Guide to Wild Foods and Useful Plants

This is a great wild plant guide for use in Boy Scout outings! All of the major species are covered as well as other more common edible and poisonous plants. I highly reccomend this book as well as other Christopher Nyerges books for Boy Scouts and Boy Scout Leaders

This book has a comprehensive description of many plants as well as many black and white pictures. I'm sure it would satisfy the most curious researcher.

I concur with the review of Hawkeye. I will add that the book has a glossary which can be helpful at times, especially for the beginner. It also has an appendix of "Safe Families" which is unique and gives one a good place to focus your research if you are concerned about misidentification. Book is full of useful tidbits most of which are included in the "edible properties", "medicinal uses" and "other uses" category. The pictures and the plant descriptions are lacking. Apparently no one reviewed the book carefully because the author states in the introduction while speaking of being a responsible forager "We may put tobacco or mulch under the plant, or we may just breathe on it so that it can inhale our carbon monoxide." Carbon monoxide is what comes from car exhaust and carbon dioxide is what we exhale that plants use to make sugars...their food! Maybe an honest mistake but a disappointing statement when you would expect the author to have a good understanding of the inner workings of plants. I am not trying to bash the book or the author, one should look past this and I still feel that the book is useful for what it is and there are things to be learned with the information it contains.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Nyerges's book is weak on its photos and plant identification but is excellent as a companion book to all those boring plant ID texts. His book provides excellent background and practical information from someone who has actually used these plants. While geared for California, many of the plants are found across the U.S. especially in the West.