Books like Iwígara — picked by fans

I really enjoyed the way Karen Rose connected herbs, the body’s systems, and the Orisha pantheon. I was very interested in learning about herbalism through the lens of non-Western spirituality, and it sent me on an inward journey I’m still riding out today.

This book has been a great resource for me in terms of getting my feet wet, making at-home remedies, and learning the body systems. I also loved the beautiful anecdotes and ancestral wisdom. This is a textbook that makes herbal healing and plant magic accessible.

Dr. Duke was a legend in the worlds of herbalism and botany, a field in which he not only earned a doctorate but made his life’s work. After immersing himself for many years in the Amazonian rainforest and Central America, he went on to create Dr. Duke’s Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases at the USDA. Traveling widely to find plants with anti-cancer activity, Duke and his team documented the chemical properties of thousands of species. His bestseller is stocked with remedies for more than a hundred of the most common ailments. Among the most accessible herbals for a general audience, this book is delightfully written, scientifically sound, and quite funny. With warmth, wit, and abundant good reason, Duke describes why and how to make your own natural medicine cabinet.

This book has been borrowed from me and not returned twice, so I suppose that says it all. It’s also the reason my third copy is an e-book. Once you read Green’s excellent guide, you’ll understand why two otherwise honorable men found the need to hang on to it. With its accessible model of male physical systems and insight into common stressors, Green’s book is a revelation on male health and illness. The ultimate goal of this book is not simply to remedy this or that ailment but more broadly to help men and boys create a personalized approach to wellness based on their body type and needs. Its alphabetical herb list and tasty recipes make this a handy reference as well. May it have a long off-the-shelf life in the home of any man who wants to heal and thrive. 

Drawing on more than three decades of experience, Dr. Romm has written an essential guide to female health and wellness. For Romm, herbs hold pride of place in the art and science of healing. As a midwife, herbalist, and board-certified family physician with a specialty in women’s health and obstetrics, her work combines a deep understanding and respect for both traditional herbal medicine and Western allopathic medicine. Anyone who wants to better understand or address specific female health issues will benefit from this revelatory book. Anyone who wants to integrate herbs into their lifestyle will enjoy the book’s abundant tips, meal plans, and 6-week action plan. Dr. Romm’s big-hearted and encouraging style will leave readers feeling committed to charting a course for better health at any age.

When I became interested in the relationship between Plateau tribal peoples and their cultural plants, everyone I spoke with directed me to a series of remarkable papers by British Columbia ethnobotanist Nancy Turner. One look at the photographs of elders who grace the introduction to each volume reinforces their individual knowledge and respect for the place where they have lived for untold generations. Turner’s work in southeastern B.C. eastern Washington, north Idaho, and western Montana have been distilled here into a handy field guide filled with both beautiful photographs and timeless information. 

What’s distinctive about this gorgeous poetry anthology is not only that each poem has a specific tree or flower as its subject but that they are grouped according to plant family.

The editor Sarah Maguire was a gardener as well as a poet and translator. In what was clearly a labour of love she brought together poems from all over the world, spanning eight centuries of writing. Her fascinating introduction considers many aspects of nature poetry, including gender and colonialism.

As a gardener and poet I have loved finding poems by Medbh McGuckian, Emily Dickinson and D.H. Lawrence grouped together in the Gentian family or poems by Louise Glück, Seamus Heaney, Lorna Goodison, Robert Herrick, Marianne Moore, and Richard Wilbur thriving next to each other in the Mint family. 

Blogger and podcaster Matt Candeias used to think plants were boring. Then, in college, he got a summer job in habitat restoration at an old quarry, and he fell in love.

He learned about the strange ways plants have sex, how they conquer new territories, and what animals they prefer to eat. Most of all, they fight for survival. It’s not exactly war, but there is never enough water, nutrients, space, and light, and there are always predators. Plants meet their challenges in surprising, wonderful ways.

So go outside, he says, and get to know your local plants like you know your friends.

So many books with beautifully illustrated florals are aimed at children, but the magic of flora is not just for kids. A wonderful example of this is The Illustrated Herbiary, which focuses on 36 botanicals like rosemary (for remembrance, just like in my book), apple, and clover. Filled with rituals and reflections for each herb, Kate O’Hara’s beautiful and detailed illustrations bring Maia Toll’s words to life.

Monica Gagliano gives us a enchanting peek at the complexities, consciousness, and subjectivity of plants, as well as at her own story as a woman scientist, who is one of the pioneers in the field of plant intelligence. Weaving together her biography with the life of plants in a creative mix of “phytobiography,” the author shows how working “on” plants is also always working “with” them. We collaborate and communicate, Gagliano suggests, across species and biological kingdom boundaries, and it is on this unknown terrain that her scientific discoveries of plant learning or plant bioacoustics are made. Although Gagliano is not a philosopher by training, the account she offers in Thus Spoke the Plant opens new and exciting vistas in the philosophy of plants.

Plants are our companions through life. We grow, pick and eat some of them, but how much do we really value them? Our ancestors had an intimate knowledge and understanding of the power of plants and were aware of which were helpful and which caused harm. They wrapped comfrey leaves around the damaged legs of animals, believed that fairies sheltered from the rain beneath ragwort plants, cured childhood hernias with the aid of ash saplings, and recognized the benefits of rosehips long before science could analyse their nutrients.

Hatfield’s Herbal follows the tradition of so many other excellent herbals, weaving botany, plant magic, medicine, and folklore into an engrossing mixture that always keeps me reading long after I found what I was originally looking for. Read a good herbal and you’ll never look at a so-called weed in the same way again.