A dedicated teacher and continual learner, Dara Saville introduces us to the wide range of plants found in the American southwest. She extols their practical value while alerting us to the dangers they face --- and by implication, the dangers we all face as changing ecologies affect us.

THE ECOLOGY OF HERBAL MEDICINE is lively and highly informed. Saville begins with her own understanding of ecological herbalism: “We are part of the living landscape.” She offers color photos of some of her favorite natural environments, along with depictions of some of the damage that has been and continues to be done to those areas. She believes that few of us, no matter how much we may enjoy nature in the abstract, take time to experience it in ways she calls “unselfing” and “interbeing” --- experiencing in our own ecological realms a level of empathy that can lead to a community commitment.

"[Saville's] extensive knowledge of her subject and devotion to her cause will attract anyone concerned about prevalent ecological crises and the consequent and continuing loss of valuable plant species."

Combatting climate change and its resulting ills such as increased forest fires and the need to contain them, and the prevalence of grazing that may also result in deforestation, is not only our duty, but could be our joyful obligation as we seek to preserve the many plants that give back to us with medical and other blessings. 

The large part of this bold statement is a materia medica, in which 39 plant forms are specifically highlighted. These are species native to herbalist Saville’s New Mexico region and include such well-known botanical healers as yarrow, datura, angelica, goldenrod and violet, and the lesser known but equally efficacious skullcap, usnea and ponderosa pine. With each listing Saville includes the plant’s history, its regional and indigenous uses, and its general and proven physical healing qualities, with many references cited. These offerings are accurate and science-based, as well as redolent of local folklore.

Based on her personal research, Saville recommends using these flowers, leaves, trees and shrubs in healing processes --- cooking with mesquite flour, applying yarrow oil for nasal dryness, adding yerba mansa to tinctures for urinary tract and sinus infections. This provides a further incentive for readers to get better acquainted with possible herbal helpers, both edible and medicinal, in their local ecosystems.

Saville is the founder of Albuquerque Herbalism and executive director of the non-profit Yerba Mansa Project. Her extensive knowledge of her subject and devotion to her cause will attract anyone concerned about prevalent ecological crises and the consequent and continuing loss of valuable plant species. Her work shares the gift of an enlivened awareness of natural surroundings that anyone can experience, simply by walking --- as Saville so often does --- on trails both familiar and unexplored.