Botanica Folklorica is a pleasurable and thought provoking collection crafted by thirteen fascinating and visionary herbal practitioner authors, with beautiful mythical and botanical illustrations bring vividly to life nearly every one of its 357 pages. These 31 chapters were all pulled directly from the pages of Plant Healer Quarterly, the most in-depth of herbal related periodicals — each exploring a different facet of the truly incredible spirit and lore of medicinal plants, trees and mushrooms. As anyone who has worked with herbs knows, these green beings and mysterious fungi provide not only bodily remedy through their chemical and energetic actions, but are in their very expression tonics for practitioners’ brave and caring hearts, setting an example for us and imparting invaluable lessons about how to wholly be, to healthfully relate, and to more effectively do! For many thousands or even millions of years, formative tales have been shared orally around riverside campfires and in the candlelit rooms of ivy draped cottages. They’ve been worked into the text of spiritual rituals in oak ringed clearings and sung out from atop traditional speaker’s rocks, handwritten on parchment and now spread globally through the internet. And in most, we find not only human main characters but also equally important animals and plants and other blossomings of the inspirited natural world. Various incarnations of the World Tree span not just the fecund earth and otherworldly realms but are also a bridge connecting imagination and aspiration, vision and creation, thought and action. The Hawthorn, the Oak and the Elder each represent something different, as their arbors frame some of the best known mythologies. Herbs like Valerian, Anemone, Witch Hazel and St. John’s Wort that have long been a central part of the healer’s apothecary crop up as significators in story after story. And from the darkened moss and loam of fairy tales there arise glowing cluster of spotted crimson caps and spectral white shrooms, drawing our attention from the rote and mundane, reintroducing us again and again to the mysterious and the as-yet-unknown, drawing our attention to the unexpected and unusual, to the most immediately significant and meaningful, to the inspirited and magical, the revelatory and the inspirational. Needed now more than ever is a new Plant Healers mythos, rooted in indelible imagery and archetypes, morals and lessons, and yet vibrantly representative of us and our work right now, addressing modern problems along with our ageless questionings and wonderings. Stories from the past have forever been amended and reconstructed to meet the most urgent requirements of the present. Our lore is that great fairytale which we are both coauthors of and central characters in, it is the dark forest of mystery and possibility from which we rise, in full costume, into the light of our healing work and meaningful lives. We’re glad you’ve joined us here at the leaf strewn edge of the enchanted, healing, oft beckoning forest. Enjoy these and other tales, discover what they have to tell or give to you personally, and every day make your life and work the most powerful and effective of stories.

Botanica Folklorica is a pleasurable and thought provoking collection crafted by thirteen fascinating and visionary herbal practitioner authors, with beautiful mythical and botanical illustrations bring vividly to life nearly every one of its 357 pages. These 31 chapters were all pulled directly from the pages of Plant Healer Quarterly, the most in-depth of herbal related periodicals — each exploring a different facet of the truly incredible spirit and lore of medicinal plants, trees and mushrooms. As anyone who has worked with herbs knows, these green beings and mysterious fungi provide not only bodily remedy through their chemical and energetic actions, but are in their very expression tonics for practitioners’ brave and caring hearts, setting an example for us and imparting invaluable lessons about how to wholly be, to healthfully relate, and to more effectively do! For many thousands or even millions of years, formative tales have been shared orally around riverside campfires and in the candlelit rooms of ivy draped cottages. They’ve been worked into the text of spiritual rituals in oak ringed clearings and sung out from atop traditional speaker’s rocks, handwritten on parchment and now spread globally through the internet. And in most, we find not only human main characters but also equally important animals and plants and other blossomings of the inspirited natural world. Various incarnations of the World Tree span not just the fecund earth and otherworldly realms but are also a bridge connecting imagination and aspiration, vision and creation, thought and action. The Hawthorn, the Oak and the Elder each represent something different, as their arbors frame some of the best known mythologies. Herbs like Valerian, Anemone, Witch Hazel and St. John’s Wort that have long been a central part of the healer’s apothecary crop up as significators in story after story. And from the darkened moss and loam of proverbial faerytales there arise glowing cluster of spotted crimson caps and spectral white shrooms, drawing our attention from the rote and mundane, reintroducing us again and again to the mysterious and the as-yet-unknown, drawing our attention to the unexpected and unusual, to the most immediately significant and meaningful, to the inspirited and magical, the revelatory and the inspirational. Needed now more than ever is a new Plant Healers mythos, rooted in indelible imagery and archetypes, morals and lessons, and yet vibrantly representative of us and our work right now, addressing modern problems along with our ageless questionings and wonderings. Stories from the past have forever been amended and reconstructed to meet the most urgent requirements of the present. Our lore is that great fairytale which we are both coauthors of and central characters in, it is the dark forest of mystery and possibility from which we rise, in full costume, into the light of our healing work and meaningful lives. We’re glad you’ve joined us here at the leaf strewn edge of the enchanted, healing, oft beckoning forest. Enjoy these and other tales, discover what they have to tell or give to you personally, and every day make your life and work the most powerful and effective of stories.