Herbal Allies and Plant Profiles: A Practitioner's Guide to Essential Medicinal Herbs

Presenting to you Herbal Allies & Plant Profiles, the second in Plant Healer's materia medica series. Each chosen chapter is excerpted directly from past issues of Plant Healer Quarterly, and are written by its diverse columnists and the inspired teachers of Plant Healer events.There is much knowledge instrumental to being an herbalist or even simply tending your own family's health using natural medicines, but none is more essential than deepening familiarity with the various herbs themselves. This includes knowing how to positively identify them in the wilds, in the garden, and in the plant matter we purchase, a skill that often depends upon taste and smell as well as visual examination.... as well as understanding their active components, energetics, actions, applications and contraindications. The authors of Herbal Allies & Plant Profiles take a considered look, finding new or less common conditions that specific herbs seem to address, referencing the latest research as well as their own personal experiences administering preparations and recording the results. Not all ways of taking an herb are as effective as we'd like. You will learn in these pages when it is optimal to use the various methods, such as teas, foods, tinctures, infusion, decoctions, steams, oils and balms.Included also, are some loving looks at herbs' folklore, history, habitat and preservation. And as the book's Foreword by Kiva Rose Hardin so well evokes, it is ultimately an herb's experienced significance, mysteries and secrets, that draw us closer to the plant, to ourselves, and to our healing missions. It is the intent of the authors of Herbal Allies & Plant Profiles that their work and words help bring you just that....