The Complete Guide to Edible Wild Plants

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Jared: Look where that got us. Yeah. So one of the things that reaches out to me and is so fascinating and fun and also a deep connection is using these plants for food again. These are amazing, delicious, highly nutritive foods that people relied on for thousands of years on this continent. And we can link ourselves in this deep emotional way of reliance on our native plant species if they can become our sustenance again. Even after you’ve taken classes, you’ll want some good books on foraging to consult from time to time, either to remind yourself of a plant you haven’t seen in awhile, or to help you explore new plants or identify those you don’t already know. I love flipping through the larger books to learn about plants I don’t yet have in my foraging repertoire.

Arora has a more compact foraging guide to a smaller number of mushroom species called All That the Rain Promises and More for taking along on foraging expeditions. COOKBOOKS FOCUSING ON FORAGED FOODS But what I keep coming around to when I’m doing field work is that one of the most important missing elements of these plant communities is actually us, people. And so when I wrote the book, my idea was, “How do we reintegrate ourselves into communities?” And communities mean a bunch of different things. We’re always thinking about creating community. It sounds really good, but there’s a lot of interdependency in communities. There’s a lot of, “I need you and you need me,” and it’s sort of inextricable in some ways. Common in grass and roadside verges. Bright blue flower with a white eye on a sprawling stem. Leaves oval and toothed.

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Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and Not So Wild) Places by Steve Brill and Evelyn Dean Jared: I work as a field botanist in addition to collecting seed and propagating plants here at Wild Ridge. And the short version of my job is to go out and make lists of plants that I see. So I’m often working in county parks, nature preserves, and I don’t think that’s really my job. I’m far from alone in singling out Samuel Thayer’s books as some of the most helpful foraging books out there. He’s got three books on foraging so far: Foragers Harvest, Nature’s Garden, and Incredible Wild Edibles, each covering 30-40 different plants. When you’ve got all three, you’ve got a reference library to over a hundred wild edibles. The Ecological Flora of the British Isles has excellent photos - search by species here - along with ecological characteristics, a database of associated insects and a helpful glossary: So tell us the short version of what ecological restoration is, because that might sound different to gardeners listening.

Loads of plants we can forage have useful medicinal properties. A few of my favorite books on foraging medicinal wild plants are below, and you can find my other top recommendations for herbal medicine books in a separate post. Wild Remedies by Rosalee de la Forêt and Emily Han For images of, and information on, 800+ Irish wildflowers (flowering times, ID tips and distribution in Ireland), try Irish Wildflowers. Toward the bottom of this post you’ll find recommendations for excellent books on foraging that can teach you how to find and use the medicinal plants growing all around us.

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There are so many more possibilities awaiting the forager searching for their next wildly delicious meal. These foraging books will open your eyes to a world of plants that will add interest and nutrition to your table. And with more of us seeking self-reliance, knowing how to safely find nutritious food in the wild is a skill worth pursuing and teaching to your kids. An expert forager, Thayer gives extensive (and often very entertaining) descriptions of some of the most common wild foods you can find in North America, including milkweed, cattails, knotweed, and violets. In addition to identification, he covers how and when to harvest and how best to use them. Color photos help guide foragers through key identifying features and how to differentiate plants from potentially poisonous look-alikes. When I think about plant communities on this continent, and I think about their story, I also think of a deeper story, which is the relationship for thousands of years that indigenous people had with these plant communities. And these were relationships that involved harvest, and they involved tending also. And I think we have a much different idea now of the kind of ecological relationship that indigenous people had with wild plant communities throughout the Americas.

