Skip to content

The healing power of plants

Caution: this is not a how-to guide for the gathering and consumption of wild plants. All of the authors stress that you’re a fool to think you can eat any found vegetation without repercussion. Poisoning and death are potential outcomes.

Caution: this is not a how-to guide for the gathering and consumption of wild plants. All of the authors stress that you’re a fool to think you can eat any found vegetation without repercussion. Poisoning and death are potential outcomes.

At the very least it can leave a bad taste in your mouth.

With that warning, Edible and Medicinal Plants of Canada becomes the most useful guide around. It features over 300 plants (including trees, shrubs, vines, herbs, sedges, grasses and ferns), including a quick thumbnail pictorial at the beginning of the book. If you’re walking around, this handy guide can help you figure out which plants to pick and which ones to leave be.

Again it must be stressed that a high degree of caution is advised. There again the book proves its utility. If you flip to the back (with sickly blue colour tabs on top of the pages), you can cross-reference with pictures and descriptions of some of the most poisonous plants in the country.

Each species gets the rundown with photographs, cultural and historical usage, medicinal properties plus other warnings and hazards as required. The authors suggest how to prepare and eat them too. This is the kind of thing that should probably get packed on a wilderness trip just in case you get separated from your group or lost on the trail somewhere.

There was no end to my wonder at the information I learned from even a quick perusal. Dandelions are considered herbs not weeds. Clover is high in protein but causes bloating. Water lilies can treat colds or respiratory ailments. Ninebarks is a shrub that got its name because you can peel away that many layers of its bark. It’s known as an astringent, diuretic and a purgative. Don’t put it in your family stew but it can help treat gonorrhoea.

For the environmentalist, there is also a section that describes the conservation status of each plant species that is considered endangered or vulnerable. That section is seven pages long and that’s sad for two reasons. There are a lot of species there and they are all tough to read. It’s in small print.

Edible and Medicinal Plants of Canada

By Andy MacKinnon, Linda Kershaw, John Thor Arnason, Patrick Owen, Amanda Karst and Fiona Hamersley-Chambers
Lone Pine Publishing
224 pages
$21.95


Scott Hayes, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

About the Author: Scott Hayes, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Ecology and Environment Reporter at the Fitzhugh Newspaper since July 2022 under Local Journalism Initiative funding provided by News Media Canada.
Read more



Comments

push icon
Be the first to read breaking stories. Enable push notifications on your device. Disable anytime.
No thanks