The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants
The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants A practical guide to all aspects of edible wild plants: finding and identifying them, their seasons of harvest, and their methods of collection and preparation. Each plant is discussed in great detail and accompanied by excellent color photographs. Includes an index, illustrated glossary, bibliography, and harvest calendar. The perfect guide for all experience levels.
Customer Review: Wishing for More
The Forager's Harvest is a beautiful book that delivers on the whole. While I would love to see a series of photos that illustrate the plant from sprout through death, that would be asking a lot, and I could not hope for anyone to provide that. As it is, compared to many such books which feature only line drawings and confusing photos, this is a very good book. He does not try to blow air up anyone's skirt, telling us that this or that plant will save the world, or even provide the perfect entree. It does, instead, try to provide a balanced clear-eyed portrait of the edible plants the author is familiar with and makes no bones about his own peccadilloes.
For those of us who would like to see more localized guides which deal with specific biomes, those books will have to wait. In the on-coming post-oil world, these identification skills will separate the living from the dead. I continue to search for the most biome specific books hoping that someone with this knowledge will share it. Perhaps they realize that the last thing the wild needs is any more foragers to strip the ground clean.
For the photos alone, I would recommend this. If you are expecting the super-detailed information needed to be expert, this book cannot be it. No book could be. The indigenous populations, who knew this information, we killed off either literally or culturally, and that info is likely not coming back except through trial and error much as it accumulated pre-agriculture.
So, ultimately, buy it. Just don't expect too much, and you will not be disappointed.
Customer Review: Limited but in depth on what it covers
This book inspired me to try eating the milkweed that is growing all over my back yard. Following the sniff-touch to tongue - taste - chew - swallow - wait 5 hrs sequence, we determined ours was edible. We have so far cooked up several plates of milkweed stems. They taste like asparagus but milder.
The book goes into some level of depth with the plants it covers, enough to give you some level of confidence. For a more comprehensive book, see the Peterson Guide.