The Earthwise Herbal, Volume II: A Complete Guide to New World Medicinal Plants

by Matthew Wood

Noted herbalist Matthew Wood brings twenty-five years of clinical experience to this comprehensive book on medicinal plants. The first in a two-volume set, The Earthwise Herbal profiles Old World plants (volume two will treat American plants). Organized alphabetically, the book encompasses all of the major—and many of the secondary—herbs of traditional and modern Western herbalism. Author Wood describes characteristic symptoms and conditions in which each plant has proved useful in the clinic, often illustrated with appropriate case histories. In addition, he takes a historical view based on his extensive study of ancient and traditional herbal literature. Written in an easy, engaging, non-technical style, The Earthwise Herbal offers insight into the “logic” of the how it works, in what areas of the body it works, how it has been used in the past, what its pharmacological constituents indicate about its use, and how all these different factors hang together to produce a portrait of the plant as a whole entity. Ideal for beginners, serious students, or advanced practitioners, The Earthwise Herbal is also useful for homeopaths and flower essence practitioners as it bridges these fields in its treatment of herbal medicines.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Genres: Nonfiction, Reference, Herbs, Health, Nature, Gardening

417 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.

Matthew Wood has been a practicing herbalist since 1982. In a period when many authors and lecturers are merely "arm chair herbalists" who offer theories and opinions based on book learning, and others have turned to the exotic traditions of India or China, he has been an active practitioner of traditional Western herbalism. He has helped tens of thousands of clients over the years, with many difficult health problems. While Matthew believes in the virtue of many other healing modalities, he has always been inspired to learn, preserve, and practice the tradition of herbal medicine descending to us from our European, Anglo-American, and Native American heritage. He is a member of the American Herbalists Guild (registered herbalist) and has earned his Masters of Science degree from the Scottish School of Herbal Medicine (accredited by the University of Wales).

Matthew has lectured in all parts of the United States, from Georgia to Maine, New York to California, and Santa Fe to Sperryville, Virginia. He has also taught in Canada, Scotland, England, and Australia. He is known throughout the world as an excellent teacher of herbal medicine. He is also the author of four acclaimed books on herbal medicine, published by North Atlantic Books, in Berkeley, CA:

Seven Herbs, Plants as Teachers (1987)
Vitalism, The History of Herbalism, Homeopathy, and Flower Essences, originally entitled The Magical Staff (1993)
The Book of Herbal Wisdom (1998)
The Practice of Traditional Western Herbalism (2004)

Reviews

[Nicholas Brink · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book Reviews -
The Earthwise Herbal: Volume I: A Complete Guide to Old World Medicinal Plants by Matthew Wood, Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2008.
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The Earthwise Herbal: Volume II: A Complete Guide to New World Medicinal Plants by Matthew Wood, Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2009.

