Identifying, Harvesting and Using Wild Plants of Eastern Canada

by Marilyn Walker

Wild Plants of Eastern Canada is a comprehensive guide to the region's plants, including their culinary, medicinal, folk, and ecological uses. The book also explores the cultural history of wild plant use among Aboriginal-Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, and Passamaquoddy-and non-Aboriginal-Black, Acadian, and Celtic-peoples. Bridging the academic and the popular, the book includes easy-to-read profiles of sixty plant species, each identified with an actual size leaf-print specimen as well as a realistic reproduction for identification. Nearly sixty recipes are included for use in contemporary cuisine. The book does not include cultivated plants, seaweeds, or trees. Includes safety tips for identifying and avoiding poisonous plants.

203 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well and for all intents and purposes, I certainly, I really and truly have very much enjoyed (and repeatedly so at that) Marilyn Walker's 2008 botany themed book Identifying, Harvesting and Using Wild Plants of Eastern Canada. For yes indeed, the many featured facts, the details on identifying, harvesting and availing oneself of the wild flora, the natural bounty of Eastern Canada are both interesting and informative (and that the author, that Marilyn Walker is also a professor at my Alma Mater, at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada, this is very much an added and appreciated personal bonus). And furthermore, and importantly for me, while many (if not actually the vast majority) of books on harvesting and using wild plants (on foraging) restrict themselves to the present, Identifying, Harvesting and Using Wild Plants of Eastern Canada also features and describes much detailed historical information, especially with regard to Canada's First Nations and how they utilised and continue to exploit and take advantage of many of the wild plants Professor Walker has engagingly and educationally presented in and with her featured text.

Therefore I do indeed quite highly recommend Identifying, Harvesting and Using Wild Plants of Eastern Canada to anyone interested in foraging for the wild natural bounties of Eastern Canada (or is simply interested in reading about this), and you are probably now wondering why, with such high praise, I have then rated Identifying, Harvesting and Using Wild Plants of Eastern Canada with only three stars. But while I am probably being majorly exacting and overly picky here, there most definitely and unfortunately are a few points in the introduction of Identifying, Harvesting and Using Wild Plants of Eastern Canada that do kind of rather rub me the wrong proverbial way, that actually tend to even feel somewhat illogical and academically suspect (and especially so considering that the author, that Marilyn Walker is a university professor).

And first and foremost, I do have a real and most infuriating problem with the fact that while Walker writes in the introduction for Identifying, Harvesting and Using Wild Plants of Eastern Canada at length about the cultural and actual genocides experienced by Canada's First Nations post colonisation, she then only makes a very quick and ridiculously cursory allusion to the expulsion of the Acadians (from what are now the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island) by the British. Now, I of course have no issues at all with Professor Walker describing the horrors, abuse, denigration, bigotry that was experienced and still sometimes is still being experienced by Canada's First Nations in such detail (and in fact, it is one of the high points of the historical introduction of Identifying, Harvesting and Using Wild Plants of Eastern Canada and is something every Canadian should know, should be taught). However, the Acadian expulsion, although of course not as traumatic and as all encompassing as what Canada's First Nations have had to deal with was (and still actually and in fact continues to be) a very controversial and tragic episode in Canadian history. For the Acadians were not simply asked or encouraged by the British to relocate to Louisiana, they were brutally forced off their land, families were deliberately separated, they experienced hardship, savage cruelty and worse, and I really wish that Marilyn Walker would make more than just a seemingly random and almost afterthought like mention of this both sad and totally horrid, war crime similar event in Identifying, Harvesting and Using Wild Plants of Eastern Canada.

For two, and indeed a rather minor but still frustrating problem is my personal bone of contention with one specific sentence at the beginning of Identifying, Harvesting and Using Wild Plants of Eastern Canada, where Walker seemingly separates insects from other animals by textually claiming that "before animals, insects and plants developed an evolutionary mutualism" which simply does not make much scientific and biologic sense at all, since insects are not separate from other animals, as insects are part of the animal kingdom, just like reptiles, birds, mammals etc. are part of the animal kingdom (and frankly, as a university professor, and one who actually specialises in medical anthropology and ethnobotany at that, Marilyn Walker should really not be making that kind of a pedestrian mistake, should definitely know and show that insects are also classified as being part of kingdom animalia, are animals just like us humans are animals as well).

However, the above two issues quite notwithstanding, Identifying, Harvesting and Using Wild Plants of Eastern Canada is still and nevertheless a truly wonderful and educational as well as engagingly readable book, great for browsing, for discovering wild plants and their many many uses, their historical significance, but also of course as a valuable information resource for individuals who are indeed serious about harvesting the wild, or propagating wild, edible plants in their own gardens. And yes, the recipes at the back of Identifying, Harvesting and Using Wild Plants of Eastern Canada do look tempting and promising as well, and although most of them are not vegan (or even vegetarian), I do think that the majority of them could probably easily be veganised (and albeit I have not tried any of Marilyn Walker's recipe suggestions, and I will likely also not be foraging for wild plants anytime soon, if ever, I certainly and indeed have found and continue to find the information presented by Walker in Identifying, Harvesting and Using Wild Plants of Eastern Canada both interesting and massively informative).