A Curious History of Vegetables: Aphrodisiacal and Healing Properties, Folk Tales, Garden Tips, and Recipes

by Wolf-Dieter Storl

Featuring gardening tips, recipes, and beautiful full-color pencil drawings of each vegetable, this book for farm-to-fork aficionados and gardeners with an esoteric bent explores the secret history of 48 well known and rare vegetables, examining their symbolism, astrological connections, healing properties, and overall character.
 
A fascinating introduction to vegetable gardening and cooking, A Curious History of Vegetables sets horticulture in its historical, cultural, and cosmological contexts. The author offers his deep understanding of the theory of biodynamic gardening and useful tips on light and warmth, ground covers, composts, crop rotation and weeds. Woven in with folk tales and stories from history, each entry also includes delicious historical recipes for each vegetable.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Plants, History, Gardening

364 pages, Paperback

First published June 14, 2016

About the author

Born in Saxony, Germany in 1942 with a green thumb and the gift of writing, and emigrating with his parents to the United States in 1954, cultural anthropologist and ethno-botanist Wolf Dieter Storl has had a special connection to nature since childhood. His specific area of research is shamanism and healing in traditional societies with a focus on the role of plants in all aspects of life, including sacred symbolism, magic, medicine, foods, and poisons. He has pursued this interest in many parts of the world.

After finishing his PhD in Anthropology (magna cum lauda) on a Fulbright scholarship in 1974 in Berne, Switzerland, he taught anthropology and sociology in Grants Pass, OR. During this time he also offered an organic gardening course that was extremely popular. He was one of the pioneers of the organic/biodynamic gardening movement. While preparing for his doctoral exams in Switzerland he also lived in an experimental community and helped tend a five-acre organic garden. There he had the good fortune to learn from master gardener, Manfred Stauffer who specialized in composting any organic matter.

Storl is also an avid traveler and has gathered much experience observing nature around the entire globe and spending time with people who are very connected to the nature that surrounds them. From1982 -83, he spent a year as an official visiting scholar at the Benares Hindu University, in Varanasi, India. After returning to the United States in 1984, he spent much time with traditional medicine persons of the Cheyenne and taught courses at Sheridan College in Sheridan, Wyoming. He has traveled and conducted research in South Asia, India, Mexico, the Canary Islands, South Africa, and much of Europe, pursuing ehtnobotanical and ethnomedicinal interests. He has written some twenty-five books and many articles in German and English, which have been translated into various languages, such as English, Dutch, French, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Japanese, Danish, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Czech. Storl is a frequent guest on German, Swiss and Austrian television and has also appeared on BBC.

After another visit in India and Nepal in 1986, he and his wife moved to Germany where he began to write books as a freelance writer and offer freelance lectures. He lives with his family on an old estate in the foothills of the Alps where he has a large garden.

Storl’s books are unique in that he does not treat nature only with cold objectivism. He is able to delve into nature's depths and supports his experience with ancient lore from all over the world that has been, for the most part, left on the wayside in the wake of objective science. He theorizes that science is not always as objective as it claims to be. He invites his readers on a journey into a world of nature that is completely alive and has its own rhyme and reason. Myths and lore from many cultures also have a prominent place in his writings, as he claims that the images portrayed in this way often tell us more about the true nature of things than dry facts can do.
Credentials:
MA from Kent State University, instructor there from 1967 – 1969 in anthropology and sociology.
PhD in Anthropology (magna cum lauda) from University of Berne Switzerland, Fulbright scholarship, 1974.
Organic, biodynamic gardener since 1970. First book, Culture and Horticulture from organic gardening course notes of three years on request of students.
Since 1986 freelance author living in Germany with family.

Wolf D. Storl also writes in German as Wolf-Dieter Storl

Reviews

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF at 70%

A lot of structural issues in this one, as well as too many ideas in a paragraph which often made it hard to follow.

[E. Kahn · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is not a history, it is an anti-rationalist tract for a very strange syncretic cult. Here is a direct quote:

"For full-fledged materialists, tales such as these are nothing but superstitious nonsense. But whoever has dealt with plants intensively knows that they are very much more than scientific botany -which restricts itself to only external empirical data- can explain."

[Nora Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a gardener and someone who likes botany, I found this book extremely interesting. I appreciated how, unlike many other nonfiction books, it took folk tales seriously, and had almost a whimsical feel to it. However, I should note that this book can be both repitive and superficial at times. From the name, I assumed that there would be more 'history' to this book - in fact, very little of it is about history. The folk tales which it revolves around sometimes run together, in part because many of the stories people told about these plants came from features that were common to many, and in part because of how many plants Storl covers.

[Katharine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Harder to get through for me, but I appreciated the rarer foods section.

[Sue Dunlop · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book about the myths, folklore and properties of common and rarer vegetables.

[Hanneke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not too bad but loved the other books i read from his hand.

[Kmorgenstern · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Dr. Storl's books and this one is no exception. I am glad his work is finally being translated into English and thus, will find a larger audience - which it absolutely deserves. This curious history of vegetables delivers exactly what it promises - and more. Dr Storl examines a good range (though not comprehensive) of common garden vegetables, such as asparagus, carrots, fennel or potato (and many others) and tells their fascinating lore and history, bringing together many interesting historical facts and tales. But he does not stop there. He devotes almost as much space to lesser known pot herbs and salad greens such as burdock, miner's lettuce, skirret, rampion and opium poppy (to name but a few). What I particularly liked is the fact that he also includes gardening tips for the more practically minded, as well as some really unusual and interesting sounding recipes that make me want to rush out there to hunt down these veggies, so I can try out them myself. Uniquely, he also talks quite a bit about astrology, both as a framework of classification the way the ancients used it, as well as about the almost forgotten art of 'astrological cuisine' that he himself once learnt from his mentor, Arthur Hermes. For those who want to delve more deeply into the subject matter he has also included a rich bibliography. A great book - not just for gardeners, but for anybody who is interested in the cultural history of our food plants.