Essential Foraging Tools and Supplies

 Uncategorized
Mar 082019
 

By Juliet Blankespoor and Meghan Gemma
Photography by Juliet Blankespoor

All crafters have a cache of special tools—and foragers are no exception. I’ve been gathering food and medicine from wild places for nearly three decades and these are my tried-and-true tools of choice. As a bonus, every single one pulls double duty in the garden and around the yard.

In addition to the tools on this list, some of your best foraging allies will be those that allow you to forage safely and ethically. This means having a stack of reliable field guides as well as a firm grasp on sustainable gathering practices. Please see these articles for references and tips:

From left to right- a pruning saw, a sharp compact knife, and a pair of garden scissors

Please note that we are not affiliated with any of these businesses: we aren’t receiving any compensation for these recommendations. We’re simply sharing what has worked for us over the years. If you have any recommendations for products or businesses you like, please share in the comments below. We love learning about new products and forward-thinking businesses!

Now, without further ado, THE TOOLS…

Felco pruners

Pruners are the tool I use most often when gathering and processing foraged herbs. They snip right through herbaceous stems, twigs, small branches, and roots. I reach for them so often that I keep them in a leather holster on a belt at my hip. If you can only purchase one tool to get started, pruners are the way to go!

I recommend Felco brand pruners, as they are very high quality and may be sharpened. Blade and spring replacements are also available. I have used my pair of Felcos extensively over the past 25 years and they are still in good working order! The blade and the spring have both been replaced multiple times and I sharpen the blade several times a year. Dull pruners are a party pooper.

Felco pruners come in a wide variety of models. Look for a pair that will reduce hand fatigue and strain. The pruner handles, when fully opened, should not exceed the width of your extended grasp. Felcos are sold at some garden centers and online. Here are other recommendations for pruners from Gardening Products Review, Empress of Dirt, and Wirecutter.

Hori hori weeding knife

This tool looks like it sounds. Heavy duty and compact, it’s a sturdy wildcrafting tool and excellent weeding implement. I use my hori-hori to break up soils and dig small- to medium-sized roots from the earth. These garden “knives” cut through most clay soils and can even pry rocks out of the ground. You can also use it for transplanting and dividing roots.

Mine has seen its share of soils across the land and is still as strong as ever after 25 years. Again, a holster is quite handy and will protect your pack as well as your person. The wooden-handled varieties are purported to be stronger than the plastic. However, if you’re prone to losing objects, consider buying one with an orange plastic handle to lessen the chances of misplacing it.

Whenever I garden or forage, my pruners and hori-hori accompany me as my most trusted companions.

Hori-horis are available through seed catalogs and landscaping outfitters as well as some specialty garden centers. Look for models that have a “lip” at the base of the blade to protect your hand if the knife slips. See this article for hori-hori reviews: 5 Best Hori-Hori Knife Reviews.

Digging fork

This is the tool of choice for digging most roots. The tines of the fork effectively loosen soils and lift branching roots free from the earth. Digging forks are much less likely to damage roots than a shovel or spade. I also use my digging fork in the garden to weed, loosen soil, and harvest medicinal roots.

Note that digging forks have square and sturdy tines, unlike manure or hay forks, which have flat, bendable tines. You can find affordable options at garden supply centers or big box hardware stores, but remember that you get what you pay for, so I wouldn’t go with the cheapest option out there. Here are some recommendations.

4. Shovel

You likely already have this tool hanging out in your garage or garden shed. Having a couple of different types is useful. Make sure you have at least one long-handled shovel with a pointed blade (as opposed to flat).

I use shovels primarily to help begin the excavation process of large, tap-rooted plants like burdock (Arctium lappa, A. minus), or when I’m digging in heavily compacted soils.

5. Kitchen scissors

A sharp pair of kitchen scissors is my go-to tool for gathering tender-stemmed greens like chickweed (Stellaria media), violet (Viola spp.), and cleavers (Galium aparine). Pruners can make a muck of this job as they’re meant for tougher stems and the reach of their blades is limited.

Kitchen scissors are handy for harvesting young greens

A foldable pruning saw is handy for cutting small- to medium-sized tree limbs and branches. I use mine most often in the spring when I’m gathering medicinal tree barks like wild cherry (Prunus serotina) and black birch (Betula lenta).

