MEDICINAL AND OTHER USES OF NORTH AMERICAN PLANTS

This guide by Charlotte Erichson-Brown focuses primarily on the ways North American Indians have used plants, trees, and shrubs for medicine, food, clothing, shelter, and other necessities. The plants considered are native to eastern Canada and the northeastern United States, although some are also found as far south as Florida and Texas and as far west as the Pacific coast.

In addition to extensive chronological historical citations dealing with documented usages of plants as far back as the fourteenth century, this book also provides data to enable even amateur botanists to identify plants in the field. Thus, accounts of herbalists, explorers, botanists, doctors, and scientists are accompanied by useful information about the plant’s range, common and scientific names, nontechnical physical description and more. To make the book especially easy to use, plants are grouped according to habitat: wet open places, woods and thickets, and dry open places. Moreover, a detailed line drawing of the plant’s leaves, buds, twigs, seeds, and other characteristic features accompanies the textual descriptions.

Scholarly, yet readable, exceptionally thorough but never dull, this classic reference belongs in the library of botanists, naturalists, herbalists, ethnologists, archaeologists — anyone interested in the long and fascinating story of how plants have served humanity.