Herbarium

A stylishly illustrated compendium of 100 herbs, designed to enrich our understanding of all their uses. This isn’t just a book for the kitchen – it’s for the greenhouse, the medicine cabinet, the coffee table... Award-winning designer Caz Hildebrand’s Herbarium is a 21st-century reboot of the traditional herbal compendium. The visual genius behind the international bestseller The Geometry of Pasta , she has created abstract forms and vibrant colours to illustrate 100 essential herbs and to reveal their hidden properties. From bergamot, comfrey and dill to sassafras, vervain and wasabi, all types of herbs are covered; each is explained through the fascinating history of their uses and symbolism. There are tips on how to use them as seasonings and how to create healing potions, as well as advice on when and how to grow them. Herbarium celebrates all facets of herbs and all their life-enhancing properties.

A stylishly illustrated compendium of 100 herbs, designed to enrich our understanding of all their uses. This isn’t just a book for the kitchen – it’s for the greenhouse, the medicine cabinet, the coffee table... Award-winning designer Caz Hildebrand’s Herbarium is a 21st-century reboot of the traditional herbal compendium. The visual genius behind the international bestseller The Geometry of Pasta , she has created abstract forms and vibrant colours to illustrate 100 essential herbs and to reveal their hidden properties. From bergamot, comfrey and dill to sassafras, vervain and wasabi, all types of herbs are covered; each is explained through the fascinating history of their uses and symbolism. There are tips on how to use them as seasonings and how to create healing potions, as well as advice on when and how to grow them. Herbarium celebrates all facets of herbs and all their life-enhancing properties.

“A sweeping history of the origins, development, and future of herbaria and their role in plant consternation.” —The American Gardener Since the 1500s, scientists have documented the plants and fungi that grew around them, organizing the specimens into collections. Known as herbaria, these archives helped give rise to botany as its own scientific endeavor.Herbarium is a fascinating enquiry into this unique field of plant biology, exploring how herbaria emerged and have changed over time, who promoted and contributed to them, and why they remain such an important source of data for their new role: understanding how the world’s flora is changing. Barbara Thiers, director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden, also explains how recent innovations that allow us to see things at both the molecular level and on a global scale can be applied to herbaria specimens, helping us address some of the most critical problems facing the world today.

“A sweeping history of the origins, development, and future of herbaria and their role in plant consternation.” —The American Gardener Since the 1500s, scientists have documented the plants and fungi that grew around them, organizing the specimens into collections. Known as herbaria, these archives helped give rise to botany as its own scientific endeavor.Herbarium is a fascinating enquiry into this unique field of plant biology, exploring how herbaria emerged and have changed over time, who promoted and contributed to them, and why they remain such an important source of data for their new role: understanding how the world’s flora is changing. Barbara Thiers, director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden, also explains how recent innovations that allow us to see things at both the molecular level and on a global scale can be applied to herbaria specimens, helping us address some of the most critical problems facing the world today.