HERB - Brother Cadfael's Herb Garden

[khkeeler]

I bought Brother Cadfael's Herb Garden because I liked the look of it.
I haven't worked extensively with it but I'd put it in the category of
Freeman's Herbs for the Mideval Housewife:  the writers know their
plants, and are trying to tell us about Medieval uses.  
	The pictures are good. Where the plants are illustrated its very
helpful.  Not all, however, are illustrated.
	They put the zodiac sign of the plants in.  This is hard information to
come by-- Culpeper is the only other source I know.  
	They give English common names. This is a plus and minus:  it'll help
match Period sources, but in many cases the common American names (I
can't speak for the rest of the world) are not the same.  They call
_Daucus carota_ wild carrot, we call it Queen Anne's lace more often.
They give for _Sempervivium techtorum_, houseleek, live for ever,
Jupiter's eye, Thor's beard, or sengren. They don't mention hens and
chick(en)s, which is how most people seem to know it in the Midwest. 
There is no index and the plants are alphabetically by common name.
There are cross references to some common names: in the r's is an entry:
"rose, dog or wild, see briar".
    The entries combinr information from many times and places and there
is no way to tell which came from where.  All the information is
Medieval (plus sources like Culpeper that result from printing press
availability and are just out of Period) or earlier tho, so its useful
to us.
	Readers must recognize, however, that this book reports Ellis Peters'
use of plants and she was writing fiction.  Some literary license on her
part was reasonable and remains in this work.
	My conclusion is that this book is a must for all would-be herbalists. 
It isn't a primary source, but its much much better than using modern
herbals because it excludes post Period information (except to clarify
the Period information) and does not include nonPeriod plants.  There is
a serious attempt to provide a Medieval context for the information and
the pictures and scientific names make the information much more
accessible than most primary sources.

ISBN 0-8212-2387-9
Rob Talbot and Robin Whiteman. Brother Cadfael's Garden. Little, Brown
and Company, New York. List price $29.95

Has anyone worked more with it?

Agnes
Agnes deLanvallei
Mag Mor, Calontir
kkeeler1 at unl.edu
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