Native Healers. Anita Ralph
CHAPTER TWO
Developing knowledge of plants: an introduction to plant science
Introduction
For many embarking on a study of herbal medicine, it is the plants themselves that are so attractive and interesting. Their extraordinary diversity and beauty combined with their manifold usefulness pro-vokes wonder and fascination. Plants have formed a major role as food, as medicine and as comfort at key stages of our lives since the earliest humans walked this Earth; plant medicines are also used by other-than-human species including other primates. Many cultural applications of plants are so embedded as to form part of language and ritual, even in the most modern of societies.
This chapter explores some fundamentals of plants as living organisms, in the same way that we look at human anatomy and physiology. Building our knowledge in the accurate identification and classification of plants and their families helps create a sound basis for expanding this learning. Using this information to sensorially deepen your knowledge of plants will continue your study and learning well beyond this introduction, and the scope of this book. In three of the following chapters of this book we will look in more depth at 15 key medicinal plants used in Western herbal medicine. We can all read and research in great detail about each of these magnificent healing herbs. We would invite you, however, to first consider them as the living beings that they are, and to explore your own interaction with them.
Tea tasting Exercise: Mary and Anita independently taste fennel seed. Drawing of ‘how it feels’.
In this chapter we will teach you a simple tasting technique to introduce the concept of using our senses to gain information about plants. You can then compare this to what others have written about those medicinal plants and their effects.
We begin however, by looking closely at four key medicinal plant families. We will explore similarities within those families, whether in terms of structure, or in terms of compounds and medicinal uses, and we will introduce some of the compounds created by plants that are of particular use to the herbalist.
The scientific naming of plants
Plant families included in this chapter include the rose family, the carrot or parsley family, the mint or deadnettle family and the sunflower or daisy family. In botanical science, plants are given scientific names, and are grouped then into scientific families.
Each scientific family name ends in ‘aceae’:
Carrot family: Apiaceae
Mint family: Lamiaceae
Sunflower or daisy family: Asteraceae
Rose family: Rosaceae
All these four families are dicotyledonous plants (see definition below), and many will be familiar to you. For example, in the Rosaceae we have apple, pear, cherry, apricot, almond, as well as roses of all types. Of the two main divisions of plants—dicotyledons and monocotyledons, the dicots form by far the largest group.
Definition—Dicotyledons: Dicotyledons are plants that grow from the embryo within the seed with a pair of first leaves, or seed leaves, known as cotyledons.
Alliums or members of the onion and garlic family are monocotyledons having a single seed leaf. Other well-known monocotyledenous plants include ginger (Zingiber officinale Roscoe.), and turmeric (Curcuma longa L.).
These families can be further divided into tribes and sub-tribes, and eventually into genera (singular = genus). The genus is important because it is the first name of the two scientific Latin names given to individual plants. The second name refers to the species of that plant genus. Whenever we refer to the scientific name of a plant, we will use the genus name followed by the species name.
So let's take thyme as an example. You may know that there are many different types of thyme, such as common or garden thyme (Thymus vulgaris L.), and wild creeping thyme (Thymus serpyllum L.).
Each one is in the genus Thymus, in the mint family (Lamiaceae family), and we can be sure which thyme we are talking about by adding the name of the species of thyme to the genus name to create the scientific name e.g., vulgaris.
Thus, as you can see from these examples, using the scientific name avoids confusion:
Alchemilla vulgaris aggr. auct. = Lady's mantle
Alchemilla arvensis (L.) Scop. = parsley piert
Petroselinum crispum (Mill.) Fuss = garden parsley
This format of genus + species is called binomial nomenclature, and was first developed into formal taxonomy by Carl Linnaeus. Note that the genus name carries a capital letter, the species name does not, and both are usually written in italics. Humans, for example, are classified as Homo sapiens, European green woodpeckers are Picus viridis. The name of the particular variety of the species can also be added after the species name to make the classification even more exact (e.g., Thymus vulgaris Argenteus (silver thyme)). Note that the variety is not written in italics. You can also see, at the end of the latin names the initial of the botanist who named that plant. For example Curcuma longa L. where the L stands for Linnaeus. Another custom to note relates to how the latin name changes over time. If a plant is renamed, the initials of the botanist who originally named the plant are then put in brackets and the initials of the botanist who supplied the new name are put after this. You can see an example of this on the previous page where Petroselenium crispum (Mill.) Fuss. was originally named by the botanist Philip Miller, and later renamed by Johann Fuss.
Common thyme (Thymus vulgaris L.)
Creeping thyme (Thymus serpyllum L.)
Common names and scientific names
It can seem intimidating to learn the scientific name for each plant. Common names often seem easier to remember than scientific names, but they are not as precise and do not reflect modern scientific taxonomy.
Not only can a common name refer to many different plants, but a single species can have more than one common name; there may be lots of common names for the same plant! This can lead to confusion, and potentially to serious problems if people confuse poisonous species or varieties with harmless ones. The scientific name is truly international and so also forms a shared language across the world.
Here in the UK, a record of local names for the same plant was recorded by Geoffrey Grigson in his book An Englishman's Flora first published in 1975 by Paladin Books. His list of names used for St John's wort, Hypericum perforatum L. include:
| Amber | Balm of the warrior's wound |
| Cammock | St John's wort |
| Penny John | Rosin rose |
| Touch-and-heal |
The names often hint at earlier uses.1
Common and botanical names are often interesting as a record of social history and may also contain information about the plant itself.
St. John's wort (Hypericum perforatum L.)
Shrubby St. John's Wort (Hypericum androsaemum L.)
Hypericum