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YOUR INSTRUCTOR: Jim Duke (James A. Duke)

Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1929, James A. "Jim" Duke is a Phi Beta

Kappa PhD (botany, 1961) graduate of the University of North Carolina. Jim,
following military service, undertook postdoctoral activities at Washington
University and Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, Missouri. There he
began studies of neotropical ethnobotany, his overriding interest to this day.
From 1963 to 1965, Duke was ecologist with the USDA (Beltsville, Maryland),
joining Battelle Columbus Laboratories (1965-71) for ecological and
ethnobotanical studies in Panama and Colombia. During this formative
period, Duke lived with various ethnic groups, closely observing their deep
dependence on forest products. The first of some twenty books, his Isthmian
Ethnobotanical Dictionary catalogs hundreds of Isthmian plants and their
uses. Rejoining USDA in 1971, Duke had assignments relating to crop
diversification, medicinal plants, and energy plant studies in developing
countries. A popular lecturer on the subjects of ethnobotany, herbs,
medicinal plants, and new crops and their ecology, he has taped dozens of
TV and radio shows. There is a good biographic sketch in the Sep/Oct-1991
issue of EastWest magazine. The National Agriculture Library has a video
history of Dr. Duke's career and development. Duke grows dozens of
interesting plants on his six-acre farmette (Herbal Vineyard) with his wife and

illustrator, Peggy. On Sept. 30, 1995, he retired after 30 years with the
USDA.Before retiring, Dr. Duke brought his Father Nature's Farmacy database
online at USDA. It is now, in Duke's retirement, one of the most frequently
consulted database with the Plant Genome Project at USDA. The URL address
is: http://www.ars-grin.gov/duke
Duke has already doubled the data content in the interactive database he
maintains as Director, Duke's Herbal Vineyard, Inc. The database is
especially useful for determining biological activities and healing potentials
of food ands herbs.

Fluent in Spanish, Duke has studied and/or lectured widely, concentrating on

tropical ecology, medical botany, and crop diversification. Widely travelled,
Duke "cut his tropical eye teeth" in Panama where he was resident from
1966-68. While working on an encyclopedia of economic plants, he has
collaborated with the National Cancer Institute on both their AIDS and
cancer-screening programs and their Designer Food Program (to prevent
cancer). His data bases on the ecology, nutritional content, folk medicinal
uses and chemical constituents of economic plants are being widely utilized.
Duke's major goal lately is to reverse the disdain for alternative medicines in
the US, where, as in the Third World, a larger and larger percentage of the
people can no longer afford first-world pharmaceuticals. Duke has a
contagious interest in natural foods and nutritional approaches to preventive
medicine. Between 1990-1992, Duke was advising the Designer Food
Program of the NIH, then under the aegis of Dr. Herb Pierson. Lately Duke
has been very active in ecotourism in Latin America and is teaching such
themes as renewable rainforest products in the rainforests of Amazonian
Peru. He has become an expert in the field of non-timber forest products.

With an aggregate of more then five years in Latin America, Duke has
traversed parts of Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa
Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guadelupe, Guatemala, Honduras,
Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. In Asia, he has
had lengthy visits in China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and quick looks at
Burma, Japan, Laos and Vietnam. In the Middle East, he has worked in Iran,
Israel, Kuwait, and Syria, with quick looks at the Mediterranean countries of
Egypt, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. His only tours in tropical Africa
include Madagascar, Sao Tome, The Ivory Coast and Zambia. Recently he has
been teaching field ethnobotany regularly in Amazonian Peru, Belize and

Costa Rica (mostly in the winter) and in the Maine northwoods (in summer
only). In 1997, similar tours are planned for Kenya and Uganda.
Jim belongs to the American Botanical Council (Trustee), American Herb
Association (Life), American Society of Pharmacognosy, Association for
Tropical Biology (Life), Council of Agricultural Science and Technology
(Cornerstone Life Member), Herb Research Foundation (Advisor),
International Association of Plant Taxonomists (Life), International Society for
Tropical Root Crops (Life), International Weed Science Society (Life),
Organization for Tropical Studies (Life), Oriental Healing Arts Society
(Honorary), Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, Smithsonian Institution (Collaborator),
Society for Conservation Biology (Life), Society for Economic Botany (Life),
Southern Appalachian Botanical Club (Life), and the Washington Academy of
Sciences (Life).

