A City Herbal: A Guide to the Lore, Legend, and Usefullness of 34 Plants That Grow Wild in the Cities, Suburbs and Country Places

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1888123001 ISBN 13: 9781888123005

Publisher: Ash Tree Publishing, 1997

The wild plants of the city are potent herbal medicines and nutritious wild edibles, as well as sources of comfort, fiber, and dyes. Lores, legends, and uses are described lyrically.

About the Author:

Maida Silverman was born and has spent her life in New York City. The fantasy of a garden of her own, overrun with fruit trees, nut trees, flowers, berries, vegetables, and herbs has not yet come to pass. Because of this she turned her attention to wild plants that grow in the city and found them rewarding and engrossing. She graduated from Pratt Institute in 1962. In addition to being an illustrator, she is a craftswoman whose major field is stitchery. She often spins her own yarns and dyes them, using vegetable dyes derived from some of the plants described in A City Herbal. Her illustrations include those from The Poetry of Chaim Nachman Bialik (published by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations), which was voted one of the Fifty Best Books of the Year by the American Institute of Graphic Arts in 1973. Her stitchery projects and writings on the use of herbs and wild plants have appeared in Family Circle and Seventeen magazines.

From Publishers Weekly:

" Here is a treasure for city dwellers who have been missing abundant pleasures free for the finding. Silverman is articulate and affectionate as she tells of the great variety of beautiful and valuable plants--bittersweet to yarrow--which grow wild in urban areas. This is a book to lift the heart, even if approached from a purely practical standpoint," commended PW.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.