HERB - Top 5 Herb Books

[Kathleen Keeler]

Baroness Leonora asked

> P.S.  Anybody else?  What are your 5 favorite herb books?  I'd love to
> know!  Plus it is really fun on a rainy day to root around in your library

I couldn't live with just 5 I think
My first response
the Greek Herbal of Dioscorides - I don't own a good copy, but one of these
days I'll find one.
(out of print)

Macer 'On the Virtues of Herbs' - 1971 translation by D.P. O'Hanlon. Hemkunt
Press, Delhi (probably still in press through New Age sources)

Tacunium Sanitatis - can I please take both the Facts on File edition (Four
Seasons of the House of Cerutti) and the Arano edition?  Out of print last I
looked.

Cockayne:  Leechcraft, wortcunning and star something... Anyway a collection of
Anglo Saxon herbals, translated.

Maybe I'll wait on the fifth to see Strabo and Tusser and ... none of which I
own.

The other important set are
A flora, as detailed and modern as possible, of Europe (that'd be huge if it
covered from the Mediterranean to the Arctic Circle. For now I have one for the
British Isles)

The New Oxford Book of Food Plants - JG Vaughan and CA Geissler. 1997. ISBN
0198548257

J Smartt and NW Simmonds. Evolution of crop plants, 2nd ed.  Longman 1994. ISBN
0582086434

a plant chemistry book. For now I have "Physicians Desk Reference" to medicinal
plants (title approximate, you can tell I'm at work) but I'm not sure about it
-- some of the pictures don't seem quite right.

Don't know what the 5th would be.  A modern garden book to grow stuff (don't
know the perfect book), or a dye book to help choose dye plants (there's an out
of print book (booklet really) from the New York Botanic Garden that is
probably my first choice just now; or the Colour Cauldron --the former is the
longer list but includes American plants, the latter is very Scottish) or my
regional flora (Flora of the Great Plains) to help recognize what I see around
me.

Nothing in common with Baroness Leonora! :-)
demonstrating the vast array of interests under the rubric "herbalism"

Cheers
Agnes

Mistress Agnes deLanvallei, O. L. (herbalism) Mag Mor, Calontir
Dedicated to the study and safe re-creation of the Medieval uses of plants:  if
I can be of assistance in your endeavors, I'd be honored.
kkeeler1 at unl.edu

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