Abundantly Wild: Collecting and Cooking Wild Edibles in the Upper Midwest
/ March 04, 2010Teresa Marrone, 2004. Adventure Publications.
This book is done as a combination of field guide and cookbook. The information on use of the plants is thorough, accurate, and written by a person who has tried the things she writes about. Abundantly Wild is one of the most practical wild food books to use. The recipes are excellent and are the focus of the book (and from those that I’ve tried, appear to actually work, which is more than I can say for many cookbooks). It includes many plants that are given little attention in most of the wild food literature, and I always enjoy seeing such fresh information. The text is also original. For identification purposes, the photos are rather small, mediocre in quality, and do not show all of the parts necessary, but this is not the book’s strength or focus. Overall this is a superb book, and one which I highly recommend to any reader in the Midwest or Northeast.
Ancestral Plants: A Primitive Skills Guide to Important Edible, Medicinal, and Useful Plants of the Northeast, Vol 1
/ April 16, 2011Arthur Haines, 2010Anaskimin.
It was hard for me to decide where to put this book, for there is no other like it. While it does cover edible wild plants and their food uses, it also goes deeply into their utilitarian and medicinal properties. While none of this is covered in extreme detail, all of it is covered with care, precision, accuracy, and the insights brought about by Arthur's personal experiences and botanical background.
A serious wild food gatherer in the Northeastern US (that is, north of Kentucky and Missouri and east of the Great Plains) or adjacent Canada will definitely want this book in his or her collection. The coverage of food uses is good but not particularly extensive. However, more general primitive skills enthusiasts will find that this book is incredibly useful and totally unique. Having been involved in woodwork, primitive archery, cordage making, and similar skills for more than 20 years, I have been disappointed time and again by the lack of botanical knowledge that prevails in the primitive skills community--and more so, by the often hostile attitude taken toward those who care to learn about the plants they are using.
Edible Wild Plants of the Prairie
/ March 05, 2010Kelly Kindscher.
This is one of the best books written on edible wild plants. The author has researched the plants thoroughly, reporting on known ethnographic uses as well as his own experiences.
(It could have been included in the ethnobotany section, but I thought it fit better here.) The text is botanically accurate and pleasant to read. The line drawings are excellent, and while some would prefer photos, these are very good illustrations. This is one of the wild food books I refer to most often. One thing I really like about it is the way Kelly cites his sources so I can investigate further if I want. I also like that he includes a lot of plants like prairie turnip, ground plum, and bush morning glory, which are not widely discussed elsewhere in edible plant books.
If you live in the prairie region this should be your first edible wild plant book. If you live elsewhere it is still an awesome book to have.
Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods From Dirt to Plate
/ January 28, 2011John Kallas, 2010. Gibbs Smith.
I have been awaiting the release of this book for a few years now. John is one of the most knowledgeable foragers in North America, and he covers the topic with great thoroughness and strict attention to detail. This book is no different. One thing that totally blew me away about this book is the "Disclaimer-yeah right!" in the very beginning. Shockingly similar to my "Claimer" in Nature's Garden. John and I did not plan this, which is quite amazing considering that, to my knowledge, these are the only two books of any kind in existence that disclaim the disclaimer. It reveals that, in teaching about wild foods, we both encounter the same ridiculous attitudes again and again, and it gives us the same frustration. Bravo John!
The book begins with an introduction to foraging, basic concepts, safety, etc, and these are covered here better than just about any other book. The bulk of the book consists of the discussion of 15 common weedy greens, each one covered in great detail with multiple color photos showing several stages of growth and examples of the plant's variation, as well as photos demonstrating harvest and preparation techniques.
Guide des plantes sauvages comestibles et toxiques
/ March 05, 2010Francois Couplan, 1994. Delachaux et niestle.
I know, the book is in French. But if you can read French, this book is worth getting, even though only about half the plants are available to us foragers in North America. Francois Couplan really knows his stuff, through both experience and extensive academic research. This book is botanically accurate and packs a ton of useful information about harvest and preparation into its limited space. The descriptions are concise and accurate, while the drawings are good, but limited.
This book is everything that Peterson’s field guide should be but isn’t. Too bad there isn’t a similar book for our continent.
Guide to Wild Foods and Useful Plants
/ March 05, 2010Christopher Nyerges, 1999. Chicago Review Press.
Christopher Nyerges is a knowledgeable, long-time forager and his experience comes through in this book. I have owned it for a long time and refer to it often, and have come to appreciate the accuracy of the information. While I don’t pick it up and think, “Man, I LOVE this book,” I definitely keep picking it up. I guess that’s because it’s written in a very straightforward, no-frills manner (but not quite recipe grammar), so it’s not like you read it for sheer literary pleasure like Euell Gibbons. You read it for information. And I sigh with relief to read one entry after another and never have to exclaim, “Man, that’s BS!” He shares his own experiences as well as the results of careful book research, creating an excellent reference.
This book is geared toward plants found in Southern California, yet still, half the species are shared with my region. I’m sure that, in the Southwest, I’d be referring to it even more often.
Stalking the Wild Asparagus
/ March 04, 2010Euell Gibbons, McKay, 1962. (Currently Published by Alan Hood Co.).
I bought this book as a teenager and still sit down with my ragged copy several times a year, always amazed at the new nuances I learn from it. Euell Gibbons was truly a master at what he did. He wrote from vast personal experience, without pretense, in a friendly tone that makes his readers love him. He was so folksy you can almost forget how extensive was the knowledge that he shared. But the more I forage, the more I come back to this book and marvel at the treasured paragraphs within.
