The Lost Language of Plants: The Ecological Importance of Plant Medicines to Life on Earth

Nautilus Book Awards: Ecology/Environment

ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year: Silver Medal, Environment

In the "pharmaceutical Silent Spring" well-known author, teacher, lecturer, and herbalist Stephen Harrod Buhner has produced a book that is certain to generate controversy.

Inside The Lost Language of Plants, you'll find:

1. A critique of technological medicine, and especially the dangers to the environment posed by pharmaceuticals and other synthetic substances that people use in connection with health care and personal body care.
2. A new look at Gaia Theory, including an explanation that plants are the original chemistries of Gaia and those phytochemistries are the fundamental communications network for the Earth's ecosystems.
3. Extensive documentation of how plants communicate their healing qualities to humans and other animals. Western culture has obliterated most people's capacity to perceive these messages, but this book also contains valuable information on how we can restore our faculties of perception.

The book will affect readers on rational and emotional planes. It is grounded in both a New Age spiritual sensibility and hard science. While some of the author's claims may strike traditional thinkers as outlandish, Buhner presents his arguments with such authority and documentation that the scientific underpinnings, however unconventional, are completely credible.

The overall impact is a powerful, eye-opening exposé of the threat that our allopathic Western medical system, in combination with our unquestioning faith in science and technology, poses to the primary life-support systems of the planet. At a time when we are preoccupied with the terrorist attacks and the possibility of biological warfare, perhaps it is time to listen to the planet.

This book is essential reading for anyone concerned about the state of the environment, the state of health care, and our cultural sanity.

Author: Stephen Harrod Buhner
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Company
Published: 03/06/2002
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.98lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.06w x 0.88d
ISBN: 9781890132880


Award: IndieFab awards - Second Place
Award: Nautilus Award - Winner


Review Citation(s):
Choice 10/01/2002 pg. 303

About the Author
Stephen Harrod Buhner was the award-winning author of 25 books on plant medicines, Earth ecosystem dynamics, emerging diseases, and the states of mind and being necessary for successful habitation of Earth including numerous articles, memoirs, short stories, and poetry on nature, human-plant, and human-Earth relationships. He taught throughout the US, Canada, and the EU for over 35 years. Stephen was an interdisciplinary, independent scholar, polymath, autodidact, Fellow of Schumacher College UK, and had been head researcher for the Foundation for Gaian Studies for the past thirty years (gaianstudies.org). His book, The Lost Language of Plants, received a Nautilus and BBC Environmental Book of the Year Award. In 2022, he received the first annual McKenna Academy Distinguished Natural Philosopher Award in recognition of his work. His book, Earth Grief: The Journey Into and Through Ecological Loss, also won a Nautilus award.