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Photo by Holly A. Heyser
As my book manuscript comes into shape — almost done! — I find myself referencing a stack of foraging books several feet high. Ands it happens I often get asked about my go-to foraging books. So here are a few of my favorites.
The first, best and most compelling foraging book for me must be Euell Gibbons’ Stalking The Wild Asparagus, the book that got me foraging for things beyond what my family knew about.
Gibbons has been an inspiration for me forever, and I’ve returned to his books over and over. He is knowledgeable, has obviously eaten everything he writes about, and most importantly, he’s traveled.
This is key: The vast majority of foraging books are regional in scope, and this is not necessarily bad — in fact I have several regional guides in this post. But Gibbons’ wanderings gave him unusual authority to write from a national perspective.
He did this in several other useful books, notably his Stalking The Blue-Eyed Scallop, which covers the seaside environment, as well as self-explanatory Stalking The Healthful Herbs. If you live or vacation near a seashore, you pretty much need to own Gibbons’ “Scallop,” and if you are at all interested in wild herbs as medicine or just as a nice accompaniment to your food, then the “Herbs” book is for you.
The one drawback of Gibbons’ books are the images, which are nice line drawings, but are not overly helpful for the beginner. A modern forager, Samuel Thayer, has done an excellent job with the images in his self-published Nature’s Garden.
This is Thayer’s second self-published book, and is the better of the two in my view. His first has a tone to it that put me off: He correctly points out that many foraging books perpetuate myths about plants because the authors have not actually seen or eaten some of the plants, but he cops a “they’re all idiots” attitude in his first book I found off-putting. Thankfully, that ‘tude is largely absent from his second book.
Nature’s Garden is an excellent book if you live east of the Great Plains. While there are a number of plants he discusses that are live in the West, more than half either do not or are so rare as to be pretty much unforagable. Still, for those plants Thayer writes about that do live in abundance here in California, I find his entries very thorough.
For those who live West of the Great Plains, there are three books I find invaluable. First and foremost is Charlotte Bringle Clarke’s Edible and Useful Plants of California. Her book covers a lot of ground and is not as thorough as Gibbons or Thayer, but she deals with pretty much everything I see around me in California — and that comprehensiveness is valuable. I use this book, which has good pictures, as a stepping stone for further research into a plant.
California, however, is an odd place (in more ways than one), and its flora is often pretty unique. But head east into the Rocky Mountains, and there is an excellent guide, Edible Native Plants of the Rocky Mountains, which has some of the best botanical illustrations I’ve ever seen in an edible plant book. Many of the plants described also live in California, and each account is far more thorough than Clarke’s book. What’s more, the Rocky Mountain book is written by scientists who ate everything they write about and did experiments on the edibility in various preparations. If you live between Colorado and the Pacific, you should get this book.
If you live further south, however, in the desert regions of California, Arizona, New Mexico or Texas, you will love Gary Paul Nabhan’s Gathering the Desert, which is a little woo-woo-juju concerning the Indians who developed all the uses for these desert plants, but which contains all sorts of useful information. Its drawback? It deals only with a few edible plants. It’s success? It deals with those plants comprehensively.
I am heading to Massachusetts soon to see my mother and sister — and to go on one last foraging trip before my book is due in August. I know a lot of those plants by heart, but I have not lived in the East since 2001, so I looked for a New England-specific plant guide, and I found one in Russ Cohen’s Wild Plants I Have Known…and Eaten. Again, Cohen has what I view as a the magic ingredient for a successful foraging book — he has actually eaten everything he writes about.
His book is specifically about Essex County, Massachusetts, but the plants he describes live pretty much everywhere from Maryland to Maine and west to the Ohio Valley. There are not too many isolated edible plants in the East, I’ve found.
I can’t finish without a word on mushrooms. Mushroom hunting is different from other foraging in that there is more risk at work; you need to know what the hell you are doing. My guide to that — and ask any mycophile and she will agree — is the incomparable Mushrooms Demystified by David Arora. It is quite simply the best mushroom identification book ever written.
So these are my top go-to foraging books, but I also keep around several older books for reference, such as the exhaustive Sturtevant’s Edible Plants of the World, and the extremely useful Edible Wild Plants by Oliver Perry Medsger. Both books are long out of print, and the links are to Amazon.com’s used book section. But if you look you can find them. Both are worth owning if you are a serious forager.
While these are my favorites, I know there are tons of other wild edible plant books out there that are equally useful — and I’ve never met one that did not have at least a little value. What am I missing? Which books are your guides?
Thanks for the guide to the guides! I can’t help but second the motion on Euell “Try Anything” Gibbons. To your list of his virtues — he knows stuff, he’s been places, he eats everything — I’d add his infectious enthusiasm. His idea that the great outdoors, far from being threatening or hostile, is this great smorgasbord of edible vegetation, is compelling enough to make anyone look differently at the plants around him.
If your Massachusetts trips ever bring you to the Cape, I’ve got a few good mushroom spots. I might even tell you where my super-secret hen-of-the-wood tree is, if you’d consider a trade for, say, some wild duck terrine …
To leverage off Mushroom Demystified, David’s book “All That the Rain Promises and More: A Hip Pocket Guide to Western Mushrooms” is a great field guide to take with you that is much easier to lug around when out in the woods.
http://www.amazon.com/All-That-Rain-Promises-More/dp/0898153883/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277226046&sr=8-1
You’ve written about Northern Minnesota in the past. Any suggestions for the great plains and/or northern woodlands? I assume that many of the text in this post are pan-regional so I’ll start there!
LOVE your work. Can’t wait to hear more about your book.
I don’t have a book you are missing, but thank you for showing me the second book by Thayer. I have the “Forager’s Harvest”, which I really like, except for the parts where his nose seems to be in the air a bit.
