Steven Foster, An Herbalist's Life
by Lavinia McKinney

Missouri has some of the world's largest springs. In the fall of 1981, a robust and energetic band of ecologists and lovers of the Ozarks met at one of them, Allie Springs, on the Jack's Fork River. There I met Steven Foster, a young herbalist from Maine, who had moved into the Arkansas Ozarks to write a book.

During our 21 year friendship there have been many stories, including how he talked me into taking his small seed company, Izard Ozark Natives, and growing it through adolescence as Elixir Farm Botanicals, and now into the Ozark Botanical Garden. But that is another story!

I have always known about Stevens' genius, but recently I decided to find out from his colleagues and friends how they saw this very special character.

My first call, naturally, was to his mother, Hope Foster. Had she noticed early clues as to Steven's expanded nature? She told me that one of her fondest memories was putting the 2-year-old boy down for his nap and having to unpack his little pockets. One day she decided to count the objects and found that her very precocious son had assembled 32 objects that were clearly hand picked and of keen interest. "We allowed Steve to do what ever he wanted to do. We supported him in his interests and he never went into a new subject until he had learned absolutely everything that he could about it." She noted that he was an antique and book collector in his early teens and really didn't get into the plants until he went to Sabbath Day Lake.

Steven knew very early as a young man that he wasn't going to go to college. He began by building his own library to teach himself. His capacious mind was activated in September of 1974, during his senior year of high school by the Shakers at Sabbathday Lake Community where he worked until September of 1978. There he renovated the Shaker gardens, harvested in their 1700 acres of woods, and revived the century old herb business.

Under the guidance of the elderly Shakers he landed on a life path of research, horticulture, botany and photography. Sister Mildred Barker, the elder leader of the community, took Steven into the heart of what was left of a long lineage of simple, true and ecstatic, clear-minded people. Brother Theodore Johnson, another elder of the community and an English teacher taught Steven the art of writing and took him under his wing during the four years that Steven was at the Shaker Village.

Les Eastman, a teacher and botanist, then cataloguing rare and endangered species in Maine, met the17-year-old Steven at the Josselyn Botanical Society. Steven had a very full bushy beard and "didn't look or act like a young man." Les saw how bright Steven was when he talked with him— "His vocabulary was very graphic." They became fast friends, botanizing, walking and collecting plants. "Steven had a full working knowledge of botany. For example, there are 60 ways to describe hairiness, and he knew the whole descriptive language. I was a bit jealous of his writing...it was so clear and lively. More than my own."

While at Sabbathday Lake, Steven met one of his early mentors, Dr. Shiu Ying Hu, a Chinese botanist lured to the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard in 1945 by two self-taught American botanists, both from Maine, Merritt L. Fernald, author of the eighth edition of Gray's Manual of Botany and Elmer Merrill, honored during his lifetime as the "American Linnaeus." When Dr. Hu met Steven she recognized a genius in the tradition of her mentors, Fernald and Merrill: "I found in Steven Foster a teacher who could share a profound knowledge of economic botany. His library had an extensive collection of old herbals as well as modern textbook, manuals, floras, and current botanical and horticultural publications. He had not only read them all, he knew exactly where and how to locate needed information in them. Already an excellent photographer, he had recorded his field observations in numerous slides and pictures."

Bill Coperthwaite, educator and Director of the Yurt foundation in Buck's Harbor, Maine, wrote me: "I remember Steven as a big, curious and very pleasant youngster. He had a magic touch with plants and with the camera from the first. He was always kindly and concerned for those around him. There was great affection between him and the elderly Shakers at Sabbathday Lake. He put love and effort into his work with the herbs there. When he came to see me he seemed equally enthralled with yurts, boats and the sea. Some of his boat shots taken here were especially fine. We struck it off well from the beginning."

And Rosemary Gladstar, herbalist and teacher, wrote: "Some people are just destined to be icons, figures that stand above and beyond for one reason or another, and Steven Foster is definitely one of those figures, certainly in the herbal community, the world of photography and in the environmental movement"...(when she first heard of Steven) "herbalism was still at the crack of dawn in the US; there was hardly an industry, only a few books had been written, a few classes were being taught, and there was, quite simply, not much to know about any of us, at least concerning herbalism. But still, word carried, energy flew, about this awesome herbalist in the Shaker Community. So as soon as there was an opportunity, I invited Steven to teach at the newly opened California School of Herbal Studies. This was way back in the early 1970's. You only have to hear Steven once to know there is brilliance in them there brains."

