Mountain States Medicinal Plants: Identify, Harvest, and Use 100 Wild Herbs for Health and Wellness (Medicinal Plants Series) - Softcover

Wiles, Briana

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1604696540 ISBN 13: 9781604696547

Publisher: Timber Press, 2018

Synopsis

In this insightful guide to the flora of the Mountain States, Briana Wiles is your trusted guide to finding, identifying, harvesting, and using over one hundred of the region’s most powerful wild plants. 

“A practical guide to using medicinal herbs as well as a powerful reminder of our reciprocal relationship with the natural world.” —Rosalee de la Forêt, author of Alchemy of Herbs  

You’ll learn how to safely and ethically forage and how to use wild plants in herbal medicines including teas, tinctures, and salves. Plant profiles include: 

• Clear, color photographs 
• Identification tips 
• Medicinal uses and herbal preparations 
• Harvesting suggestions 
• Lists of what to forage for each season, making the guide useful year-round!

Thorough, comprehensive, and safe, this is a must-have for foragers, naturalists, and herbalists in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, and northern Nevada.

About this title

About the Author

Briana Wiles is a herbalist and wild plants expert. She teaches classes on foraging and medicinal plants. Wiles also runs Rooted Apothecary, which offers bulk herbs, herbal remedies, and her own line of body-care products made with foraged botanicals. Visit her online at rooted-apothecary.com.

From the Back Cover

With their wealth of botanical diversity, the mountain states provide an abundance of healing herbs accessible to all. Whether you are just starting out or are looking to deepen your herbal knowledge, this book is your essential companion for finding, identifying, harvesting, and safely using the most important wild medicinal plants of Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, the eastern sides of Oregon and Washington, and southern Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction
Something brought this book into your hands, that innate need for learning, a passion for plants, or a desire to understand how to make simple, pure medicines. With this book, you will be able to identify and recognize plants you may have walked past before or even thought of as weeds. Just getting outside into nature to meet any of these plants is therapeutic and mind-altering. You will start to hear and participate in the communication that takes place between humans and plants. Gathering information and inspiration on which plants grow near you, or which ones you want to search for, will connect you to the earth in a powerful way. Likewise, there is much empowerment in taking charge of your health and what enters your body.

Mountain ranges of the Rockies span through each of the states and provinces covered in this book. The mountain west starts to the south in Colorado, Utah, and Nevada; moves north through Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho; slides west into the eastern sides of Oregon and Washington; and reaches further north into southern Alberta and Saskatchewan. In this territory all the plants in this book can be discovered; however, each herb does not grow in every part of this territory. The mountain west holds a great variety of elevations and ecosystems. Some plants grow only in the southern states, others only in the north; many plants are found either below a certain elevation or above it. An hour’s drive can bring you thousands of feet lower or higher and to a whole new land of plants. This is an added benefit to living at altitude—you can chase the seasons. Spring starts low and ends high, meaning just as one season ends at 5000 feet, it is just beginning again at 7000 feet.

Guidance for the Wild Harvest
Let this book give you guidance, not only on where to find medicinal plants but also on how to approach your search. Let it also provide you with inspiration to prepare herbs for medicine-making, eventually leading you to concoct your own unique remedies. This book is full of rules and recipes to follow, but they were made to be tweaked. When you don’t find the plants you’re looking for, research the ones you do have near you. Be aware of variations in climate and in the plants themselves. Always harvest with these variations in mind—if it’s a meager-looking plant, let it be and find one that has more vitality, which also means more medicine. I always say, the altering of recipes often begins with the plants themselves. 

Wildcraft safely
Be careful. Always use multiple references when learning to identify a new plant. Bring your books and notes with you into the field. Learn which plants not to harvest, because they are poisonous, or threatened, or because taking them away would damage the surrounding ecosystem. When reading about a plant, always check the potential cautions for harvesting and ingestion. Harvest wisely. Make sure the plant you are gathering is the one you are after. Be mindful of any other plants that make it into your basket. Some may be unintended or downright undesirable. Take the time to garble your plants, separating out the parts you are going to use, and process them with care.

Edition details

• Publisher: Timber Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1604696540
• ISBN 13: 9781604696547
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 296