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Planting the Future: Saving Our Medicinal Herbs
Edited by Rosemary Gladstar and Pamela Hirsch
Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press, 2000
310 pp., $22.95, paper
ISBN 0-89281-894-8
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Ralse one hand if you've ever taken the herbal supplement Echinacea to boost your immune system. Raise your other hand if you've read that Echinacea is being "loved to death" because commercial harvesters are using up naturally occurring collections of these and other native medicinal plants. Whether you see a conflict here or not, you may want to use those hands to plant Echinacea purpurea (purple coneflower) in your herb garden. If you do, you'll be adding a pink, aster-like plant which grows well in dry, not overly enriched soil to your garden. You'll also be demonstrating that it's time for us to plant domestic versions of important wild, endangered herbals, as we work to sustain native plant colonies in their natural habitats.

In Planting the Future: Saving Our Medicinal Herbs, edited by Rosemary Gladstar and Pamela Hirsch, Echinacea and thirty-two other native medicinal plants are interestingly and beautifully described by herbalists dedicated to the conservation and restoration of endangered medicinal plants. Read, one after another, the list of herbals sounds like a poem:

Arnica, Black Cohosh, Bloodroot and Blue Cohosh;
Calamus Root, Cascara Sagrada, Echinacea, Eyebright and American Ginseng;
Goldenseal, Goldthread, Helonias Root and Kava;
Lady's Slipper Orchid, Lobelia,
Lomatium, Oregon Grape and Osha;
Partridgeberry, Pipsissewa, Pleurisy Root, and Slippery Elm;
Spikenard, Stoneroot, Sundew and Trillium;
Venus's-Flytrap, Virginia Snakeroot, White Sage and Wild Indigo;
American Wild Yam, Yerba Mansa and Yerba Santa.

According to Rosemary Gladstar and Pamela Hirsch, however, you are to post this herbal list on your refrigerator and take it to the health food store. Become Consumers, they say, who refuse to purchase products made from these medicinal plants unless you have asked each commercial enterprise about their collecting practice. "What are you doing to replant domestic varieties?" and "How are you helping to sustain `at-risk' plants within their native habitats?"

What puzzled me as I first read essays on Oregon Grape, Osha, Echinacea and American Ginseng was the tension I felt between being instructed to value these herbs for their curative powers and being admonished to stop using (or over-using) these national treasures. Only after rereading the introductory pieces entitled "What You Can Do To Make a Difference," and "Creating Botanical Sanctuaries,"did I realize that these are the tensions these herbalists feel. Ironically, the first audience for this collection is those who have been harvesting native plants since early"hippie"or "back to nature" movements in the 1970s - the "Wildcrafters" themselves.

With heartfelt pleas, each essayist in this fine volume concludes his or her essay by describing practices which will help sustain plant colonies and their native habitats. Thirty years ago, instructors worked to "sell" herbalists on the value of the wild plants over the domestic. In this volume, essayists suggest ways of protecting wild varieties within a sustainable environment. They encourage, where possible, the planting and harvesting of domestic cousins such as Echinacea purpurea, which, in the long run, will help protect at least five heavily depleted, wild cousins. And, in a startling essay titled "The American Extra Pharmacopoeia 'one herbalist encourages the use of imported" nuisance" plants such as kudzu and Purple Loosestrife to fill medicinal needs.

Planting the Future: Saving Our Medicinal Herbs, supported by United Plant Savers organization, is an interesting collection of essays about using, harvesting, preserving and planting medicinal herbs. There are enough fascinating details in each chapter. The index holds references to books, periodicals and nurseries - as well as the address of the United Plant Savers organization. So raise those hands! Maybe it's time to revisit the idea of using ""at-risk" plants in standard dietary products. Maybe it's time to plant more purple coneflower. Echinacea purpurea is a beautiful, sun loving plant.

-Jeanne Whitehouse

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