I was drawn to reading these two books after reading Wood’s earlier book: The Book of Herbal Wisdom along with a strong recommendation from an herbalist friend, Jennifer Tucker who has followed Wood in his workshops.
In my years of practice in journeying with the spirits of the Earth and ancestral spirit guides I have only on a rare occasion journeyed with a plant spirit guide. So over this last year my interest and intent has been to listen to the spirit guides of medicinal plants as did our hunting and gathering ancestors. These plant guides gave our ancestors much direction in how to live healthy lives. I highly value Wood’s writing as he seeks to identify the spirit guides of medicinal plants, guides that he refers to as the essence or personality of the plant.
Wood begins by reviewing a number of old world systems for categorizing medicinal plants and the many different illnesses that these plants treat. He identifies parallels in the personality of a plant, sometimes referred to as the signature of the plant, and the personality or signature of the illness to be treated. The effectiveness of herbal medicine is to bring together or match the personality of the plant to the personality of the illness. Each of these Old World systems, whether Greek, Ayurvedic, Traditional Chinese, or Alchemical, has a system for categorizing the essence of the plant and the disorder. The similarities and differences between these systems are fascinating, some binary, and some of three, four, five or six categories, and some quite obviously borrowed from one or more of the other cultures. In reviewing these systems, Wood distills out or brings together in an integrated system these historic systems that he uses in these two volumes as well as his earlier book, The Book of Herbal Wisdom.
These descriptors which he calls tastes of the plant include not just tastes but draws from all the senses, smell, sensations, sounds, etc. of the plant and the disease, and for comparison purposes the healthy individual. These characteristics include the plant and disease tissue states of: Hot/Excitation, Cold/Depression, Dry/Atrophy, Damp/Stagnation, Damp/Relaxation and Wind/Tension, with the tastes of Sour, Bitter, Salty, Sweet, and Pungent or Spicy. He includes in these descriptors sensations and textures: Diffusive (tingling, nerve-stimulation); Permanent (not tingling); Astringent (puckering, constrictive); Acidity (taste of bile in throat, taste that provokes shivering); Watery (thin); Mucliaginous (slimy); Gummy (tacky); Resinous (sticky); Soapy; Oily (nutty); Meaty (proteinadeous); Metallic (taste of blood in mouth, presence of metals); and Aromatic (scent). These descriptors have been identified through careful observation of the plant and the illness.
The second volume examines the American Indian taxonomy of describing “Bad Blood,” which is described in terms of location ( high or low within the organism); viscosity (thick or thin); speed (fast or slow moving); and temperature (hot or cold).
For Wood, identifying these characteristics eliminates the guesswork and gives the clinician more precise tools for therapeutic success, clarifies the fine distinctions between different herbs, rediscovers forgotten or neglected herbs, provides a clearer picture of the activity of each herb, and reduces the amount of medication required for treatment.
The disease names offered by conventional medicine are artificial and the symptoms may vary greatly. The specificity of the symptoms and not the disease name is most important in determining which herbal medicine needs to be used. In both volumes Wood most importantly offers many examples of how the personality of the disease and the personality of the plant to be used are determined.
In Volume I Wood describes in general terms how to prepare the herbs. Teas may be prepared as an infusion, cold infusion, or decoction. Tinctures may be prepared from fresh or dried plants, and he briefly describes poultices, salves and oils. The dosage of an herb varies depending upon personal preferences with Wood preferring the low dose approach. He reports in volume I, pg. 39, that the “Low dose practice tends to be based on the concept that the preparation has a more ‘energetic’ intelligence or virtue that acts on the vital force or self-regulating system of the body to effect change.” Stephen Buhner in “The Secret Teachings of Plants” recognizes that the medicinal plants have the intelligence to know what is needed and can draw upon the many hormones and chemical compounds available to the plant to provide what is needed by the person calling for help, i.e. when the person is calling from his or her heart. In the practices of homeopathy and flower essence the dose is so low that it is nearly non-existent, yet the medicine can provide what is needed to heal. Though I have come from the belief that higher doses of a medication are required for the more serious problems, I now realize that in my practice of calling upon the spirits of animals, e.g. the bear or the coyote spirit, healing comes from the spirit of the animal and not the animal itself. Thus a low to non-existent dose is like calling upon the spirit of the plant, while using a high dose is treating the problem as it is treated in conventional medicine.
With this in mind, I have selected several of Wood’s descriptions of approximately 270 medicinal plants in Volume I, and about 200 plants in Volume II to compare his described personality to that which I have found in my journeying with the plant in ecstatic trance. Though Wood’s system eliminates the guesswork in determining the appropriate medicinal herb for a specific problem, the traditional healers or shamans would more likely rely upon using a form of ecstatic trance to communicate with the plant’s spirit essence or intelligence and the essence of the illness to be treated. Wood in determining his system of identifying the personality of a plant or illness begins with how the Greeks determine the appropriate medicine, thus he begins from the era of early recorded history and does not consider the prehistoric ways of the hunter-gatherers. Though, the shamanic way does not diminish the importance or usefulness of his system, and the value of Wood’s system brings the use of medicinal plants into the modern world.
What is ecstatic trance as I use it? Ecstatic Trance is produced by rapid stimulation to the nervous system by drumming or rattling while standing or sitting in specific postures that give the trance journey direction. I generally use one of three postures, a posture for divination to answer a question, a posture of healing while I hold a piece of the plant against my heart, and a posture for shape-shifting to become the plant. The trance journeys are quite diverse. Some produce a metaphoric description in describing one’s relationship to the plant. Then, like so many of the teaching stories for children of animals with human characteristics, some of the trance journeys with plants are more specific to the plant but describe the plant with more human characteristics. Then some of the trance experiences describe the plant more directly.
For example I found the cleansing nature of Calamus while I sat in a shape-shifting posture when the drumming started. I held a slice of Calamus under my tongue and a beautiful Calamus rhizome with small roots resting on the floor in front of me upon which I placed my hands with splayed fingers. I first found myself at a spring of which I am quite familiar. It had moss growing in it with mosquitoes jumping around on the moss. A Calamus was growing in the mud. I was the rhizome squirming through the mud, cleansing the pool of water. I felt a cleansing action within me flowing through the various channels within me, the channels of blood and lymph, along with the acupuncture meridians, an experience that describes the plant personality of cleansing quite directly.