Euell didn't just share practical information about gathering plants and cooking them; he shared an infectious enthusiasm so powerful that it drew the half-interested into the fields and woods to try the things he praised. To anybody interested in edible wild plants, I recommend this book before all others. It only covers a rather small number of plants, but it is a good selection--and you can't cover them all in one book.
Edible and Medicinal Plants of the Rockies
/ March 05, 2010Linda Kershaw, 2000. Lone Pine.
This book is well put together and contains a limited but good selection of the edible wild plants of the Rocky Mountains. The photos are excellent, although there are often not enough to identify the plant, and the edible parts are frequently not depicted. Kershaw has compiled information from many literary sources here. She’s done a good job of that, although the sources are not cited and this method has significant limitations when not corroborated by personal experience—of which her text reveals almost none. Probably related to this, she lumps many groups of plants together for discussion when in fact their qualities differ substantially. This can be very frustrating and misleading.
This is a good book to get you started, and highly recommended to anyone in the region covered, but other sources should be sought to reveal more details about how the plants are actually used.
Edible Wild Plants
/ March 05, 2010Oliver Perry Medsger, 1939. Collier.
This black and white classic, with few pictures except a small section of plates in the center and scattered line drawings, is a good and often-overlooked source of information. Medsger has compiled information from many of the original ethnobotanical works—although he does not cite them. He also seems to have a fair amount of his own experiential knowledge to contribute to his writing. The accounts of each plant are not extensive, but they are to-the-point and rather accurate.
Again, plants from the western states appear to be slightly underrepresented here, but that may be due to the geographically limited ranges of many western edibles, compared to the East where the habitats are more homogenous and plant ranges tend to be larger. The book is surprisingly inclusive, covering many good edibles that are routinely ignored in wild food books.
This is one of the original sources that many later books have drawn their information from, and the influence isn’t hard to see.
Field Guide to North American Edible Wild Plants
/ March 05, 2010Thomas Elias and Peter Dykeman, 1982. Outdoor Life Books.
This book is a classic that I am conflicted about. It is very useful, and as a teenager it was among my most prized possessions. It helped me experience many wonderful adventures and taught me many plants. But as I’ve become more knowledgeable, I like it less and less. I think this conflict occurs because it fills a big void that really needed to be filled—but it doesn’t fill it very well. It covers edible plants from all of North America, which means it leaves out about 70% of the good edibles and tries to cover the best 30%. It does an OK job for the East, but Western plants are underrepresented (no mariposa lily?).
The selection of plants and what is said about them is almost completely limited to what is listed in a small number of well-known wild food books published before it. That brings me to my biggest complaint about this title: its utter unoriginality. In places, it seems to border on plagiarism, or at least copycat laziness.
A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants of Eastern and Central North America
/ March 05, 2010Lee Peterson, 1978. Houghton Mifflin.
A convenient book that many, many foragers have. It lists many of the best wild edibles of the region it claims to cover, and discusses them with very terse, economical entries. There are mediocre to good line drawings for most of the plants, and color plates for a few of them. As should surprise no one, the Peterson series put together a useful and well-designed little book. It is one of the only “field guides” to wild edibles that is actually practical to carry along in a coat pocket or small sack. I have long used it as a “list,” which I glance at when I travel to remind me of edibles to keep my eye out for.
Where the publisher went wrong, however, is on content. As I read this book, I really get the feeling that the author knew very little about the subject matter, at least compared to other wild food authors. (Unfortunately, this could be said of many if not most of the wild food books published from 1970-1990).
Edible and Useful Plants of California
/ March 05, 2010Charlotte Bringle Clark, 1977. University of California Press.
This book is a long list of edible wild plants that includes so many it doesn’t have much space to go into any detail about them. There is nothing exceptionally good or bad about the book, I just don’t find it particularly useful. The information is essentially accurate, but just too scanty for my taste. I want more than a few sentences per plant.
If you live in California or the western US, it’s a decent book to get. There are some good recipes.
The Neighborhood Forager
/ March 05, 2010Robert Henderson.
I have owned this book for several years and read it cover to cover, most parts more than once. It is a good read and I like the way it is set up, and the author's enthusiasm is appreciated. There is much good information inside, but unfortunately, there is misinformation to a degree that I think is inexcusable, and there are a lot of places in here where I feel like the author is writing beyond his knowledge.
For example, the drawings of "evening primrose" actually show primrose, which is a totally different plant in an entirely different family. But the text clearly describes eating the root of evening primrose. So it seems like he didn't even know what evening primrose was, had never tried it, but copied his information on how to use it, even the description of its flavor, from another book. The text sure makes it sound like he's had experience with the plant. I think it is disingenuous and a disservice to the reader.
The Wild Food Trailguide
/ March 05, 2010Alan Hall, 1973. Holt.
The Wild Food Trailguide is one of the earlier wild food books that capitalized on the popularity of foraging in the Euell Gibbons and back-to-the-land era. It is a small guide that uses space economically, covering a moderate number of mostly eastern wild edibles in fairly good detail. Well, there is enough detail, but only if the detail is accurate—but that is not always the case. There are a number of plant accounts that are very misleading and unhelpful to the forager. This book, like many from the era, seems to be derived largely from a small number of earlier literary sources, rather than primarily from the author’s personal experience. There is virtually nothing innovative in terms of the selection of plants covered, or what is said about them.
It is organized and useful, but one among many mediocre wild food guides.
Using Wayside Plants
/ March 05, 2010Nelson Coon, 1957. Hearthside.
This is one of those old classics, black and white, from the days when people read plant books for their words and not their pictures. It is fairly accurate and covers quite a few wild edibles of eastern North America, although it goes into little detail about them. This is not a great source of information for the forager, but as your library expands you’ll probably want to get this one for reference.
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