Good morning Meena,

I greatly enjoyed your book as a gift given to me by Sebastian. I have been teaching “Plants and Human Health” and “Practical Botany” since 2010. I myself grew up in a family with deep roots in plant-related professions. My paternal side was a nursery-owner and my maternal side was a land-owner before the Communist Revolution in China. When I grew up, I was always in an environment filled with plants, especially in a nursery where my grand-parents used to own and later worked. I studied horticulture and my wife studied botany in college, and later in grad school we both studied botany and my wife specialized in medicinal plant taxonomy and identification. She even tried to start a herb company in Ann Arbor about ten years ago, but it did not work out. My research is in plant phylogenetics and evolution. When student enrollment in my plant evolution class dropped to a point that the course git cancelled, as a part of the trend of lack of interest by students in pure science related courses (out of job and career trend shift in this country), I thought hard on what to teach to continue my pursuit of botany teaching interest. Plants for human health and happiness was the topic that I thought students would always be interested. I have been proven correct since both courses now are in full capacity and I even need to increase the upper limit for Practical Botany, a non-major course. In any case, when there is a chance, I would like to meet you, since Ayurveda is something I have only been exposed to very recently and it seems that it will have a great appeal to our society, and I would like to learn more about it. I may recommend your book as one of the books to my students, since they often ask me what to read.

I wish you great luck in your continued pursuit to popularize this great art of living!