|  We human beings of the developed societies have once more been expelled from a garden – the formal garden of Euro-American humanism and its assumptions of human superiority, priority, uniqueness, and dominance. We have been thrown back into that other garden with all the other animals and fungi and insects, where we can no longer be sure we are so privileged. The walls between ”nature” and “culture” begin to crumble as we enter a posthuman era. Darwinian insights force occidental people, often unwillingly, to acknowledge their literal kinship with critters.
— Gary Snyder I think a generally skeptical attitude toward contemporary herbalism is . . . well, healthy. There are several reasons for this suggestion. Despite some successes, much of contemporary herbalism remains scientifically unvalidated. While whole plant medicines most likely contain synergistic compounds that are lost when scientists isolate a single active component, whole plant medicines also undoubtedly vary unpredictably in the amount and proportions of their chemical constituents. Much contemporary herbalism is simply anecdotal; recommendations for plant uses are inconsistent and contradictory from writer to writer; claims of efficacy for some plants are so broad as to challenge credulity. Yet, in the wilderness, or in a long-term survival situation, a knowledge of plant medicine may turn out to be of great importance. What to do? One answer, of course, is to seek increased scientific understanding of just how these physiologically active plant constituents developed and how they work in the human body. However, for our purposes – that is, working with medicinal plants in the wilderness, rather than buying them at a health food store – I think the answer lies in a genuinely ethnobotanical approach to plant medicine. The indigenous peoples of the Americas have had thousands of years to figure out what plants work for which conditions. This doesn’t mean they can’t be wrong; indigenous people can be just as stubbornly wrong as anyone else. But it does mean that we should be listening respectfully to indigenous plant traditions. This entails three things. First, we have to make sure that we are able to correctly identify the plants these traditions are addressing. Second, we have to relate those plants to specific indigenous traditions, through both historical sources and contemporary bearers of largely oral tradition. Third, we have to understand those traditions, not as feeble forerunners of our own scientific way of thinking, but as essentially spiritual, in which healing with plants is part of a complex of medical, religious, mythic, symbolic, and social processes, each with its own healing powers.
 Bradford Angier, Field Guide to Medicinal Wild Plants (Harrisburg PA: Stackpole Books, 1978), ISBN 0-8117-2076-4. First of all, this is not a field guide: it has no identification key; the plants are arranged alphabetically by common name; there is no index of Latin names. You have to know the common name of the plant before you can find it in the book, and even then you have to be careful: ginseng, for example, is listed under A, for American ginseng. I can't tell whether osha root is in the book or not, because I can't look it up under its Latin name Ligisticum porteri, although the Latin name for each plant is given in its entry; and I can't tell whether or not it might be in the index under some other popular name. It would have been better to have called this book an encyclopedia of medicinal plants, for that is exactly what it is. All its faults aside, the book is filled with interesting historical and medical information about each of the 108 medicinal plants it discusses, each one illustrated with a clear color drawing of the leaves, flower, root, fruit, and other distinguishing characteristics, and each entry giving the plant's family, common names, characteristics, area, and uses, the last primarily from Native American and pioneers.
 Stephen Buhner, Sacred Plant Medicine (Boulder CO: Roberts Rinehart, 1996), ISBN 1-57098-086-1. It is very important to remember that, in all the indigenous cultures with which I am familiar, you are not healed by plants; you are healed by the spirits of plants. Within the indigenous world, plants are experienced as having intelligence and a soul; it is the plants themselves that taught human beings how to use them as medicine. Subtitled Explorations in the Practice of Indigenous Herbalism, this is one of the few books on plant medicine to deal with this issue head on, and to discuss plants simultaneously as medicine and as sacred beings. The book looks at the historical use of plants by native peoples and gives a detailed look at how the sacredness of plants is experienced in indigenous cultures. It has chapters on plant visions and sacred plant songs, creating sacred relationships with plants, and healing in a sacred manner. It discusses the ceremonies of of wildcrafting medicinal plants and of making plants into medicine. Other books tell you what plants to use for which conditions, which turns the plants into technologies; it is good to recall that this is not how the original users of plants viewed them.
