James Alan Duke was born in Eastlake, Alabama on April 4, 1929. He learned to play the bass fiddle in high school and began performing with Homer Briarhopper and His Dixie Dudes. At the age of 16, Duke played on a record that the band cut in Nashville. He received bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in botany from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He did postdoctoral work as a professor at Washington University in St. Louis and curatorial work at the Missouri Botanical Gardens there. He worked for the Department of Agriculture eventually becoming the head of the Medicinal Plant Laboratory. He was a pioneer in ethnobotany and phytochemicals. He wrote numerous books including The Green Pharmacy: New Discoveries in Herbal Remedies for Common Diseases and Conditions from the World's Foremost Authority on Healing Herbs, Handbook of Medicinal Herbs, and The Peterson Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs of Eastern and Central North America written with Steven Foster. After retiring from the Agriculture Department, he occasionally conducted tours along the Amazon River and gave tours of his herb farm the Green Farmacy Garden. He died on December 10, 2017 at the age of 88.
