and stimulate sluggish systems, whether physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual. He reveals how wild plants regulate our heart variability rate and adjust the way DNA is read by our cells, controlling the self-destructive tendencies that lead to chronic inflammation or cancer. Offering examples of ancient and modern uses of wild plants in each of the 3 classes--from aromatic peppermint to bitter dandelion to tonic chocolate--Mase provides easy recipes to integrate them into meals as seasonings and as central ingredients in soups, stocks, salads, and grain dishes as well as including formulas for teas, spirits, and tinctures. Providing a framework for safe and effective use as well as new insights to enrich the practice of advanced herbalists, he shows how healing wild plant deficiency syndrome --that is, adding wild plants back into our diets--is vital not only to our health but also to our spiritual development.

The Psilocybin Mushroom Bible: The Definitive Guide to Growing and Using Magic Mushrooms


K. Mandrake - 2016
    The book features over 40 step-by-step photographic instruction guides to each step of the process, including: sterilizing the equipment to produce mushrooms; how to build the containers used during home mushroom cultivation; safety measures for preventing contamination of the mushroom cultures; and a guide to consuming magic mushrooms safely and enjoyably.Dr. Mandrake uses his doctoral studies in mycology to detail the history and botany of psilocybin mushrooms to give readers an idea of their prevalence throughout human history. The book is highly detailed and comprehensive, allowing readers to learn the entire process required to produce perfect magic mushrooms every time.

Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities


Amy Stewart - 2009
    In Wicked Plants, Stewart takes on over two hundred of Mother Nature’s most appalling creations. It’s an A to Z of plants that kill, maim, intoxicate, and otherwise offend. You’ll learn which plants to avoid (like exploding shrubs), which plants make themselves exceedingly unwelcome (like the vine that ate the South), and which ones have been killing for centuries (like the weed that killed Abraham Lincoln's mother). Menacing botanical illustrations and splendidly ghastly drawings create a fascinating portrait of the evildoers that may be lurking in your own backyard. Drawing on history, medicine, science, and legend, this compendium of bloodcurdling botany will entertain, alarm, and enlighten even the most intrepid gardeners and nature lovers.

The Earthwise Herbal: A Complete Guide to Old World Medicinal Plants


Matthew Wood - 2008
    The first in a two-volume set, The Earthwise Herbal profiles Old World plants (volume two will treat American plants). Organized alphabetically, the book encompasses all of the major—and many of the secondary—herbs of traditional and modern Western herbalism. Author Wood describes characteristic symptoms and conditions in which each plant has proved useful in the clinic, often illustrated with appropriate case histories. In addition, he takes a historical view based on his extensive study of ancient and traditional herbal literature. Written in an easy, engaging, non-technical style, The Earthwise Herbal offers insight into the “logic” of the plant: how it works, in what areas of the body it works, how it has been used in the past, what its pharmacological constituents indicate about its use, and how all these different factors hang together to produce a portrait of the plant as a whole entity. Ideal for beginners, serious students, or advanced practitioners, The Earthwise Herbal is also useful for homeopaths and flower essence practitioners as it bridges these fields in its treatment of herbal medicines.

The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms


Gary Lincoff - 1980
    The 762 full-color identification photographs show the mushrooms as they appear in natural habitats. Organized visually, the book groups all mushrooms by color and shape to make identification simple and accurate in the field, while the text account for each species includes a detailed physical description, information on edibility, season, habitat, range, look-alikes, alternative names, and facts on edible and poisonous species, uses, and folklore. A supplementary section on cooking and eating wild mushrooms, and illustrations identifying the parts of a mushroom, round out this essential guide.

Botany for Gardeners


Brian Capon - 1990
    Two dozen new photos and illustrations make this new edition even richer with information. Its convenient paperback format makes it easy to carry and access, whether you are in or out of the garden. An essential overview of the science behind plants for beginning and advanced gardeners alike.

Making Plant Medicine


Richo Cech - 2000
    This is a modern medicine making book and formulary with its roots in original herbalism designed for every medicinal herb gardener to cultivate the full potential of the plant-human relationship. Richo Cech tells very good stories based on his experience as a global wanderer, herbalist and medicine maker. In the context of his lifelong love of gardening, he has procduced this long-awaited book that is original, amusing and absolutely useful.Part 1: Medicine Making* drying and processing herbs* making tinctures the easy way* the mathematics of tincturing and solubility factors* basic formulas for fresh and dry tinctures, including dosages* vinegar extracts, glycerites, herbal succi and syrups teas, decoctions, herbal oils, salves and creams poultices, compresses and soaksPart 2: A Gardener's FormularyThis section covers well over 100 herbs that are readily cultivated in North America. The listings include: conservation status, parts used, specific formulas, practical uses, dosages, contraindications and an overview of alternate species.Since the beginning, the garden has been a haven of good values, both physical and spiritual. The act of gardening provides a balm for every wound. May your medicine be of the garden, and may it be of benefit to all.