Book List for my students

For the 2012 Herbalist Course we will be working from a certain set of herbal books, but I will also give a list of some other favorite books of mine for reference

Plants of Coastal  BC (Pojar)

There are books out for different regions as well. This book is great for identifying local plants. There’s lots of great field guides out there for any area you may live in. Look for color photographs, black line drawing are pretty useless. I have EDIBLE & MEDICINAL PLANTS OF CANADA by MacKinnon  & Kershaw too. They tend towards paranoid with lots of warnings for plants that I use all the time. Best to cross reference with something like Terry Willard’s book



Edible & Medicinal Plants of the Rocky Mountains (Terry Willard)

I love this book for getting information on what medicinal uses the local plants can be used for.



 The Herb Book (John Lust)

Great reference book covering many herbs & gives dosages. I been through 2 copies of this, wore the first copy right out.



Bartams Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine

This one is great as general reference for tweaking your memory when it comes to matching up ailments & herbs.



Susun Weeds books:

Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year

Healing Wise

Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way

Breast Cancer? Breast Health!

I have all 4 of these, and while I think these are all useful for many herbalists, I just find I am not so into Susun Weed any more. The Healing Wise one is hard to read. I used the Childbearing one & Menopausal one quite a bit when those times applied to me. The Breast Health one is useful for choosing herbs that help to prevent cancer (which I think we should be using all the time). I feel like I have moved on from her methods of herbalism though.

I have moved on from the ailment based books this year, my students will work with choosing herbs based on a person’s constitution rather than just the ailment.



Dr. Kidds’ Guilde to Herbal Dog Care

I love this book. I have used it so much to help me think which herb to use for my dogs. I will be covering herbs for dogs in the Herbalist Course. Seems to me, in the 2010 course we branched out into horses & cattle & sheep too.



Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West by Michael Moore (the herbalist)

This book is great! I love his writing & he covers all sorts of wonderful plants. When I saw it I just grabbed it off the shelf & bought it without even opening it. His website is full of great manuals & information too.

Those are really great books to start with. Depends on what you need them for, whether its identifying in the wild, or finding dosages or ailments, or dog care, etc.