Dr. Duke serves as a Senior Scientific Adviser to Nature's Herbs and is on the
board of trustees of the American Botanical Council, Director, Botanical
Products International (Hakalau Hawaii) and Microbotanica, the Scientific
Advisory Team of Shaman Pharmaceuticals (San Francisco), Medical Advisory
Board of Herbalife (Los Angeles), and serves as Medicinal Plant Adviser to
Reader's Digest and Time-Life. He also serves as an advisor or unpaid
consultant to ACEER (Amazon Center for Environmental Education and
Research), Alternative Medicine Digest, American Health, the Center for
Alternative Medicine in Women's Health (NY), Center for Mind-Body Medicine,
Center for Plant Conservation, Herb Research Foundation, International
Expeditions, National College of Phytotherapy, Rodale Press, Rheumatology
Unit (NIH); Supplements/ Dietary Advisory Board (NIH, Bethesda MD),
Rosenthal Center for Alternative/Complementary Medicine, TRAMIL, and the
World Health Organization (Traditional Medicine Program ). He is CEO of a
newly formed consulting firm, Duke's Herbal Vineyard Inc, where he is writing
the newsletter, News from the Herbal Village, and raising several specimen
herbs for analysis and study. Routinely queried by editors and writers for
several different popular and scientific health-oriented journals, and by
producers of radio and television networks, both conservative and liberal,
Duke recently has given accredited continuing education lectures on herbal
medicine, pros and cons, to chiropractors, nurses, nurse practitioners,
pharmacists, and physicians.

In addition to scores of popular and scientific articles, Duke has published

several pertinent books: (1) Handbook of Legumes of World Economic
Importance, Plenum Press, New York, 345 pp., 1981; (2) Medicinal Plants of
the Bible, Trado-Medic Books, Buffalo, New York, 233 pp., 1981; (3) CRC
Handbook of Medicinal Herbs, CRC Press, Inc., Boca Raton, Florida, 704 pp.,
1985; (4) Culinary Herbs: A Potpourri, Trado-Medic Books, Buffalo, New York,
195 pp., 1985; (5) Medicinal Plants of China (with E. Ayensu), Reference
Publications, Algonac, Michigan, 2 vols., 705 pp., 1985; (6) CRC Handbook of
Proximate Analysis Tables of Higher Plants (with A. Atchley), CRC Press, Inc.,
Boca Raton, Florida, 389 pp., 1986; (7) Isthmian Ethnobotanical Dictionary,
3rd edition, Scientific Publishers, Jodhpur, India, 205 pp., 1986; (8) Handbook
of Northeastern Indian Medicinal Plants, Quarterman Press, Lincoln,
Massachusetts, 212 pp., 1986; (9) Living Liqueurs, Quarterman Press,
Lincoln, Massachusetts, 110 pp., 1987; (10) CRC Handbook of Agricultural
Energy Potential for Developing Countries (with A. Atchley, K. Ackerson, and
P. Duke), CRC Press, Inc., Boca Raton, Florida, 4 vols., 1063 pp., 1987; (11)
CRC Handbook of Nuts, CRC Press, Inc., Boca Raton, Florida, 343 pp., 1989;
(12) with Steven Foster, a Peterson Field Guide to Medicinal Plants,
Houghton-Miflin, Boston MA, 366 pp, 1990 (13) Ginseng, a Concise
Handbook, Reference Publications, Algonac, Michigan, 273 pp., 1990, (14)
CRC Handbook of Edible Weeds, CRC Press, Inc., Boca Raton, Florida, 1992
and (15) CRC Handbook (and database) of Phytochemical Constituents of
GRAS Herbs and Other Economic Plants, 654 pp., 1992 and the CRC
Handbook (and Database) of Biological Activities of Phytochemicals (1992),
(16) CRC Handbook of Alternative Cash Crops, (J. A. Duke and J. L. duCellier),
CRC Press, Inc., Boca Raton, Florida, 1993, 536 pp., (18) Duke and Vasquez's
Amazonian Ethnobotanical Dictionary in 1994 and (19) Beckstrom-Sternberg
and Duke (1996, CRC Handbook of Aromathematics) Number 20, his opus
magnum, Green Pharmacy, Rodale Press, is due to be out July, 1997.
Currently Dr. Duke, retired from the USDA Sept. 30, is working on three
books, Green Pharmacy for Rodale Press, Synergy in Phytomedicines, under
consideration by Synergetic Press, and finally, a second edition to the CRC
Handbook of Medicinal Herbs. After he finishes these, Duke threatens to do
more talking and less writing. In 1995 he presented more than 200 lectures
and/or guided field trips or workshops. 1996 looks busier. Duke is a regular or
occasional contributor or editorial adviser to such periodicals as Alternative
Medicine Digest, American Health, Business of Herbs, Complementary
Medicine for the Physician, Diversity, Economic Botany, The
Environmentarian, HerbalGram, Herbs for Health, The International
Permaculture Species Yearbook, The Journal of Alternative & Complementary

Medicine, Journal of Optimal Nutrition, Journal or Aromatherapy, Mind-Body

Connection, Natural Health, Organic Gardening, News from the Herbal
Village, and Wild Foods Forum.