Customer Reviews

Edible and Medicinal Plants of the Great Lakes Region

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you're at all interested in herbs and edible wild plants, you need to get this book if only to read about the author's experiences with many of the listed plants. Almost every plant in the woods is either edible (sometimes with a bit of fiddling) or medicinal, even spotted hemlock which is the poison that reputedly killed Socrates. 'Conium Maculatum' "has been utilized as an antispasmodic, sedative, and an anodyne" but I definitely wouldn't try this wild parsley look-alike at home. The author is a D.O. and knows what he's doing, but even he skipped a 'personal experience' with spotted hemlock.

I wish color could have been added to this book. It's the only thing missing from a thorough description and line drawing of each plant (mushrooms included). Much Indian lore is included, such as this description of the uses for Pitcher Plant (Sarracenia Purpurea):

"The Canadian Indians used the root tea to treat smallpox. It was used by Natives to sharpen their memory. Another report says the tea was supposed to cause forgetfulness of sorrow. The tea has been used with benefit in dyspepsia. The Ojibwe women drank a tea of the root to assist parturition."

The author heard of a man from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan who lived to be 125 "and attributed his old age to drinking the liquid in the leaves of the pitcher plant periodically." So Dr. Naegele tried it himself and it didn't do any harm except for the ingestion of a few rotten insects.

This book is extensively footnoted and cross-indexed. There are tables of symptoms, and the plants that can be used for their cure. For example the following plants maybe useful for "nervous complaints:" Hemp; Lady's Slipper; Pennyroyal; Cow Parsnip; Motherwort; Catnip; Ginseng; Rose; Mad-dog weed; Stinging nettle; Rose moss. There are also two extensive glossaries of botanical and medical terms.

Many of the included plants are found outside of the Great Lakes Region, so this book should prove useful to a much wider audience.

If you are interested in the subject matter, this is deffinately worth a read. It is very detailed, but personal experiences and lore keep it from being dry. My only complaint is that there are no actual photographs of any plants and the hand drawn illustrations are plain "black and white".

This is an interesting book and a good one for a forager with a little previous experience. It's really more of a recipe book. If you want to get into serious foraging you will have to buy a better field guide. I was a little bummed out when I found out the book even recommends not using this book as your source for identifying plants. That doesn't leave me feeling very confident.

My daughter is into edible plants and is LOVING this book. There is quite a bit of useful information on it. It is written in a first hand account by the author. This is a bit different. I do wish it had color plates or pictures in the book. Would be more useful than the black and white illustrations.

I really liked this book although the pictures are not colored (althought the color is listed). If you know what some of the plants already look like it's worth getting. Otherwise,would recommend getting a diff book because I did wind up doing alot of internet searching for what the plants looked like. Overall, pretty good information on the plants though.

The book was an interesting read, and it was nice to see the authors own experiences with each of the plants... but, I would not recommend this as your foundation edible/medicinal plants book, due to the fact that the subject matter was not as well-researched as some. For instance, edible fiddleheads were listed as cinnamon fern, instead of ostrich fern... No wonder the author thought they were bitter! This was such a basic error, that I had a hard time taking the rest of the book seriously.