whats the best method to acquire knowledge of herbs and their properties? im extremely interested in this field but i would realy like to NOT dedicate half my life to the experimentation of 1,000's of plants for a hobby and possible profit in the future. i started out taking notes on all of these herb books and printing/reading all the stuff on the internet, but some contradicted each other and i dont know if what i know is true or not. or will i indeed have to spend many years of testing and such all i really wanna do is to have the know-how to diagnose me, or someone else, isolate the problem and be able to prescribe a few things to help/cure the problem...not the next big medical breakthrough
My take on this is that you will not learn the herb lore unless you are prepared to read and ask and possibly do a course or have a mentor that you can learn from.. In some places this herbal law is part of a tertiary course that includes herbal medicines as per example http://www.atccm.com.au/cms_resources/file/WESTERN_HERBS.pdf Liz
where is this? and by the intro "and can be traced back to prominent physicians such as Dioscorides, Hippocrates and Galen" it sounds kinda...mystic and not 100% fact
Well, if you want 100% fact then you won't be going into herbalism. HOWEVER: The fact that some of the primary sources are the Greek and Roman physicians shouldn't place it in myth, since their writings have come down through history. Of course, some of their uses have been disproven, but there is a real weath of literature out there dealing with the true effects of the most commonly used herbs. Unfortunate for you, but lots and lots of reading is pretty much the only way to get what you want.
I'm about to start a course on herbalism. the books I've had to get are really interesting and could be the kind of thing you're looking for; they give a lot of information about the plants, what habitat they like, what active constituents they have, what part to use, what to use it for.... I'm on the west coast, and these books are primarily written for that region (Michael Moore's series of "medicinal plants of the pacific west";... mountains west";... desert and canyons west"), but there'd be a similar type of manual written for your area. What I've learned so far is that herbalists generally use a list of only about 30 or so plants to learn about (ideally native to their area, so they can harvest the part needed themselves); adding more doesn't necessarily have benefit since you'd have a wide enough range of uses in that number of plants to cover your herbal needs. One approach would be to find out what grows near you, and research those plants. A surprising number of "weeds" (dandelion, comfrey, yarrow, burdock etc) in your backyard are highly valued herbs.
yeah, im moving to mod-Europe and starting a bee farm and there main pollenation source will be all the pants ill grow and harvest.