Pruning saw

7. Sharp Compact Knife

Sharp compact knife for peeling the bark of medicinal trees

8. Assorted Baskets

Baskets will reward you in more ways than one. They’re handy for gathering and drying herbs, and they are beautiful to behold. It’s helpful to have an assortment of baskets on hand. You can typically find used baskets in thrift stores. Look for a few that have an open weave and are broad and flattish (helpful for increasing ventilation when drying loose herbs).

I have a small collection of buckets in my storeroom, and they get used more frequently than you might think. I pull them out for large-scale harvests like elderberry (Sambucus nigra var. canadensis) and wild blueberry (Vaccinium spp.), as well as for muddy root harvests. A little water in the bottom will also help to keep the stems and leaves of herbs fresh on a long car ride home.

These can be repurposed food-grade buckets; I like both the 3- and 5-gallon sizes. Try asking for empty buckets at the bakery counter or food prep section of your local grocery store. You can also purchase 5-gallon buckets at home improvement and hardware stores. Tubtrugs—pliable buckets with handles—are an alternative that can be quite useful for harvesting. They can be expensive but last a long time.

10. Gloves

Foraging can be hard on the hands, and your fingertips will thank you for stashing a pair of gloves in your pack for prickly situations (think: picking stinging nettles or wading through a berry bramble). I actually keep two pairs of gloves on hand—a thin, supple pair for delicate tasks and a thicker leather and/or canvas pair for moments when I need more protection.  

11. Heavy-Duty Chopping Knife

You will want to have a Japanese butchers knife or a heavy-duty kitchen knife for chopping tough roots.

A sturdy bristled brush is extremely helpful for scrubbing the soil from the cracks and crevices of your root harvests.

I highly recommend purchasing a hand lens, also called a jeweler’s loupe—preferably 10x to 20x (10 to 20 times magnification). These nifty little tools allow you to gaze at wee botanical parts (helpful for plant ID) and have a much higher magnification ability than plain magnifying lenses (the kind used for enlarging print). Many have an LED attached, which is ideal because the increased lighting makes it much easier to spy on flowers. Available at university bookstores or naturalist stores.

Hand lens

Meet Our Contributors:

JULIET BLANKESPOOR founded the Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine in 2007 and serves as the school’s primary instructor and Creative Director. She's been a professional plant-human matchmaker for close to three decades. Juliet caught the plant bug when she was nineteen and went on to earn a degree in Botany. She's owned just about every type of herbal business you can imagine: an herbal nursery, a medicinal products business, a clinical practice, and now, an herbal school.

These days, she channels her botanical obsession with writing and photography in her online programs and here on her personal blog, Castanea. She's writing her first book: Cultivating Medicinal Herbs: Grow, Harvest, and Prepare Handcrafted Remedies from Your Home Garden. Juliet and her houseplants share a home with her family and herb books in Asheville, North Carolina.

MEGHAN GEMMA is one of the Chestnut School’s primary instructors through her written lessons, and is the principal pollinator of the school’s social media community—sharing herbal and wild foods wisdom from the flowery heart of the school to an ever-wider field of herbalists, gardeners, healers, and plant lovers.

She has been in a steady relationship with the Chestnut School since 2010—as an intern and manager at the Chestnut Herb Nursery; as a plant-smitten student “back in the day” when the school’s programs were taught in the field; and later as a part the school’s woman-powered professional team. Meghan lives in the Ivy Creek watershed, just north of Asheville, North Carolina.

COCO VILLA designed, sewed, and botanically-dyed her green tunic worn in the photos above. Coco creates one of a kind conceptual pieces for seasonal collections and private clients. Creations are wildly crafted in small batches and naturally dyed by hand with locally foraged plant matter. All goods are stitched together from natural fibers, folk fabric, hand printed textiles, or salvaged materials. Coco's website: www.somosbycoconuco.com.

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Are you intrigued with the idea
of foraging but intimidated by where to start?

The course begins with the basic ground rules of foraging safety and ethics, and then moves on to botany and plant identification. Before you know it, you’ll have the skills and confidence to safely identify and harvest wild plants.

