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La Plante compagne. Pratique et imaginaire
PIERRE LIEUTAGHI
LA PLANTE COMPAGNE
Pratique et imaginaire de la flore sauvage en Europe occidentale
13 × 24 cm 312 pages 250 color illustrations softback may 2021 retail price: 24 €
Pierre Lieutaghi is an ethnobotanist and writer based in Provence. He is one of the leading experts in the knowledge associated with plants in Western societies. With Actes Sud, he has published Le Livre des bonnes herbes (1996), Le Livre des arbres, arbustes et arbrisseaux (2004) and Une ethnobotanique méditerranéenne (2017), as well as a novel, Elio (2014).
COMPANION PLANTS
A practical and imaginative engagement with the wild flora of Western Europe
Pierre Lieutaghi New edition
Even in lands such as ours with a long tradition of written history and landscapes that have been moulded by agriculture for millennia, there exists a parallel story of our close relationship with wild plants. Though it may have been forgotten and is less accessible to words, this story is much more than a chronicle of practical usages – it is a tale of the perfecting of thought itself and can play a valuable role in helping us to reconnect with the world around us. An essay in the form of short tales that are more social than natural history, La Plante compagne explores avenues for retrieving the memories of Man’s association with herbs and trees. It also serves as an introduction to ethnobotany and its insights: the social customs and imaginative associations surrounding the practical use of the most common plants over the ages; the legacy of these interactions for us today; and the current state of this relationship, since the dialogue between human and plants is forever ongoing.
First published in 1998, this superbly written and richly illustrated text remains to this day the only survey of the knowledge associated with wild plants aimed at a general audience.
This second edition features a new preface in which the author describes some of the major developments in the field over the last thirty years.
