Reviews from the Press
Botany in a Day
Thomas J. Elpel's Herbal Field Guide to Plant Families
Botany in a Day: Thomas J. Elpel's Herbal Field Guide to Plant Families presents a simplified way of identifying plants through learning the patterns in over 100 plant families. The author states that up until now a serious study of plants was impractical for most people because of "the immensity of the field". This becomes apparent as he lists "the hierarchy of the Plant Kingdom," which includes division, class, subclass, order, family, subfamily, tribe, genus and species. Elpel notes that it is on the family level that enough similarities are found between plants to aid identification and perhaps to guess at the plant's uses. He includes a chapter on plant properties which contains cautions but is also a distillation of his own experience and philosophy, his connection with the "Whole," his belief that each of us has an "inner knowing." The book is interesting, well-written and illustrated with line drawings. It also contains a bibliography, indices of plants by genus and plants and plant families by common names, as well as an index of plant families by Latin name.
--Ecology Action Newsletter. Willits, California. February 2003.
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