Customer Reviews

The Lost Language of Plants: The Ecological Importance of Plant Medicines for Life on Earth

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This is one of the best books I have read in a long time. Thoughtful, poignant, well written, it even brought me to tears at some points. I learned so many things I didn't know, which doesn't happen for me very often, sad to say. I have a pretty good idea how destructive man has been to the environment, but there were chapters in this book that opened my eyes even further, particularly when it comes to the ripple effect of the pharmaceutical industry.

But more than that, the author discusses with due respect the indigenous history of working with plants and how dismissing that history in the name of profit, power and control serves no one.

This book is truly a labor of love that speaks from every page. I had no idea what a page-turner it would turn out to be. Consider yourself forewarned.


...geminiwalker

A couple of summers ago, in the midst of a blackberry glut, I decided I should harvest some Oregon Grape berries to mix with blackberry for a good, sour jelly. But I needed a whole patch, and a few individual plants were all I knew. Before I got around to looking, I found myself on a walk, huffing and puffing up my favorite steep hill. In the middle, I just stopped - for no obvious reason - and looked up. All around me, in the midst of the salal, was a thicket of Oregon Grape, laden with berries! My brother-in-law and I came back and filled up buckets. The deep purple, astringent berries made a stunning blend with the blackberries, and the jelly set up beautifully. But most stunning, even after we ate it all up, was how the plant showed itself in a place I'd been through a hundred times before without ever noticing it.

Is that language? Maybe not But even if it only meant that I could make my jelly, it did have meaning, and to convey meaning is, after all, the purpose of language. The Lost Language of Plants is a book about meaning: not whether plants speak, or even how they speak, but what they say to us and we to them.

Buhner says there is meaning to Life, and that plants communicate it clearly and fully through their chemistry and biology. In human industrial culture, however, the common values of Life - birth, growth, death, and renewal - have mutated into progress, wealth, and poverty - the trinity of economic growth. As a result, billions of years of evolution are being pushed to favor waste over renewal, and death over Life. Under human control, Life is a mere by-product of a soul-less, cosmic machine that happens to have produced "resources" that we can consume until they're gone or until Life ends, whichever comes first.

"Imagine a ball of twine the exact size and shape of Earth," Buhner writes; "Better yet, telephone line. Take the end point of the line and weave it back into the beginning so that there is no beginning and no end. Every place the line crosses itself (you could think of them as synaptic junctions) messages cross over; communication travels quickly throughout the entire line itself as well. Academic disciplines are areas where a segment of line is cut out of the ball and studied. They explore its tensile strength, its molecular structure, its chemical composition, the colors and types of wires that run through it. Any communications that were flowing or might flow through it cannot be studied once it is cut out of the whole-only a tiny part of the picture can be seen. Misunderstandings easily arise, especially if the communications that flow through the line are the most important thing.

"Turn the ball of telephone line back into Earth. Each plant, plant neighborhood, plant community, ecosystem, and biome has messages flowing through it constantly-trillions and trillions of messages at the same time. The messages are complex communications between all the different parts of the ecosystem. There is no beginning and no end, no cause and no effect. The three-and-a-half-billion-year-old feedback loops of Earth are so closely intertwined that there is always another cause underneath whatever cause you begin with. Impacts at any one point affect every other point in the system. Life is so closely coupled with the physical and chemical environment of which it is a part that the two cannot legitimately be viewed in isolation from one another. As James Lovelock says: `Together they constitute a single evolutionary process, which is self-regulating.'" (p 172)

If, as Buhner suggests, we are the language, and the language is us, and the meaning of that language is the beauty of Life itself, then redemption is not an airy philosophical postulate, but an experimental result within the realm of reason and, perhaps, within the realm of possibility.

Stephen tackles the prescription drug industry without painting a doom and gloom scenario. He presents facts in a loving way so that the reader can understand why plants are important. Stephen sees a problem and offers a solution. A great book for anyone worried about prescription drugs, on prescription drugs, or interested in plants.

This is a book you should read, and unlike many "should" reads, this one is a real pleasure. Stephen has taken on a huge task with this book, and almost tries to cover too much ground, but he pulls it off with style and art. Once you get past the wonderful language and the perceptive viewpoint you will stumble on a scathing and accurate depiction of what mainstream medicine is doing to the environment. It is a picture that makes "Silent Spring" seem tame in comparison, and the book as a whole will lift you up out of your chair and get you moving to find answers.

Fascinating, informative and eye-opening, "The Lost Language of Plants" by Stephen Buhner shows us the life of evolving plant chemistries, revealing the science in the `magic' of plants used as medicine by 4 of 5 people on the planet. A merciless exposé following the path of medical effluence through our soil, water, and air clearly illustrates effects on molecules as they change to affect generations to come... generations of all life: bacteria, plants, wildlife, and humans, as we reproduce. We have been participants in a medical experiment of reductionist technology for a few hundred years and the results are not widely known or circulated. Buhner's well-researched and brilliantly conceived presentation refutes any denial one may have harbored before reading this book.

