I wanted to know a bit about what kind of beliefs people have had (and continue to have) about different plants, which this book did tell me. It did what I wanted in that sense. Unfortunately the writing style did not agree with my much, especially as occasionally it changed tenses at random. For the most part, it focused on the present tense, but every so often it would use the past tense, implying that the ability being discussed was something that people used to believe, or that the plant used to possess. This was never explicit, so I was never sure if it was a mistake, or if I was meant to take it as not being up to date information.