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Wildflowers of Illinois Woodlands
This work offer helpful descriptions to the non-specialist of the most interesting wild flowers in Illinois. It is a companion volume to one on the wild flowers of Indiana, and the two books together cover 128 flowers.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
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November 29, 2019
My favorite part about this book is the last paragraph of each account which contains ethnobotanical information about each species. However, I have found a few errors, which have me questioning the validity of some of the information. On page 137 is the account for black nightshade. It correctly lists that black nightshade (Solanum nigrum) has been used for food. However, on the adjacent page is a picture of a plant that is clearly deadly nightshade (Solanum dulcamara) which is poisonous.
Another thing that bugged me was this statement that I saw multiple times in the text (such as on page 41): "early settlers ate this plant...whether or not indians made similar food and medical uses is not known... it is likely that they learned of both from the pioneers if they lacked prior knowledge of their own."
That scenario seems extremely unlikely that Europeans who knew nothing of this new to them continent would be teaching indigenous folks whose very survival for thousands of years has depended on knowing which plants are edible.
Even with those mistakes, a lot of good information which I have corroborated elsewhere. For example, Taenidia seeds were used as seasoning, cow parsnip stems are edible, water lily lower buds are edible, dayflower is edible etc. Also some other things that I will have to confirm (pg 185 states Mimulus ringens leaves are edible and were eaten by western tribes).
Another thing that bugged me was this statement that I saw multiple times in the text (such as on page 41): "early settlers ate this plant...whether or not indians made similar food and medical uses is not known... it is likely that they learned of both from the pioneers if they lacked prior knowledge of their own."
That scenario seems extremely unlikely that Europeans who knew nothing of this new to them continent would be teaching indigenous folks whose very survival for thousands of years has depended on knowing which plants are edible.
Even with those mistakes, a lot of good information which I have corroborated elsewhere. For example, Taenidia seeds were used as seasoning, cow parsnip stems are edible, water lily lower buds are edible, dayflower is edible etc. Also some other things that I will have to confirm (pg 185 states Mimulus ringens leaves are edible and were eaten by western tribes).
Displaying 1 of 1 review