Hidden Histories and Ancient Mysteries of Witches, Plants and Fungi. 2015. 32 figs. 180 p. gr8vo. Paper bd.

Discover ancient rituals and plant lore that formed the foundations for medicine, botany, and modern agriculture. For centuries, peasants leaped over bonfires with accompaniment of song, ale and courtship, in spring, mid-summer and fall, all to combat smut, of crops and livestock were the primary basis of social life and cohesion, and these rituals contributed to a vigorous plant lore that later transmuted into the foundations of medicine, botany, and modern agriculture.

In Hidden Histories and Ancient Mysteries of Witches, Plants, and Fungi, Dr. Frank Dugan, veteran plant pathologist and author of Fungi in the Ancient World and Conspectus of World Ethnomycology traces the evolution of plant lore and crop protection from the ancient beginnings of agriculture, through human civilizations advances, and into today, where modern witches now browse online for herbal remedies and consult their county extension agents on edible fungi.

Through this unique book, Dugan stitches a wide variety of academic disciplines in a cohesive, entertaining, and historically relevant text that opens a window on the cultures of centuries past and the plants within thema window made more transparent by recent advances in archaeobotany, molecular-genetics, paleolinguistics, paleo- and historical climatology, agricultural history, and comparative folklore.

Chapter I surveys new evidence of the impact of crises and catastrophes on social history in the deep past, including the role of climate change, famine, and plant disease in developing cultivated plants and in the distant origins of botany and mycology.

Chapter II examines archaeological and linguistic evidence for early medicinal use of ethnobotanical knowledge, particularly by women, and considers the more recent mining of medieval and Renaissance writings for pharmaceutical purposes.

Chapter III thoroughly documents the appearance of New World plants (tobacco, potato, tomatoes, Capsicum pepper, and pumpkin, among others) in Old World folklore, especially in European traditions. The place of folklore in controversial theories of Pre-Columbian diffusion of New World plants is evaluated.

Chapter IV traces the impacts of literacy, commercial seed catalogs,and store-bought medicines in diminishing plant knowledge obtained from traditional sources. It also examines the creationof new "ancient" traditions of ethnobotany that are sometimes good folklore and sometimes "fakelore."

Chapter V examines the roles of plants and agriculture in contemporary customs of possible pagan origin, focusing especially on those meant to protect crop and livestock health. The mysteries and probable realities of their origins are often more complex and more fascinating than the familiar, authoritativesources would suggest.