 J.L. Castner, et al., A Field Guide to Medicinal and Useful Plants of the Upper Amazon (Gainesville FL: Feline Press, 1998), ISBN 0-9625150-7-8. If you are going to the Upper Amazon, this is a very handy small book, with excellent color photographs, describing the primary medicinal and otherwise useful plants you will encounter. The text ranges, alphabetically, from abuta, used in making arrow poisons, to Zingiber officinale, or ginger – which illustrates the arbitrary way in which the entries are organized. There are indexes by Latin, English, and Spanish (which includes Quechua) names, which means you can find a picture and description of a plant if you know what it is called; but there is no key, so the only way to identify an unknown plant is to flip through the book hoping to find a matching picture. Each plant has several photographs, a description, and a brief description of its uses. The book covers the familiar – cashews, pineapples, coffee, manioc – as well as ayahuasca, uña de gato, chiric sanango, chacruna, and sangre del grado. There are other, larger, heavier, more comprehensive and learned books – and by that I mean, actually, one book, Richard Schultes & Robert Raffauf, The Healing Forest: Medicinal and Toxic Plants of Northwest Amazonia (Portland OR: Dioscorides Press, 1990), ISBN 0-931146-14-3 – but this book is useful, well-illustrated, and portable.
 John Crellin, et al., The Tommie Bass Books - Volume I, Trying to Give Ease: Tommie Bass and the Story of Herbal Medicine (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1990), ISBN 0-8223-2017-7; Volume II, A Reference Guide to Medicinal Plants: Herbal Medicine Past and Present (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1990), ISBN 0-8223-1019-8. A. L. Tommie Bass was, before his death, a widely known and deeply beloved Appalachian herbalist with an encyclopedic knowledge of plants, people, and life. The authors are a professor of the history of medicine and a professor of botany. Together they use the life, practices, and accumulated knowledge of Tommie Bass as a fulcrum for discussing the history of herbalism, its traditional concepts, and the physical and psychological effects of herbal remedies. Based on extensive interviews with Bass and his patients, the book discusses local plant resources and use and the background of traditional Appalachian herbal practitioners; most important, it gives Bass's views in his own voice, describes his life and the development of his art, documents the extent of his practice, and gives details of his advice and herb recommendations. It is easy to see why Bass was so beloved in his community: he is knowledgeable, unassuming, thoughtful, articulate, and salty. He thinks about what he does, and he generates theoretical constructs to explain his practice. Just as important, in the second volume, the book collects articles on 260 medicinal herbs used by Bass, each essay including the herbalist's account of his knowledge of the herb followed by a commentary including information on the herb's taxonomy, history, a consensus of usage, today's scientific knowledge of the herb, notes, and references.
 Adam Gottlieb, Peyote and Other Psychoactive Cacti. Berkeley CA: Ronin Publishing, 2nd edition, 1997. ISBN 0-914171-95-X. Peyote has been used ceremonially by the native peoples of the Americas as a spiritual medicine for close to 3,000 years. Peyote and Other Psychoactive Cacti is primarily a concise and readable guide to the art of cultivating peyote, San Pedro, and the numerous other entheogenic cacti. In light of the possible extinction of wild peyote, this book is a timely resource for those who feel a responsibility to preserve this sacred medicine. For example, the author writes:
When harvesting Peyote, many people uproot the entire plant. This is unnecessary and wasteful. The roots contain no mescaline. Some of these plants have taken a long time to reach their size. A cactus three inches in diameter may be more than twenty years old. To collect peyote properly, the button must be cleanly decapitated slightly above ground level. When the roots are left intact, new buds will form where the old one was removed. These will eventually develop into full-size buttons, which may be harvested as before. If the new heads are not allowed to reach full size and flower, however, no seedling will be produced and eventually the roots will expire. Faulty harvesting methods have seriously depleted populations of this cactus. The book also functions as an identification guide to peyote, other cacti of central Mexico – including peyotillo, tsuwiri, sunami, doana, dolichothele – and the San Pedro cactus of the Peruvian and Ecuadorian Andes.
 James Herrick, et al., Iroquois Medical Botany (Syracuse NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995), ISBN 0-8156-0464-5. The Iroquois League or Confederacy consisted of six nations – the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora. These peoples shared beliefs about the cosmos which connected man both to nature and to the powerful realms of spirits. Healing plants are part of this interconnected spiritual realm, and this book, by two noted anthropologists, discusses the place of plants in the Iroquois cosmos, conceptions of illness in traditional Iroquois culture, and traditional Iroquois medical treatments, based both on historical sources and interviews with Iroquois elders. The discussion ranges over plant collection techniques, divination techniques, communal medical practices, medicine societies, and counterwitchcraft, and discusses illness – from birthmarks and toothaches to sunstroke and cancer – in terms of the Iroquois concept of balance and disturbance of the forces in one's life. The bulk of the book is an encyclopedia of more than 450 native names, uses, and preparations of medicinal plants, accompanied by historical references and black-and-white drawings.
