Love Them to Death - by Wendy L Applequist (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Love Them to Death encourages readers to envision a variety of economic uses for the invasive plants of their region.

This peer-reviewed, edited volume brings together writings by a diverse group of independent professionals, academics, and artisans, with expertise in a wide range of plant uses--for food and drink, herbal medicines, basketry, livestock forage, biofuel, structural materials, paper, and dyes. From cultural and ecological examinations to practical applications, Love Them to Death looks at troublesome species as resources that might be safely and thoughtfully exploited.

Review Quotes

"Who says you can't eat your problems? This collection of peer-reviewed essays from ecologists, biologists, and other experts explores a range of controls for invasive plants, from culinary approaches to papermaking to biomass/biofuel solutions. The argument is that while eradicating invasives has been the goal, controlling them through useful harvesting may be the more realistic and economically beneficial path."-- "American Gardener"

"This book is more than a compendium on wild invasive plants, it's a great introduction for communities to explore the weeds around them for use in everything from food to structures."-- "Tama Matsuoka Wong, wild food purveyor and author of Into the Weeds: How to Garden Like a Forager"

"Love Them to Death provides a remarkable shift in the 'traditional' perspective on invasive species. While we have been brought up to consider invasive plants as foes, this book makes a powerful case for shifting the paradigmatic landscape of invasive species, by providing a series of well-written and researched chapters on the potential utilitarian value that they can provide. People who eat such plants are termed invasivores, and the book provides examples of many other types of uses--building materials, medicines, biomass, fodder, and in artistry--based on species that have been at best ignored and at worst considered our enemies. Congratulations to the editor and chapter authors who have reshaped our thinking and understanding of this complex but fascinating topic."-- "Michael J. Balick, PhD, The New York Botanical Garden"

About the Author

Wendy L. Applequist, an associate scientist in the Missouri Botanical Garden's William L. Brown Center, is a plant taxonomist with interests in medicinal plants, nomenclature, and the flora of Madagascar. She is the author of The Identification of Medicinal Plants: A Handbook of the Morphology of Botanicals in Commerce.