Native American Ethnobotany

An extraordinary compilation of the plants used by North American native peoples for medicine, food, fiber, dye, and a host of other things. Anthropologist Daniel E. Moerman has devoted 25 years to the task of gathering together the accumulated ethnobotanical knowledge on more than 4000 plants. More than 44,000 uses for these plants by various tribes are documented here. This is undoubtedly the most massive ethnobotanical survey ever undertaken, preserving an enormous store of information for the future.

Media reviews of this book:

" Native American Ethnobotany is an essential reference for all those interested in the uses of plants."

—Wild Foods Forum, March 2005

"When I received the book I thought I had died and gone to heaven! This is one of the items I would run back to save if my house ever burned down."

—Melodye Murphy, Amazon.com, December 2001

"This typographically attractive book presents its data with interest and humor."

—Taxon, May 2000

"Moerman has done an excellent job of presenting the information in useable form."

—Rachel Hays, American Biology Teacher, March 2000

"Daniel Moerman's massive work, long anticipated by ethnobiologists and anthropologists, is striking... Its pages are brimming with the most complete explication of Native Americans ... and their interaction with plants ever undertaken ...

Moerman provides... information probably impossible to find anywhere else — nothing to date has been so thorough and systematic.

... [The book includes] several indices of great value...

...The cost [is] miraculously low for this masterpiece.

...No library can be without... Moerman's offering. His work will likely never be surpassed... This is probably the magnum opus of the field. We are all indebted to him for this marvelous achievement. "

—Donald J. McGraw, American Scientist, February 2000

Customer reviews of this book:

"Excellently informative for plant uses — an excellent resource and guide book."

—Johnnie H. from Lillington, North Carolina, January 5, 2007

"Made my unit on ethnobotany wonderfully student-friendly."

—Della C. from Conway, Arizona, November 9, 2005

"Our (library) horticultural specialist and cultural specialist are fighting over who gets it first! Wonderful book!"

—Patsy A. from Sequim, Washington, September 12, 2005

"Easily the best book in my collection. Outstanding!"

—Marvin Y. from St. John, North Dakota, April 20, 2005

"Rocks my world!"

—Elias S. from Detroit, Oregon, May 22, 2004

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An excerpt from this book:

Native American peoples had a remarkable amount of knowledge of the world in which they lived. In particular, they knew a great deal about plants. There are in North America 31,566 kinds (species, subspecies, varieties, and so on) of vascular plants: seed plants, including the flowering plants (angiosperms) and conifers (gymnosperms), and spore-bearing plants, including the ferns, club mosses, spike mosses, and horsetails (pteridophytes). North America is defined here as North America north of Mexico, and Hawaii and Greenland. American Indians used 2874 of these species as medicines, 1886 as foods, 230 as dyes, and 492 as fibers (for weaving, baskets, building materials, and so on) ...

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