Cooking and Herbalism

[Orin Fenix]

Hi all! I was hoping that someone could answer a point of clarification for me. Herbalism is fairly clearly defined in both the skill page and the grading guide as the ability to use plants for medicinal purposes. However it's listed as a related skill for Cooking in terms of knowing how to use the properties of herbs in dishes. Is the cooking lore wrong or is it just assumed that herbalism extends partially past medicine? Sorry if this is a silly question, it just came up in regards to a thread I had written. On a slightly related note, I'm a bit confused when it comes toathering plants in the wilderness from the herbs and plants section of the price list that are specifically listed as requiring levels in herbalism or poison or some other skill to recognize and harvest. Would the act of recognizing and harvesting those plants from the above list give you and require experience in the skill list under its personal write-up? Or would it be covered by botany, foraging, gathering or something more along those lines? Sorry if this information is covered elsewhere and I really appreciate the help in figuring this out, especially since I believe it is simply me being especually dense.

[Zhol]

I think the key phrase is on the Herbalism page, where it says "plant and plant extracts". Part of Herbalism is saying "here, eat this leaf", but there's also things like separating seeds from seed pods, grinding things into powders, drying leaves, squeezing out essential oils, and so on. Those skills would predominantly be used as part of making herbal remedies, but the exact same drying/crushing/etc processes would be how you turn a non-medicinal plant into a powdered spice, and so on.

It's about having a set of skills that can be put to different uses. The Medicine skill for example applies to both humans and animals (there's no "vet" skill). Being able to clean and bandage the wound on a llama is the same principle as cleaning and bandaging a wound on a human. Similarly, grinding up Lilian root as part of a herbal remedy is the same process/principle as grinding up ginger as part of a gingerbread recipe.

As far as the difference between botany and herbalism, I'm less sure on that one... but I would guess that it's a difference between being able to recognise wild rosemary (herbalism) and knowing the specific science (botany) of where rosemary grows, why it likes that climate, etc.

[Orin Fenix]

I'm probably just wildly over thinking this, aren't I? Thanks for the response Zhol! If anyone else wants to chime in or just shoot me a PM about this that'd be great. But I think most of my confusion has been cleared up.