Guest guest Posted March 9, 2000 Report Share Posted March 9, 2000 The book Chinese Tonic Herbs by Ron Teeguarden has black and white photographs of herbs. He also gives some advice on what to look for in judging the quality of herbs. Tasting a little bit of the herb also can give information. For example, if the herb is classified as having a sour taste only, but you taste salty or bitter and no sour, something is wrong. Part of the training at the Rocky Mountain Herbal Institute and other herbal schools is you're required to taste herbs and learn to recognize the flavors. This has some practical uses beyond just learning to recognize the herbs. Very often a herb's taste will be linked to its properties, as you saw in the posts on the different tastes. There are some things I don't like about the Teeguarden book. For one thing he overuses the word " tonic " . For another he makes some speculations about which parts of the body (like the different endocrine glands) identified by Western anatomy are linked to which meridian systems, and presents this as hard fact. (There's a lot of disagreement on this. It's not a concensus at this point.) But all in all it is a pretty good book for beginners. And there are those photographs of the herbs. Victoria --== Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ ==-- Share what you know. Learn what you don't. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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