The Lost Language of Plants Quotes

“Is the soul solid, like iron? Or is it tender and breakable, like the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl? Who has it, and who doesn’t? I keep looking around me. The face of the moose is as sad as the face of Jesus. The swan opens her white wings slowly. In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness. One question leads to another. Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg? Like the eye of a hummingbird? Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop? Why should I have it, and not the anteater who loves her children? Why should I have it, and not the camel? Come to think of it, what about the maple trees? What about the blue iris? What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight? What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves? What about the grass? —Mary Oliver, “Some Questions You Might Ask”
― Stephen Harrod Buhner, The Lost Language of Plants: The Ecological Importance of Plant Medicine to Life on Earth

“[Man] sees the morning as the beginning of a new day; he takes germination as the start in the life of a plant, and withering as its end. But this is nothing more than biased judgment on his part. Nature is one. There is no starting point or destination, only an unending flux, a continuous metamorphosis of all things. —Masanobu Fukuoka, THE NATURAL WAY OF FARMING”
― Stephen Harrod Buhner, The Lost Language of Plants: The Ecological Importance of Plant Medicine to Life on Earth

“Consider Norbert Mayer’s poem Just now A rock took fright When it saw me It escaped By playing dead”
― Stephen Harrod Buhner, The Lost Language of Plants: The Ecological Importance of Plant Medicine to Life on Earth

“That we take plant words in through our nose or our skin or our eyes or our tongue instead of our ears does not make their language less subtle, or sophisticated, or less filled with meaning. As the soul of a human being can never be understood from its chemistry or grammar, so cannot plant purpose, intelligence, or soul. Plants are much more than the sum of their parts. And they have been talking to us a long time.”
― Stephen Harrod Buhner, The Lost Language of Plants: The Ecological Importance of Plant Medicine to Life on Earth

“The living and holistic biosystem that is nature cannot be dissected or resolved into its parts. Once broken down, it dies. Or rather, those who break off a piece of nature lay hold of something that is dead, and, unaware that what they are examining is no longer what they think it to be, claim to understand nature. . . . Because [man] starts off with misconceptions about nature and takes the wrong approach to understanding it, regardless of how rational his thinking, everything winds up all wrong.”
― Stephen Harrod Buhner, The Lost Language of Plants: The Ecological Importance of Plant Medicine to Life on Earth