Useful Wild Plants Of The United
States And Canada by Charles Francis Saunders (1920)
Illustrated By Photographs, And By
Numerous Line Drawings by Lucy Hamilton Aring
"Although little known these days, Saunders (1859-1941) cast a large shadow in
the first several decades of the 20th Century, writing many widely read books on
western wildflowers, the Anasazi, edible plants, and the Indian, Spanish and
Anglo folklore and culture of California, the Sierras and the Southwest. He was
also a major and influential contributer to Sunset Magazine in its salad years.
Although couched in a genteel "Revisionist Manifest Destiny" tone with echoes of
"White-Man's Burden", his folksy non-threatening style helped humanize the
dimished remnants of the First Americans to the growing middle class of white
Americans, and were firmly founded in a voracious curiosity about the usability
of fast-vanishing traditions. Without using the ersatz Injun fables of E.T.
Seton or the austere fake-machismo of Zane Grey, Saunders introduced much of the
American public of his era to a person-sized understanding of the remnant "Old
West". " -Michael Moore ( the botanist, not the producer)
