Herbcraft

Near-synonyms: herbalism, herblore

(1.) Botany, superseding the ancient Herbcraft, is the name now given to the science which relates to all those inferior ranks of the organic creation called plants, or vegetables.

For he was a cunning man in herbcraft, was Father Peter, and he knew well the nature of each herb and flower, and their several virtues curative, sedative, stimulative—said virtues very possibly all being quite the reverse: […]

The first stage was simple, for one with knowledge of herbcraft, but had to be done with meticulous care.

‘I first met you when you were about eight years old,’ Nevyn said. ‘I doubt if you remember. And then once when you were about sixteen, you were very ill of a fever, and I cured you — just with herbcraft, though, not dweomer.’

“Yes,” Sunny confided shyly. “It helps me when I work on them to give them a story. Griselda, for instance, escaped the Salem witch trials and lived by herself in a cranberry bog for two hundred years—see her cranberry wreath?—before coming back to civilization to share her herbcraft with select acolytes. I based her on one of my teachers at Bailey.”