Charlotte Erichsen-Brown 
Medicinal and Other Uses of North American Plants 
A Historical Survey with Special Reference to the Eastern Indian Tribes

Spanning the last 500 years, this exceptionally detailed and well-researched guide focuses primarily on the ways North American Indians have used plants, trees, and shrubs for medicine, food, clothing, shelter, and other necessities. The plants considered are native to eastern Canada and the northeastern United States, although some are also found as far south as Florida and Texas and as far west as the Pacific coast.

In addition to extensive chronological historical citations dealing with documented usages of plants as far back as the fourteenth century, this book also provides data to enable even amateur botanists to identify plants in the field. Thus, accounts of herbalists, explorers, botanists, doctors, and scientists are accompanied by useful information about the plant’s range, common and scientific names, nontechnical physical description and more. To make the book especially easy to use, plants are grouped according to habitat: wet open places, woods and thickets, and dry open places. Moreover, a detailed line drawing of the plant’s leaves, buds, twigs, seeds, and other characteristic features accompanies the textual descriptions.

Scholarly, yet readable, exceptionally thorough but never dull, this classic reference belongs in the library of botanists, naturalists, herbalists, ethnologists, archaeologists — anyone interested in the long and fascinating story of how plants have served humanity.

“Charlotte Erichsen-Brown is a noted and inspired student of the ethnobotany of eastern North America. She has completed a study of great imagination and energy. Whether on a library’s reference shelf or in a backpack along the trail, her work will inform and educate, and often amaze.” — J. L. Riley, Botany Department, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada.

Table of Content

Preface

Introduction

Evergreen Trees

-including the larch which drops its needles

Deciduous trees

-including shrubby willows

Shrubs and Vines

-including cherry and hawthorn trees

Wet Open Places

—seasonally wet meadows, lake and stream banks, swamps and acid bogs or all moist open places. This section starts with plants that float in the water, moves to those that like water on their roots and then to those at water’s edge. Also found in wet open places but discussed under other section are St. John’s wort, raspberries, cleavers, violets, may apples, pepper grass, goldenrods and stinging nettles

Woods and Thickets

—all kinds of wooded areas, ranging from climax forests, through open woods, to the edges of woods and including generally areas where plants are shaded by higher trees or shrubs and coniferous swamps. Also found in woods and thickets but discussed under other sections are jack in the pulpit, wood nettle, jewel weed, wild lettuce, columbine, cinquefoils, Indian hemp, chenopods, certain goldenrods, blackberries and raspberries

Dry Open Places

—fields, fence rows, sides of roads, recently burnt-over land, pockets of soil in crevices in open rock and generally areas that are unshaded and dry in summer conditions. Also found in dry open places but discussed in other sections are some of the St. John’ worts, asters, rattlesnake plantains, seneca snakeroot, racemed milkwort, golden and pale corydalis

Glossary

Sources Cited

General Index

Botanical Index