Start by turning to the book's central 'Gallery of Medicinal Plants'. Here you will find specially commissioned paintings of more than 280 North American species. The paintings, as accurate as they are beautiful, provide all the details you need to identify the plants in the wild -- or in a garden. Each is accompanied by a full-color photograph that shows wat the plant looks like in its natural habitat and by a description of its growth habits, its geographic range, and the specific environment in which it grows.

The 'ABC of Plants' section tells you how to find plants in the wild, how to identify them, how to collect and preserve them. It's a quick and easy course in botany covering the parts of a plant from root to flowering shoot, and it also describes the way plants manufacture medicinal substances.

The 'Plants, People, and Medicine' section tells the fascinating story of mankind's relationship to plants from prehistoric times to the present. Archeologists and anthropolotists have contributed their knowledge of civilizations far removed from us in time or space; historians of the more recent past; and doctors and herbalists of today's developments.

The section 'Growing and Using Herbs' will teach you to grow your own healthful herbs, and discover the many useful and delightful ways that you can employ them in cooking, crafts, and cosmetics.

Other self-contained sections offer the knowledge accumulated by the scientists, historians, anthropologists, and others who have explored the worlds of botany and medicine. In 'Exotic Plants' you can read the fascinating stories of many plants of incomparable value that are native to parts of the world outside th United States and Canada. In 'Plants in Myth and Magic' you'll learn how, in the struggle to gain mastery over nature, mankind has used plants as a magical force.