Stalking the Healthful Herbs

by Euell Gibbons

Overview

Having written the enormously popular Stalking the Wild Asparagus and Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop, Euell Gibbons turned his attention to the wealth of herbs that grow wild throughout North America. Combining the skills he learned as a boy with Indian lore and his years of patient experimentation, he wrote this book that others might enjoy the benefits of our little-known natural heritage.

Euell Gibbons shows the reader how to enjoy the culinary and medicinal virtues of herbs and wild plants. Drawn from the author’s wide knowledge of plants as well as from the lore of Native Americans and early settlers, the information is supplemented by nutritionists at Pennsylvania State University who worked with Gibbons on analysis of the entries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811739047
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	03/23/2020
Series:	19660101
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Euell Gibbons was born in Red River County, Texas, and made a living in various ways—as a cowboy, hobo, carpenter, surveyor, boat builder, beachcomber, newspaperman, farmer, and teacher—throughout many states, before writing his first book, Stalking the Wild Asparagus, in 1962 at age fifty-one.

Table of Contents

Foreword xi

Preface xiii

1 Those Green Things 1

2 What's an Herb to Do With? 7

3 Wild Horseradish as Medicine, Condiment, and Cosmetic 13

4 Witch-Hazel: Most Familiar of All Herbal Medicines 22

5 Comforting Composites: Boneset, Coltsfoot, and Yarrow 27

6 Wild Lettuce: A Vegetable Tranquilizer 38

7 Medicine and Magic from Wormwood 42

8 Elecampane, Horseheal, or Elf Dock 47

9 For Courage: Borage, Star-Flower, or Beebread 53

10 Comfrey, Knitbone, or Healing Herb 58

11 Nature's Vitamin Pill: The Common Blue Violet 63

12 The Fragrant Wild Mints 70

13 Beating the Cats to the Catnip 80

14 Those Healthful Heaths 86

15 Ground-Ivy or Gill-over-the-ground 96

16 The Wild and Woolly Horehound 102

17 Common Garden Sage Gone Wild 107

18 How to Have a Wild Thyme 113

19 Did You Ever Eat a Pine Tree? 117

20 Stalking the Slippery Elm 126

21 The Common Stinging Nettle 132

22 Marsh-Marigold or American Cowslip 139

23 Goldthread, Canker-root, or Mouthroot 145

24 Wild Carrot, Bird's-nest, or Queen Anne's-lace 149

25 Ginseng: More Precious Than Gold 154

26 How to Eat a Rose 162

27 Hawthorn or Red Haw 171

28 The Useful Chickweed 175

29 The Versatile Viburnums 180

30 Those Marvelous Mallows 192

31 Listen to the Basswood Tree 202

32 Jewelweed or Wild Touch-me-not 207

33 Medicinal Christmas Decoration 213

34 Cleavers or Goosegrass 219

35 Great Mullein or Velvet Dock 224

36 Curled Dock: Weed or Fine Food? 231

37 What I Do with the Blaspheme-vine and Indian Cucumber 238

38 Jack-in-the-pulpit or Indian-turnip 249

39 The Odorous Skunk-cabbage 254

40 Chufa or Nut-grass 261

41 Just How Good Are Wild Foods? 268

42 Capturing Wild Perfumes 284

Glossary 290

Index 297

Editorial Reviews

A handful of crushed pennyroyal rubbed on exposed skin will keep mosquitoes away. A half-cup of violet-leaf greens has as much Vitamin C as four oranges. Lemonade flavored with a jigger of borage juice is an especially cooling drink. The roots of Queen Anne’s lace will do for a meal in an emergency. That insatiable stalker of the wildlings, Euell Gibbons, has been out hunting again.

Joan Lee Faust

The author of Stalking the Wild Asparagus and Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop explores the nutritional, medicinal, and useful elements of wild herbs and plants. His search took him into the field, the kitchen [and] into the laboratory at Pennsylvania State University, where nutritionists analyzed food values in plants he brought them.

Phoebe-Lou Adams

The author of Stalking the Healthful Herbs brings to our attention in a delightful fashion many of the culinary and medicinal herbs native to North America—kinds that were well known to the Indians and early settlers. His intimate knowledge of these plants is based on countless field studies as well as on painstaking research. One clearly gets the feeling that he writes of what he knows and of what he has learned from endless experience and experiment.

Elizabeth C. Hall

The author of Stalking the Wild Asparagus and Stalking the Blue-eyed Scallop explores the nutritional, medicinal and useful elements of wild herbs and plants. His search took him into the field, the kitchen (and) into the laboratory at Pennsylvania State University, where nutritionist analyzed food values in plants he brought them. Taken preventively, he discovered, wild plants furnish rich amounts of natural vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that help build the body's natural defenses…—The Atlantic Monthly

Phoebe-Lou Adams