With spring time just around the corner I thought it would be a perfect time to talk about one of my absolute favorite advanced herbal books by Micheal Moore. If you live in the Intermountain West of the United States this is a must have book. Your herbal library would be sorely lacking without it.

As an herbalist, plant enthusiast, and someone who is highly interested in the story the landscape around me has to tell, this book is indispensable. Pretty much every time I find a “new to me” plant on my plant walks, I turn to this book. I try as much as I can to only use herbs I can grow or forage myself. (I’ve been an aspiring locavore for decades) In that persuit, Micheal Moore’s book has taught me so much about the plants that are available to me in Utah.

It’s so thorough, it’s  as if Micheal has come along on your walks with you. If that hasn’t convinced you already, grab a cup of tea and let me tell you exactly what I like about this book and why it will actually be useful to you.

Herbal Book Review: Medicinal Plants of the Intermountain West

The book opens with an intro from the author. I like his way of sharing with the reader the physical space that he is writing in and what his thoughts are on learning about plants and interacting with them. It gives you a great understanding of just how important plants are to him.

This book is organized by common plant name in alphabetical order. As someone who grew up doing research before the internet, having a reference book organized in alphabetical order made my conscientious side do a happy dance. As much as I like herbs organized by season or plant family, sometimes I just want to look up a plant fast. With this book I can just think juniper and go to the j section of the book.

The information included with each plant is quite thorough. Each plant page includes a map of the states you can find it in, other common names as well as the scientific names of other species of the plant if applicable. One of the things I like a lot is that next to the main common name of the plant is the family. Learning what family a plant is in is really helpful for identifying plants you may not know the name of yet, but you know similar characteristics for.

He then follows with the who, what, why, where, when and how of each plant. Telling you how to identify it, where and when to find it,  how to collect it, how to prepare it and how it is beneficial as plant medicine. He ends each plant listing with contraindications which is really nice because those aren’t often included in herbal books.

Scattered throughout the book are black and white illustrations of each plant and in the middle is a lovely section of color pictures of various easy to identify but some what harder to find as a beginner.

How is this book useful to you

As Micheal states in his introduction, this book is for “Green Herbalists”. The ones who want to understand plants on a holistic level, just like you want to understand the person you are working with on a holistic level to help them, you want to understand where a plant grows, why it grows there, what other plants can be found around it, and how and when to harvest it, so that it is in prime condition to help you make high quality remedies.

If you want to be an herbalist who has local plant knowledge “a locavore herbalist” and you live in the intermountain west this book of monographs will really be your key to learning about the plants in your area.

I’ve also found this book useful for finding local substitutes for herbs that I might not find in a store. For example I was looking up menstrual cramp remedies and discovered in this book that red osier dogwood bark can be used for menstrual cramps on the first day of the cycle. This is a plant that is abundant in the mountain stream areas here. I was excited to read that.

If you are interested in being in the back country it’s even more important to have local plant knowledge incase you are hurt or need emergency food. Combine this book with the Herbal Medic and you have a very good starting place for off-grid herbalism.

Why is it important as an herbalist to learn about your immediate environment?

• Learning about the environment you live in is one of the key traditional skills I talk about. When you learn about the kind of geology you have and the weather systems, you’ll understand why the plants that are around you are there. You won’t find acid loving plants in a place that is dry and has very high ph.

• Learning about the plants that are endemic to your area will open your eyes to the story that is being told by nature every moment of everyday. If you want to understand the world better and have less fear of the wild places, just learn about the plants in your area.

For example last fall there was a wild fire on the trail near my house. It was started by a man who didn’t care to put out his cigarette properly. Lucky the fire only burned a few hundred square feet before it was put out. It was such a scar on the landscape. The line between the burnt black ground and the normal tan high desert soil was stark. But now that it’s spring, you would hardly know that a fire had happened.

There are so many plants growing out of the ashes and even one plant I’d not see there in all the years I’ve been walking this trail (which is pretty much like 4 times a week all year long) minors lettuce. This year has also been a very low snow year and because minors lettuce likes cold wet weather it was able to grow there this spring.

To sum it all up if you could only have ten advanced herbalism books, this one should absolutely be one of them. You will keep coming back to this book year after years as it is so rich with information.

** If you get the book or have it, let me know what you think in the comments below. If you have any suggestions for other books you’d like me to review let me know that as well.