"I remember once many years back at one of the conferences organized by Ric Scalzo of Gaia Herbs. Steven was a featured speaker and was offering a few classes. I ventured into one and spent the next hour and a half fascinated by a lecturer who was a brilliant blend of stand up comedian, astute scholar, and etymologist. The subject was something such as "What is an Herb?" No one, no one else I know, could take a subject so simple, expound on it in such depth, and keep it so interesting. That is Steven."

By 1982, at the age of 25 Steven had written his first book Herbal Bounty, published in 1984, which was later revised and reprinted as Herbal Renaissance, with a forward by Richard Evans Schultes, who comments that, "Steven Foster has produced a comprehensive book on the cultivation of herbs and in doing so has contributed significantly to our total knowledge of herbs and their uses."

Mark Blumenthal, Executive Director of the American Botanical Council and editor of Herbalgram first met Steven Foster in around 1977 in Boston: "We were planning to stage a Boston Tea Party...to protest the FDA action against the Select Tea Co. whose sassafras tea had been confiscated by FDA under the presumption that sassafras was hepatotoxic, due to the presence of safrole, which had been previously banned in beverages (eg, root beer). As I recall, at the last minute, a young herbalist drove from Boston most all of the night up to the Shaker Herb Farm in Sabbathday Lake, Maine...and returned with a large burlap bag of some of the most beautiful sassafras root bark you ever saw (or smelled!). This was the herb we ceremoniously threw into the harbor!"

"Steven has no formal training in botany, pharmacognosy, etc., yet he is one of the most knowledgeable experts in the field of medicinal herbs. He shares co-authorship with the leading experts on herbal medicine", Blumenthal continued.

The irrepressible Jim Duke, his co-author of the Peterson Field Guide to Medicinal Plants says of Steven, "Self trained, he has mastered the various difficult fields and skills so important in making him and aspiring competitors top notch; bibliographic detail and documentation, herbal medicine, inquisitiveness, persistence, photography, scholastic inquiry and probably most important, plant taxonomy."

Dr. Duke also quips "I should have added that Mark Blumenthal and I often refer to Foster as the curmudgeon who finds every typo in all our works!"

The late, Prof. Varro E. Tyler chose Steven as his successor in the co-authorship of Tyler's Honest Herbal. With Prof. Chongxi Yueh, one of China's leading herbal scholars, he wrote Herbal Emissaries, the first book to help people learn to grow Chinese herbs in the U.S., clearly a major contribution to modern herbalism! And with Dr. Albert Leung, Steven co-authored the Encyclopedia of Common Natural Ingredients, a detailed authoritative reference for natural ingredients used in commerce.

Steven's genius shows up everywhere—in its commitment to the industry and boards and agencies that determine the economics, and, therefore, destiny and diversity, of many native plants.

Since our first meeting that fall day in 1981, a long and fun filled adventure has unfolded. We began a project together called the "Ozark Beneficial Plant Project" and Steven, characteristically, wrote his second book, Echinacea Exhalted in 1984, a carefully researched collection of all of the available data about the echinaceas.

Echinacea became a passion for Steven and he utterly committed himself to the conservation of the indigenous populations of this plant. To this end he has been very successful. The culture of this family has been revealed and it now is cultivated worldwide instead of wild harvested. For me, a grower, he is most importantly, an engaged genius!

Steven Foster, President of the Steven Foster Group, Inc., is one of the most respected names in herbal health care. For twenty-five years, he has served as a medicinal plant specialist, commercial consultant, writer, lecturer, and photographer. Foster has over 700 photo-illustrated articles in popular, trade, and scientific journals. He is the author of fourteen books on herbal medicine, some of which have been translated into Japanese, Greek, Italian, and Spanish editions. Check out his website at www.stevenfoster.com .

Lavinia McKinney owns and operates Elixir Farm in Brixey, Missouri.