Wood describes the personality taste of Calamus as bitter, pungent, acrid, warm, dry, aromatic, astringent and resinous. Its tissue states are depression, stagnation and constriction, (Volume II, pg 58). Though his description does not include its cleansing nature, he writes of how it cleanses the phlegm for such problems as congested sinuses, laryngitis and from the cerebrum to increase one’s thinking ability and comprehension.
Similarly when I used ecstatic trance while sitting in a shape-shifting posture near a Juniper tree that is growing over a massive shelf of rock, I felt its roots finding their way through small cracks in the rock as it broke through the rock. As a root I was led by a trickle of water that found its way into the small cracks.
Afterwards I returned to “The Book of Herbal Wisdom” (pg. 25) to learn that the Juniper is a saxifrage, a plant that can break through rocks. “The old authors believed that plants which broke into the rocks with their root systems and clove them apart were suited to ‘breaking stones’ in the kidneys.” The intelligence of the Juniper knew of my need to deal with a kidney stone. According to Wood, in Volume II, pg. 213, Juniper’s taste is pungent, bitter, acrid, sweet, warm, dry, oily, stimulating, aromatic and antiseptic. Its tissue states are depression, stagnation and constriction.
On the eve of the first day of spring I sat in front of the Black Walnut again in the shape-shifting with fingers splayed as roots of the Black Walnut. The first thing I noticed as I sat after smudging and calling the spirits was a patch of wild garlic. I had to take a piece of it to chew on. My experience gave the Black Walnut human characteristics as in an adult version of a children’s story:
A rush of feelings came to me from the squirrel collecting the nuts, to the Juglone of the Black Walnut and the Garlic. In particular I felt the feeling of arrogance, a feeling of the arrogance of Black Walnut’s need to push other life away with its Juglone though it is very majestic and powerful in its size. Similarly, Garlic pushes away such predators as the deer with its aroma. Yet, both have friends. The Black Walnut’s friend, the squirrel, collects the nuts and by burying them new Walnuts grows. I greatly appreciate the Black Walnut and the Wild Garlic, the Black Walnut for its beautiful wood and the dye from the husks of the nuts for hair coloring and other art, and the Wild Garlic for its flavor in cooking. Yet, both the garlic and walnut show arrogance with a lack of self-confidence in its need to push others away. I have used and appreciate the Black Walnut’s wood in the trim and furnishing of my office and the garlic in cooking. Also many animals appreciate the Black Walnut for ridding them of parasites, worms and fungi. In our garden we often have to pull up the new little walnut trees that grow from where the squirrels bury the nuts. It is a very interesting plant that brings about a wide range of feelings from love and appreciation to some potential feelings of resentment because of its arrogance.
Wood’s taste description of the Black Walnut is fragrant, bitter and astringent. Its tissue states are depression, relaxation and torpor, (Volume II, pg. 209), but again he does not mention its need to push other life away.
When I told this story to Jennifer Tucker she had a very different response. In contrast to my relationship with Black Walnut she has experienced protection and nurturance with the Juglone as a way of healing from a bad relationship and helping in weaning to creating healthy separation. As she reports:
After years of living within a grove of Black Walnut I have observed in myself a solid protective energy “force.” With more intuitive awareness I am able to discern the protective energy force that surrounds the house and also the barn. I describe it as a psychic protective energy emanating from the trees that filter’s out psychic “static.” In observing and getting to know the trees better I “saw” this protective “circle” as a positive “boundary” and that we need to have healthy boundaries in relationship with others, the community and with our own mental thoughts. In cases of addiction, unhealthy codependence, abuse issues, or inability to adapt to change Black Walnut is my go-to herb.
The Black Walnut’s essence and nut is idea for “weaning” oneself from addictive behaviors, protection from psychic attack by other spirits, entities or thought-forms, again that idea of a “filter” for the Psyche. In women who breast-feed their children for several years and are ready to transition to the next healthy growth life-transition, Walnut flower essence for the mother and child used as a flower essence externally on the nipple, and on the pulse points and a few drops in food or liquid the child ingests helps with natural transition.
In Jennifer’s following metaphoric trance experience, she interpreted the metaphor as the experience progressed. Yarrow spontaneously presented a vision of itself as a single stem, leaf and flower surrounded by Light. The message is that the Yin and Yang balance of duality embodies life.
“I then sensed the energy of the archetype “warrior’s” purpose in both genders and of women warriors who have gone before with clarity of fierce and focus. A vision of Achilles’ Mother as Goddess of the Immortal Feminine came to me of how the archetype of Higher Self can be drawn upon to infuse our human experience. The duality of earth’s embodied experience represented in male and female, is a Yarrow message. The “Flesh, Blood and Bones” of which we are made is both our “weakness and strength” in being mortal. Yarrow helps strengthen and protect through the connection to Spirit (immortality). The Light is the Shield of Spirit around the physical to protect and connect to Higher Self. The Yarrow is medicine for wounds that cut through flesh, blood and to the bone; and emotional wounds of surviving life’s traumas that “cut to the bone.” (Flesh= Outer Personality, identity, actions; Blood= connection, communication, inheritance, ancestor karma, DNA; Bones=Our foundation, strength, architecture.)
According to Wood, (Volume II, pg. 53) the taste of Yarrow is bitter, pungent, acrid, diffusive, astringent and aromatic and its tissue states are excitation, depression and relaxation. The Latin name of the plant is Achillea, named after Achilles. Wood does recognize in his writing that Yarrow is used for the “wounded warrior” and for stemming blood flow for lacerations and bruises.
In Lisa’s experience the intelligence of yarrow knew what she needed and led her metaphorically to a more appropriate plant, the olive leaf that is used for dealing with hypertension, vasoconstriction and angina:
I got distracted at first by thoughts of recent experiences, but then I remembered the instructions to follow a path, a path that led to a circular staircase deep into the earth. I started walking towards our white pine and then was at the sacred women’s well we visited in Sardinia, going down those impeccably measure, ever narrowing steps toward the water at the bottom, with the dome high above it and the opening to the light. I saw the ancient olive trees in the nearby grove and thought “oh, this is the instruction for my healing. I should be taking olive leaf for my heart.” (Something I’ve been wondering about for years.) “Yarrow is sending me healing instructions. Thank you, Yarrow.”
From these examples, it is apparent that ecstatic trance does open the door to the personality of a medicinal plant, but more specifically to the need of the moment, but it does not provide the overall picture of what a plant has to offer. Wood’s system offers a broader, more complete picture of the plant, but it takes the experienced herbalist to draw from these pictures to decide which plant(s) are most appropriately for the particular situation. Wood’s two volumes that review over 450 medicinal plants are very valuable as a resource in how to use these medicinal herbs.

[Gabrielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid book but in no way is this a "complete" guide. Many important native species are not included, and a number of herbs discussed only have partial entries. Is it worth noting that he is also using "New World" to mean temperate North America?

As it is said, all indigenous knowledge is local. There are a number of great herbals that have been written by indigenous and naturalized people about specific regions of North and South America. These are necessarily lesser in breadth but the depth of knowledge is far greater than what you find here (despite Wood's many many years of Western herbal work).

[Michael Blackmore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hey I love this book. There's always nifty food for herby thought in his books.

And having this and the Old World volume together is just a great pair of herbal references to have.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I used this fabulous reference to complete Rosemary Gladstar’s course The Art and Science of Herbalism. While I didn’t read this cover-to-cover, as it’s an encyclopedia, I referenced around 100 herbs and took copious notes. Amazing book, with no other reference covering so many facets of herbalism. Truly life changing.

[Cherie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A continuation of Wood's other book. Great resource.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very detailed information and a good reference on herb energetics.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Contained significantly less herbs of interest than the other herbals I've read. I realize the scope of the book is limited, I wasn't expecting it to be limited as much as it was.

[Larisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent reference with detailed explanations covering the methodology of Eastern and Western herbalism using American herbs.

[Janine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Combined with the Old World book. This is an invaluable resource that all herbalists should have.

[Rhonda]

Compliments vol 1. Good to have the set

[Leah Rampy · Rating 5 out of 5]

You don't actually read this book, but pouring over the pages is well worth the time of a plant lover. This is a classic reference for medicinal plants.