Henriette! Arrrgggh! How did you let your book go out of print here on Amazon?
I have been remiss, I should have reviewed this book long ago. And I don't have time to do it justice now. Suffice to say it's 150 pages of practical brilliance!
My only complaint is that it covers too few herbs, but those it does cover it does extremely well and practically. Did I mention how PRACTICAL this book is? It's obviously written by a practicing herbalist who grows and wildcrafts and actually USES (imagine that) herbs in her daily life and tells you how to do the same.
The book covers not only herbs but entire plant families (plant families tend to have members that are related by structure and function and so the information on one exemplar herb is often applicable to another in the family, certainly in learning to compare and contrast herbs in the family.)
Families covered:
Carrot
Mallow
Mint
Rose
Quick therapeutic guides:
Painful Menses
Advice for the flu season
Digestive upset
Earache
Itching
Bleeding
Toothache
Sciatica
Also (did I mention practical?): Picking and drying, and making: teas, oils, salves, tinctures, vinegars, syrups and all the things that can go wrong with all of those projects.
And the best guide to making your own Flower Essences I have ever seen.
Henriette Kress, the author, has run one of the internet's oldest and largest website resources on herbs and the practice of herbalism worldwide since almost the inception of the internet. To find her, just search her name, even as I just did search "kress" and "herbs" (without quotes) and her website will be the first gazillion hits your search engine returns. Click on one and pester Henriette to put her book back out here! Or you could probably purchase directly from her too.
Meanwhile pester her to write another. This should be Volume 1 of a series of at least 20. I love being able to compensate her for all the work she has done extremely well, extremely in-depth, and for free for decades by buying her wonderful book and I want to buy more!
PS(So what's with this "practical" thing I got going on? I have just had a recent overdose of impractical, airy-fairy, "this herb is good for the XYZ" (liver or stomach or some such) without any discussion of HOW to use it, WHY to use it, WHAT FORM to use it in, and WHERE did that information COME FROM? Thanks for allowing me to get that out of my system ;-)