So I’ll be looking for it and the mushroom guide. And congrats on the upcoming book.
Tamar: I’ll be on Cape Ann this weekend…
JR: Good point. Forgot about Arora’s field guide.
Nathan: Sam Thayer’s books are excellent for Minnesota.
If you’re in the PNW I recommend ‘Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest’ by Trudell and Ammirati. Loads of full color photos and a focus on species from Northern Cali to B.C., and reasonably small enough to carry around. But in general, Arora’s short, adorable, freaky-hippie-guide ‘All That The Rain Promises And More’ is a good entry to your basic edibles.
Great list! I love Ms. Bringle Clark’s book. I’m also impressed with the desert book you mention – and it’s important to note that few plants are covered because of the environs, and folks out there had to really make-do with what they had.
As for California’s unique plant life, may I immodestly point you to a recent California resolution working its way through the legislature – ACR 173, designating a California Native Plant Week – authored by Assemblywoman Evans, and written by someone you may know…
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/09-10/bill/asm/ab_0151-0200/acr_173_bill_20100622_amended_asm_v98.html
Among the facts in the resolution: California has more native plant taxa than all other states combined.
1) I jut got that Audubon guide to CA that you are peeking at in your photo. As a non-lifestyle-forager-but-interested-in-what’s-out-there kinda person, I think this will be a nice start. Thanks.
2) Woo-woo juju? Love that.
Hope your East Coast visit is grand.
I always go to what we call “Pojar’s” for plant I.D. in the Pacific N.W. (hope this link works) Plants Of The Pacific Northwest Coast: Washington, Oregon, British Columbia & Alaska
I carry that, along with my “Edible” plant books, especially the ones with the line drawings like Gibbons’ books. That way I get a good guide with typing and whatnot built into it. It’s worth the extra effort, especially in the case of Gibbons books, because his info is great it’s just the illustrations and typing that are a bit lacking.
Bp
John Kallas just came out with his new book Edible Wild Plants: http://www.wildfoodadventures.com/ediblewildplantsdirtplate.html
I have some of the books mentioned here, and I will find some of the others suggested.
However, I am looking forward to *your* book because I have a feeling (and hope I’m not wrong) that you will talk more about using these ingredients and about why finding them (and harvesting them in sustainable ways) is important for health and taste reasons.
Stalking the Wild Asparagus is also one of my go-to guides. My parents used to make fun of Euell Gibbons when I was a kid (was there some SNL or SCTV skit that did it?). “Ever eat a wood fence? Taste just like wild hickory nuts!”
Josh: I know! It’s not just California’s people who are a little freaky. This place is like the Australia of the US with all its unique species…
bPaul: POJARS. Love it. I actually need that one, because it focuses on all plants, not just edible ones. I often find myself walking along, thinking, “that one’s edible, so is that one, and that one. But what the hell is THAT thing?”
Stu: I have Kallas’ book. I did not include it because it is SO specific about SO few plants that it feels like the first chapters of a proper foraging book. Kallas is planning on follow-up books, and if they are as in-depth as his first, his will become the go-to collection for foragers…
Cathy: Thanks! I will not be devling too deeply into the health aspects of wild food in my book – it is not my area of expertise. But suffice to say eating wild is better for you than eating Walmart.
Heather: I was thinking about that exact skit when I was pulling sassafras seedlings on Sunday…
Hi, Hank–
It’s been years since I purchased an edible plant book, as I’m still relying on the books I got 15-20 years ago! So I’ll definitely check out your recommendations, and avidly await your book. I’ve gotten a lot of use out of “A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants, Eastern and Central North America” by Lee Allen Peterson (first published in 1977 but has been reprinted–I bought mine in 1994), which has nicely detailed line drawings and a section of photographs, though not all plants are depicted in the photos; and “Edible Wild Plants: A North American Field Guide” by Thomas S. Elias and Peter A. Dykeman (1990), with nice color photos of every plant. Both books give lots of information on uses, habitat, notes about look-alikes and other caveats/warnings. “Wildman” Steve Brill’s 1994 book “Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants” is a fun read for the anecdotes he shares and is very informative, but I use it for supplemental information after I’ve already identified the plant, as I don’t find his line drawings that helpful for ID purposes. And I still have, I’m embarrassed to say, a book published in 1972 that I borrowed from a science teacher in junior high school and never remembered to return–”Early Uses of California Plants” by Edward K. Balls (sorry about that, Mr. Falb!!)….I remember that for a time in 1970s, the Sunday comics section of the paper (I think it was the LA Times, but could’ve been the Herald Examiner) ran a series of panels illustrating a different wild edible plant each week, how to ID it and use it. As a kid, I found it very exciting and compelling. Does anyone else remember this?
I inherited my first foraging book from my grandpa. The book is titled “The Edible Wild” and it was written by Berndt Berglund and Clare E. Bolsby, published in 1971. Great book!
[...] Had a Berry Good Week Posted on July 4, 2010 by Justin Early last week I read this post by Hank Shaw at Hunter Angler Gardner Cook (a blog I should add to my links page come to think of [...]
I was hoping you would have a post on foraging books so I was really happy to find this. Do you have any idea how useful these books would be for foraging in Scandinavia? I checked at the library the other day and there doesn’t seem to be any regionally specific foraging guide here (Sweden that is). Obviously we have some things that are special for this area like lingonberries and cloudberries but as a novice forager I’m fairly in the dark beyond the obvious berries and chanterelles.
Hello, I am looking for a book to get my partner as he is very much into survival situations. I would like a book that tells you the name of a plant or tree, description, obvious signs and whether its useful or edible. We live in the UK but we also travel to Europ alot. any tips? thanks.