Western thinking has its own way of seeing things and we live in the cradle of all that it produces. We see ourselves as an advanced society and display little use or respect for our elders, or those who have gone before us. Buhner's language unveils the illusion embedded within our language and our thinking, embodies ancient understanding and functional relationships, and reveals the complex communication between all parts of the eco-system. Stephen Buhner, as scientist, intellectual, storyteller and shaman, teaches us a language so that we may see differently. This is a passionate call to reconnect to our biocentric origins, to nature, to save our planet and ourselves.

I am halfway through this book and plan to start right over again when I'm finished. I think that this is one of the most fascinating things I have ever read. BUT, if you asked me what it is about I'd have a hard time explaining it. Yes, it is about how chemicals are seeping into the ecosystem, and how we might view plant medicine as an alternative etc, but it's about so much more than that. It's scientific and shamanistic at the same time, merging two ways of thinking into one. Really I should say, it explains one type of epistemology in the language of another. I really like it and it's changing my way of looking at the life around me. Also, my perception of God/spirituality etc. Check it out. PS. Mr Buhner thanks for such an interesting and thought provoking read! You are so right! KM

The Lost Language Of Plants: The Ecological Importance Of Plant Medicines To Life On Earth by educator and environmentalist Stephen Harrod Buhner is a scathing expose about the abuse of modern Western medicines, and the over-saturation of antibiotics, while the conventional medical community neglect the natural healing power of plants. Offering a way for humanity to relearn and better understand the nature language of growing things, The Lost Language Of Plants is a spiritual book of reinventing one's world view to foster a better world and a testament to the need for a return to our shamanic roots and a renewed respect for, and protection of, the environmental biodiversity. The Lost Language Of Plants is strongly recommended reading for environmental activists, students of alternative medicine, and the non-specialist general reader with an interest in how the natural medicines of plant life can foster our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being.

The Lost Language of Plants takes the reader on a journey from our innate and ancient connection with the living Earth to our disconnection from it and the ensuing wounds. Then in a coyote sort of way, Stephen Buhner brings us full circle and shows us a way to walk once again, within the circle of life;a part of it, not apart from it. He speaks to the heart of our separation not only from the plants who are our teachers and healers, but from ourselves and each other. Reading the Lost Language of Plants I sensed an ancient and wise place deep within my psyche, maybe even within my DNA, ache for the healing that renewing our relationship with the plants can bring. The truths revealed within the pages of this book are at once compelling and painful and hopeful. This is a must read for anyone who loves the Earth, loves the plants and is not afraid to think or to feel.

We are polluting the environment with pharmaceuticals developed to heal, and are losing the planet's natural healers and stabilizers in the process. In the The Lost Language Of Plants, Stephen Bohner sees plants as sentient beings adjusting to the environment: the discussion focuses on the importance of preserving plants which hold the key to healing both man and environment.

A Pharmaceutical Silent Spring
. . . is what the publisher calls Stephen Buhner's new book, and they're right: The Lost Language of Plants is a book that everyone needs to read. The USGS has just published a study about traceable quantities of commonly prescribed and over-the-counter drugs (not to mention bug sprays, soaps, lotions, and other personal care products) polluting the water. Researchers are still determining how these contaminants affect the environment, but it's clear that they are having a drastic impact on habitats and the health of humans and the planet alike. Stephen Buhner provides a more detailed synthesis of this data than I've been able to find in any other book. Our bodies do not absorb all the synthetic chemicals we pour into them, and we end up peeing drugs into our waterways. Buhner documents how hormones from birth control pills are altering the gender of fish; how chemotherapy drugs too toxic to be handled regularly get flushed into the regular sewage; how all kinds of bacteria are developing resistance faster than scientists can develop new antibiotics because of the loads of antibiotics fed to humans(and especially livestock) unnecessarily. This information is chilling, especially if, like me, you're moved to take a good look at your medicine cabinet. But medicine saves lives, right? We need it, don't we? Buhner questions this assumption. If we're going to solve America's legal drug problem, we're going to have to look at health and "cures" differently. Buhner suggests, with passionate conviction, that we start by trying to view ourselves as parts of our ecosystem, as equal partners in the health of the
planet with plants and animals. Earth evolved over millenia with plants serving as the chemical catalysts that kept ecosystems healthy and in balance. These same plants have served as medicines for people since the beginning of Homo sapiens as a species. It's only in the 20th century that Western science began to presume that humans could control, replicate, and synthesize the chemical properties of plants. It's time that we recognized that our knowledge is shallow and that to really learn how the earth works we need to listen to our elders--the plants--just as our ancestors once did, and as some surviving indigenous peoples do today. Buhner believes that it is possible for us to change our paradigm of how the world works, and
begins to point the way. The survival of the living world depends on our taking his advice.