The medicinal properties of plants have been of interest to society for centuries and continue to be a subject of modern research. Yet too often research has been predicated upon poorly identified plant material and secondary sources of information. Much of what we know about the use of plants as drugs, poisons, foods, and as instruments of magical or religious practice derives from lore inherited from the clay tablets and papyri of the ancients and from compilations of early Greek, Arabic, and Indian physicians. Meanwhile, information pertaining to plant parts used even now in the daily life of peoples far removed from the influence of modern medical and health practices has been largely overlooked.

With the encroachment of civilized cultures on primitive societies, unique traditions—often unwritten—are being destroyed. In many instances, the very plants involved are disappearing. Not infrequently, the only record, where one exists at all, of these vanishing pools of knowledge is that of the botanical field worker. For no matter what chemical or biological investigations may follow, the botanist can affix to an actual specimen, as he collects it in the field, the local terms applied to the plant and a description of native medicinal or other uses.

Dr. Altschul has compiled field notes of health and medical interest on over 5,000 species of plants, culled from some 2,500,000 specimens of higher plants collected by field botanists from all over the world and deposited in the combined collections of the Arnold Arboretum and Gray Herbarium of Harvard University. The resulting catalogue represents a unique approach to supplying new investigational leads to researchers seeking biologically active plant principles. Dr. Altschul's meticulous sheet&ndashby–sheet examination of the Harvard collections provides the pharmacognosist, pharmacologist, and others in the medical and health sciences with an extensive firsthand survey of the domestic medicines of many cultures.

These previously unpublished botanists' notes are here made available in a comprehensive publication that should become an important resource for every investigation into the area of medicinal phytochemistry. Indexes to families and genera are provided, as well as a medical index referring to diseases and to therapeutic properties for researchers intent on locating plants with special medicinal capacities. The author is a Research Fellow at the Botanical Museum of Harvard University.

Taking us back to the birth of New England’s forests, Sheila Connor shows us these trees evolving amidst a succession of human cultures, from the archaic Indians who crafted canoes from white birch and snowshoes from ash, to the colonists who built ships of oak and pine, to the industrialists who laid railroad tracks on chestnut timber, to the tanners who used hemlock bark to treat the leather required to shoe the Union army. In this engaging narrative, cultural history affords insights into forestry, botany, horticulture, and ecology, which in turn illuminate the course of human conduct in a wooded land. Beautifully written and lavishly illustrated, this book will delight readers with a special interest in the trees of the region, as well as those who wonder what our American culture owes to nature.

This is a travel story of trees and shrubs—as rousing as the adventures of Marco Polo. Stephen Spongberg’s vividly written and lavishly illustrated account tells of intrepid and extraordinary explorers who journeyed to the far corners of the globe and brought back to Europe and North America a wealth of exotic plant species. It constitutes a veritable history of ornamental trees and shrubs.

In the seventeenth century, gardening in England and Europe was in the throes of revolution. Plants—no longer cultivated solely for their practical value as a source of food or medicinal herbs—were woven into the landscape for architectural effects. Flowers were grown and arranged to beautify banquet tables, and the gardens surrounding palaces and country estates became pleasure grounds, their design vying with the genius of the houses themselves. Where did these hundreds of trees and shrubs originate? Virginia creepers, American sycamores, Washington thorns, black walnuts, umbrella trees. Franklin trees, and even poison ivy are just a few of the many species that were brought to European gardens by adventurous plantsmen exploring colonial America.

Following the Revolutionary War, scientific and agricultural societies were formed in Boston and Philadelphia, botanical gardens were established in New York and Cambridge, and scientific expeditions were organized for the purpose of fostering the discovery of new plants throughout the world that could be grown in the North American climate.

Without doubt, the most fertile plant explorations by Americans and Europeans were conducted in the mysterious Orient. With the opening of Japanese and Chinese ports to foreign trade in the middle of the nineteenth century, European plantsmen were able to indulge their insatiable appetite for some of the most astounding ornamental plants the Western world had ever seen: ginkgo trees, lacebark pines, Japanese yew, honeysuckles, lilacs, crabapples, magnolias, cherry trees, to name only a few.

A Reunion of Trees focuses on the particular contribution of the Arnold Arboretum, which was established in Boston in 1872 for the purpose of displaying and studying exotic plants from around the globe. Scores of trees and shrubs on the Arboretum grounds are described and illustrated in this handsomely produced volume. The landscape designer interested in recreating period gardens will find this book a treasure trove of information about the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while amateur and professional gardeners alike will discover a unique resource book for many unusual plants.