Edible and Medicinal Plants of the Rockies

Sandy Campbell is a reference librarian in the Science and Technology Library at the University of Alberta.

This book is difficult to characterize. Though not scholarly, it is an
academic work in that the author claims no practical knowledge of the
human uses of plants. Linda Kershaw makes it clear in the introduction
that “no judgement has been made regarding the validity of reported
uses.” Later, she writes: “The historical use of a plant does not
imply that it was effective. It could have been just one of a long
series of failed experiments.” So, Kershaw is simply reporting what
others have said about the plants, whether or not it is true.

In spite of the fact that it is academic, the book is packaged as a
practical tool. Although it is not formally part of the Lone Pine Field
Guide series, all it has all the features of that series, including
thumbnail images at the front, organization by plant family,
high-quality photographs to aid in plant identification, and descriptive
text. In fact, some of the text and many of the photographs were used in
an earlier Lone Pine field guide, Plants of the Rocky Mountains, that
Kershaw coauthored.

Although the cover notes state that the book “is not intended as a
‘how-to’ guide for eating wild plants,” its similarity in
appearance to the field guides may encourage people to use it for just
that purpose. It is understandable then, that Kershaw would want to
discourage readers from using the guide as a plant finding and
preparation tool. One would expect her to exercise similar care with the
plant identification. However, on page 161 what is identified as an
Agoseris seed head was presented in her earlier book as the seed head of
a common dandelion. While putting Agoseris in your salad probably
wouldn’t harm you, the error casts doubt on the whole book.

Given the popularity of the subject, public libraries (at least in the
Rocky Mountain region) will want to purchase copies of this book.
However, it needs to be balanced with standard herbal texts that
describe well-known uses of plant families and texts based in practical
knowledge. For example, Terry Willard’s 1992 volume, Edible and
Medicinal Plants of the Rocky Mountains and Neighbouring Territories,
covers fewer species but is based on the author’s long-time study of
the clinical use of herbs.