 Kelly Kindscher, Medicinal Wild Plants of the Prairie: An Ethnobotanical Guide (Lawrence KS: University Press of Kansas, 1992), ISBN 0-7006-0527-4. In this book, an ethnobotanist documents the medicinal use of 203 native prairie plants by the Plains Indians. Based on an extensive review of archival material, fieldwork, and interviews, the plants covered range over the entire Prairie Bioregion, from Texas on the south to Canada on the north, and from the Rocky Mountains on the west to the forests of Missouri, Indiana, and Wisconsin in the east. The book discusses plant-based treatments for diseases ranging from hyperactivity to syphilis and from arthritis to worms, and describes the treatments themselves, including internal and external use, moxabustion, and smoke treatments. Each extensive plant entry includes a black-and-white drawing and range map, and gives common names, Indian names, scientific name, description, habitat, parts used, Indian use, Anglo folk use, medical history, scientific research, and cultivation.
 Michael Moore, The Medicinal Plants Series – Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West (Santa Fe NM: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1982), ISBN 0-89013-104-X, Medicinal Plants of the Desert and Canyon West (Santa Fe NM: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1989), ISBN 0-89013-182-1, and Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West (Red Crane Books, 1993), ISBN 1-87861-031-7. The author is one of the few writers who specializes in medicinal plants in the wild, as opposed to the health food store, and these three books are a classic series of manuals on the medicinal plants of the western United States, comprehensively covering New Mexico, Arizona, West Texas, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and the California desert. The books each deal with hundreds of species, and show how to identify, collect, prepare, and use the plants, along with truly practical advice based on the author’s long experience in the field.
 Paul Stamets, Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World: An Identification Guide (Berkeley CA: Ten Speed Press, 1996), ISBN 0-89815-839-7. Few plants of the gods have ever been held in greater reverence than the sacred mushrooms of Mexico. So hallowed were these fungi that the Aztecs called them Teonancatl (”divine flesh”) and used them only in the most holy of their ceremonies. These various mushrooms are now known to be employed in divinatory and religious rites among the Mazatec, Chinantec, Chatino, Mije, Zapotec, and Mixtec of Oaxaca; the Nahua and possibly the Otomi of Puebla; and the Tarascana of Michoacan. This book, by the author of Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms, is the only identification guide exclusively devoted to the world's psilocybin-containing mushrooms. It provides detailed descriptions and color photos for over 100 species, as well as an exploration of their long-standing use and continued significance. This book is the best single resource for information about Psilocybe mushrooms, beginning with a brief history of their use and a general review on their nature and habitat. There is an extensive section listing many different kinds of Psilocybes and similar mushrooms with a thorough description and photograph on most of them, although, unfortunately, many of the photographs are small and muddy. Still, this is the only book of its kind.
 Gregory L. Tilford, Edible and Medicinal Plants of the West (Missoula MT: Mountain Press, 1997), ISBN 0-87842-359-1. Despite the title, the emphasis in this book, written by an herbalist, is on medicinal plants; the author has also written From Earth to Herbalist: An Earth-Conscious Guide to Medicinal Plants (Missoula MT: Mountain Press, 1998), ISBN 0-87842-372-9. This book is an alphabetical listing of more than 250 plants, from alder to yucca, each with a clear color photograph. Each entry gives the plant’s common name, scientific name, family, description, time of blooming, habitat and range, edibility, medicinal uses, and – most helpful – look-alike plants. Numerous entries contain important warnings of adverse reactions to the handling or ingestion of the plants, including contact dermatitis, gastrointestinal irritation, and liver damage. There is a separate section on toxic plants and advanced medicines, where the term toxicity replaces the subhead edibility. There is an index of both common and scientific names. Alas, there is no key, so you either know the name of the plant already or you have to flip through the book, hoping to stumble on a photograph that resembles the plant you are looking at. No sources are given for the recommended medicinal uses; the reader does not know whether these are traditional indigenous uses, uses developed by European settlers, or something the author made up.
 Virgil Vogel, American Indian Medicine (Norman OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), ISBN 0-8061-2293-5. This is a comprehensive 500-page description of the healing practices of indigenous North American peoples, primarily as observed by European settlers and as interacting with imported European medicine. The book covers everything from bone setting to childbirth, and from suturing wounds to the use of emetics. Most important for this discussion, however, is a lengthy and well-documented section on American Indian contributions to pharmacology – that is, an alphabetical list, by common name, of plants used for various healing purposes, with excerpts from early European observers on how the plant was used, and how effectively. Unfortunately, illustrations are minimal, but the book is still – especially in combination with a good field guide – a treasure trove of information on the historic uses of medicinal plants in North America.
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