HERB - Re: sources and names

[khkeeler]

Jasmine wrote
> You know what I really wish we had? A comprehensive reference of
> plants that are listed in original source material and any other
> period source material, including a listing of their current
> botanical and any previous botanicals they might have had. Anyone
> know of one?

No. I think we need to (gradually) write one.

There is a book of English names of plant culled from the Period
literature--written by a linguist with little serious interest in plants
(i.e. goes to modern English common names not scientific names); there
are floras for all the European countries matching scientific names to
modern (and some traditional) common names; there are herbals annotated
by good botanists to identify, where possible, the plant the Medieval
writers meant.  I just ordered a folklore book (Oxford Dictionary of
Plant Lore, R. Vickery) of which a Texas A&M reviewer wrote "the
common... names are unfamiliar outside of [the British Isles] making it
difficult to find anything..."  

In my opinion, putting it all together is no small task, but we could
start.
The common medicinal and culinary herbs, vegetables and fruit will make
the central list.
We can quickly add the native trees of Europe.
To add in plants brought into Europe during Period from the Middle and
Far East, and the post 1492 additions makes the problem harder, but not
impossible.

There are lots of difficult questions, but we can certainly make it
easier for the next person to work through this stuff.

Sara/Evaine sounded like she volunteered! I volunteer to help.

 I generated some lists for teaching at the Royal University and I
imagine others have too.  Riddle (Dioscorides on Pharmacy and Medicine)
lists the plants in Dioscorides' herbal, and that will cover a lot of
the medicinal plants of Period, since they restated D. a lot (and its
pretty big): I can get that to you.  Got a web site? (I don't).  

Agnes deLanvallei in Calontir

kkeeler1 at unl.edu
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