Edible Native Plants of the Rocky Mountains

I grew up in the midwest eating wild plants, often as walking munchies, occasionally as more serious food. I learned my plants well enough so that when I moved from the countryside into Chicago, I continued my munching and upped my edibles as a "starving" graduate student. After I moved to Colorado, I began learning the local plants and using them for food. During the wild growing season -- May - October at 8,000 feet on Pikes Peak -- I've gathered quite a bit near our cabin, mostly for little add-ons to breakfast or lunch. If you're only going to buy one book on Rocky Mountain edible plants, this wouldn't be my choice. That would be Linda Kershaw's Edible and Medicinal Plants of the Rockies (see my review). But Harrington's book would definitely be my second choice. It's based on considerable personal experiences and quite a bit of knowledge & research. Unlike Kershaw, Harrington gives good & detailed directions on different ways to prepare these plants and honest evaluations about taste results. Unlike some of the other reviews, I find that Harrington includes a fair number of native plants -- I suspect over a hundred. Admittedly, there are a LOT more edible plants out there. But how many people are going to learn to find, recognize & fix more than that? I strongly suspect Harrington includes the major edible plants. Certainly he include the ones I'm most likely to use. In spite of its name, the book also includes what I think of as eurasian plants, including the common dandelion, purslane, wild oats, etc. The biggest drawback, for me, are the black- & -white pictures. The drawings are good, but when I don't KNOW the plant, I prefer pictures or drawings in color. So I take along a guidebook, such as Guide to Colorado Wildflowers: Mountains (Guide to Colorado Wildflowers. Vol 2. Mountains) or Plants of the Rocky Mountains. But hey, if you're really interested in food plants, you need to be interested in plants. So get some local guidebooks. This book covers the whole state of Colorado, and spreads south a bit into New Mexico, north into Wyoming and maybe beyond, as well as into the western edge of Utah. Beyond that, I suspect many plants will still be found, but it probably won't be as comprehensive. The writing can get a bit dry, occasionally "scholarly", but it's definitely straightforward and not-at-all difficult to read. And the "scholarly" parts are easy to recognize & skip if you want. I find Harrington a quite useful addition to Kershaw. Anyone really interested in actually eating edible plants from the central Rockies will likely find the book quite valuable. I recommend it tastily.

This book only describes a small number of edible plants in the Rocky Mountains, but does so very thoroughly for each plant. It provides good guidelines for testing the edibility of plants and careful descriptions to make sure you get the right plant.Harrington is a great authority on Rocky Mountain flora.