The Complete Language of Herbs is a comprehensive encyclopedia providing the meanings, powers, facts, and folklore for over 500 herbs and spices.
Along with a beautiful visual depiction, each entry provides the herb or spice's scientific and common names, characteristics, and historic meanings and powers from mythology, medieval legends, folklore, and flower poetry.
Did you know that allspice can be added to herbal mixtures to attract money or luck? Or that sprinkling arrowroot at the doors of your home will keep guests' negative energy from entering? Reaching the height of popularity during the Victorian era, floriographies-dictionaries of symbolic flower meanings-were an amusing pastime and art to subtly communicate unspoken emotions. To complement the success of TheComplete Language of Flowers, author S. Theresa Dietz has scoured historic sources and compiled an equally beautiful compendium in The Complete Language of Herbs, revealing the secrets and powers of hundreds of common and forgotten herbs and spices from around the world.
Together with stunning full-color illustrations and two indexes, one for searching by common herb and spice name and the other organized by meaning, this beautiful reference is a must-have for gardeners, chefs, party planners, and food enthusiasts.
Elegantly designed and beautifully illustrated, the Complete Illustrated Encyclopedia series offers comprehensive, display-worthy references on a range of intriguing topics, including birthday astrology, dream interpretation, astrological self-care practices, techniques for harnessing the power of dreams, and the stories behind signs and symbols.
The Complete Language of Herbs is a book of traditional meanings and uses of herbs and herbaceous plants in the traditional manner of the Victorians. It's a companion volume to S. Theresa Dietz's other encyclopedia with the same theme about flowers. Due out 2nd Aug 2022 from Quarto on their Wellfleet imprint, it's 256 pages and will be available in paperback format.
The book has a retro botanical print vibe and the introduction leads directly into a very short 'how to use this book'. The bulk of the book contains an alphabetical listing of the flowers and plants. Each listing contains a color illustration followed by some of the common names for each plant listed, symbolic meaning(s), possible powers, and folklore and facts. The listings are compact and there are 4-6 listings per page. The book includes a nice bibliography and index. The index includes the plants listed with common names alphabetically; the've also included an abbreviated bibliography for further research.
This is an appealing and very pretty book for a somewhat niche audience. It's more useful for readers who are interested in the folklore and historical uses of the plants contained in the listings rather than readers looking for practical culture and modern herbal uses.
Four stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
