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The Scots Herbal: Plant Lore of Scotland
The first ever comprehensive guide to the use of wild plants in Scotland from prehistoric times?as food, medicine, dye, fodder and many other things besides.
189 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1996
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July 14, 2019
The introduction talks briefly about wild foods in the modern context, and describes the fact that while there is a lot of information available on Scots plants it is often scattered and inaccessible. The first forty or so pages are a concise, useful outline of the uses of plants as food, medicine, magic/myth, textiles and as an economic tool.
The remainder of the book is arranged in taxonomic families of plants (which makes it very easy to use) but including the common, Gaelic, Scots and local names. The amount of information for the different entries obviously varies considerably but includes the ways in which the plant was used and where it was found. This book covers (though briefly) stone age to twentieth century and so has the potential of being very useful to anyone who is trying to glean the fragments of information available from the dark ages.
The introduction has an interesting list of foods that were available to, and have been suggested by archaeologists as having been in use by Stone Age Scots. It includes various roots and herbs and describes the flavours they would have produced in terms of ‘peppery, ginger flavour’ ect. I found it interesting that included is lime which I would not have expected on the British Islands that early.
There is a short segment on the 1991 discovery of the man in the ice, a segment on basket making and other uses of wood ect. And descriptions of excavations of a twelfth century site near Perth which may have been a dyers workshop. The plants found there were are mosses, heather and other plants that seem local rather than indigo and madder.
The remainder of the book is arranged in taxonomic families of plants (which makes it very easy to use) but including the common, Gaelic, Scots and local names. The amount of information for the different entries obviously varies considerably but includes the ways in which the plant was used and where it was found. This book covers (though briefly) stone age to twentieth century and so has the potential of being very useful to anyone who is trying to glean the fragments of information available from the dark ages.
The introduction has an interesting list of foods that were available to, and have been suggested by archaeologists as having been in use by Stone Age Scots. It includes various roots and herbs and describes the flavours they would have produced in terms of ‘peppery, ginger flavour’ ect. I found it interesting that included is lime which I would not have expected on the British Islands that early.
There is a short segment on the 1991 discovery of the man in the ice, a segment on basket making and other uses of wood ect. And descriptions of excavations of a twelfth century site near Perth which may have been a dyers workshop. The plants found there were are mosses, heather and other plants that seem local rather than indigo and madder.
Displaying 1 of 1 review