Jared:… a raw potato is not French fries, but we know how to make French fries and they’re so good. And that’s so often the case with these wild edibles too, is that they have a cultural tradition of preparation around them that makes them not only safe to eat, but also delicious. And we have to, in some cases, innovate or relearn those things about all these species. And that’s also part of the excitement. THE LECTURE that he’s been giving for a number of years is not-so-subtly called “Kill Your Lawn.” Ecological horticulturist Dan Jaffe Wilder knows that starting over and creating an entire native habitat instead of a lawn isn’t for everyone. But Dan just wants to grab our attention and get us to start to make some changes at least in the way we care for the turfgrass we do want in our landscapes. And maybe give up a little square footage of it to some other kind of more diverse planting, too, like the wild strawberries ( Fragaria virginiana, inset). Alternative, more eco-focused styles of lawn care, along with some lawn alternatives is what he and I talked about on the podcast. Dan is Director of Applied Ecology at Norcross Wildlife Foundation in Wales, Massachusetts, and its 8,000-acre sanctuary. He’s also co-author with Mark Richardson of the book “Native Plants for New England Gardens.” So if there’s plants missing from that community, what are the missing elements here? And sometimes they’re disturbances like wildfire. And sometimes they’re missing animal species, like large carnivores. Likes dry, disturbed places such as waste ground, railways, walls and roofs. Long sprays of purple, white or lilac flowers; a favourite of butterflies.Below are the best foraging books I’ve found among the dozens I’ve consulted over the years. Note that they focus on edible and medicinal plants of North America, but you can also find some books on foraging specific to your region or other parts of the world. Many plants described in foraging books grow on several continents. But like goldenseal, for instance, one of my favorite woodland plants in the garden for a million years here that I have been growing, Hydrastis canadensis [above, at Margaret’s]. So, that’s one, for instance. And I used to grow Jerusalem artichoke, and I have a lot of Aralia racemosa, the spikenard, the native spikenard, and on and on and on. So I thought maybe we could talk about some of the plants that maybe surprisingly to people—aronias, elderberries, blueberries. Yeah. Jared: Every year I’m tasting the chokeberries. I’m like, “Are you ready yet? Are you ready at all?” [Laughter.] It’s like, no, no. Because it has that astringency. The solution: Get a big foraging guide and at least one of the more detailed guides. If I were just starting a foraging book collection, I’d begin with Steve Brill’s Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants and one of Thayer’s foraging guides, or perhaps Wild Remedies by herbalists Rosalee de la Forêt and Emily Han. Flipping through Brill’s guide will boggle the new forager’s mind with hundreds of wild plants most of us don’t realize are edible. IN HIS NEW BOOK, “Wild Plant Culture,” restoration ecologist Jared Rosenbaum says something provocative about gardening with native plants.

The Field Studies Council have some really useful and inexpensive fold-out sheets - there's one describing the various parts of a flower, one of common ferns, others on the plants found in a particular habitat, eg moorlands. Access them here.Try the 'Wildflower of the Month' series on the BSBI News & Views blog: ID tips, fascinating facts and info for snake's-head fritillary, purple saxifrage, sweet violets, bluebells, buttercups, and bird's-foot trefoil. It’s time to expand our vision past supporting birds, butterflies, and bees, and fully integrate the most challenging animal of all, the human being, into our native plant gardens,” he writes. Margaret Roach: Before we begin talking about the book, I wanted to just hear a little bit about Wild Ridge Plants, and what else you’re up to when you’re not writing books [laughter]. Native Flower features plants found growing without cultivation, in natural and urban environments in the UK. This includes both 'native' indigenous plants and 'non-native' species introduced to the UK - in many cases garden 'escapes' that have naturalised. In some cases, 'non-native' plants may also be classed 'invasive', where there is evidence of harm to the environment or plants are difficult to keep under control*. These species may be listed and regulated by law, to limit environmental damage. Originally compiled by Chris Philip and his partner Denys Gueroult, who were looking for interesting plants to grow in their garden and recording what nursery was selling what selection, the original Plant Finder listed 22,000 plants. Since then, the book has grown in terms of the plant groups it covers, its comprehensiveness and the number of genera, species and cultivars that are included.