You’ll befriend THE most common edible and medicinal wayside plants, including dandelion, stinging nettles, violet, yarrow, burdock, rose, goldenrod, and many others. The printable manual is hundreds of pages long and filled with close-up photos for identification, medicinal uses, and loads of easy-to-follow recipes. In fact, most of our plant profiles contain more detail than you’ll find in any book on wild foods and herbs.

Registration for the Foraging Course is closed until 2020.

Sign up for free tutorials (videos + articles) on Foraging and herbal medicine, and to be notified about new course offerings.

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The Best Regional Books for Plant Identification and Foraging Wild Foods and Herbs

 General
Nov 222017
 

The Best Regional Books for Plant Identification and Foraging Wild Foods and Herbs

By Meghan Gemma with Juliet Blankespoor

The following article is a sneak peek into our 375-hour Online Foraging Course: Edible and Medicinal Wild Herbs, which begins in early 2018! The course begins with the basic ground rules of foraging safety and ethics, and then moves on to botany and plant identification. Before you know it, you’ll have the skills and confidence to safely identify and harvest wild plants.
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You’ll befriend THE most common edible and medicinal wayside plants, including dandelion, stinging nettles, violet, yarrow, burdock, rose, goldenrod, and many others. The printable manual is hundreds of pages long and filled with close-up photos for identification, medicinal uses, and loads of easy-to-follow recipes. In fact, most of our plant profiles contain more detail than you’ll find in any book on wild foods and herbs.

Registration for this online course runs December 20th, 2017 through January 15th, 2018 and is only open once a year. The course runs January 15th through November 1st, 2018!
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Juliet Blankespoor’s study, including her “top shelf” books

If you’ve ever felt frustrated trying to choose a reliable field guide to take foraging with you, you’re not alone. There are heaps of books on the subject, and the selection can be dizzying. It’s truly important—you might even say a matter of life and death—to make solid choices in this department. To give you a hand, we cozied up in the Chestnut library and got studious, reviewing all the regional wild food and medicine books we could get our hands on, and checking each one for botanical accuracy and attention to detail. The best are queued up here, and there’s a little something for everyone, from bright-eyed beginners to seasoned foragers and plant enthusiasts.

The books we feature are fairly specific; they dial in on bioregions throughout North America and are tailored to help you safely identify plants and forage wild food and medicine right where you live. As a companion to this list, please check out The Ten Best Books on Foraging Wild Foods and Herbs, which is the field guide lowdown to our favorite general foraging books (which pertain to most of temperate North America and Eurasia). We highly recommend starting with our article Sustainably Foraging for Wild Edibles and Herbs. You’ll notice some general guides on botany and plant families at the beginning of this list. Understanding plant families—and how to identify them—is a huge first step for any forager or self-respecting plant nerd.

And if all this merely whets your appetite, come join us for our Online Foraging Course: Edible and Medicinal Wild Herbs (releasing with the New Year 2018). We’ll give you all the tools you need to explore plant identification, wild food and medicine foraging, and the herbal uses of the most abundant and healing wild plants of the temperate world. Plus, we’ll share our very favorite culinary and medicinal recipes. On the other hand, if a more comprehensive course on DIY herbalism is up your alley, take a peek at our Online Herbal Immersion.

In good conscience, we simply couldn’t list many popular wild food guides here, mostly because they do not emphasize poisonous look-alikes in their plant descriptions, which could mean fatal consequences for foragers using those books. If you think there’s a book that deserves to be mentioned but isn’t, please let us know—we’ll continue expanding this guide as new resources become available!
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I can’t wait to really dive into this book!

Contents:

General Botany Books

Botany in a Day by Thomas J. Elpel. A botanical classic and best seller that has a place on every forager’s shelf. Elpel shares what he calls “The Patterns Method” of plant identification, a fast and easy way to begin recognizing the key traits of various plant families. This tutorial has helped more budding botanists, herbalists, and foragers than any other identification guide I know! Elpel also features descriptions of plant families throughout North America, along with profiles of notable members from each family, including comments on edible and medicinal uses. Highly recommended. Be sure to purchase the most recent edition.

Flowering Plant Families of the World by V. H. Heywood. A beautiful book for the coffee table or reference library, this hardcover classic is filled with gorgeous, scientifically accurate illustrations and range maps for over five hundred plant families throughout the world. Make sure to purchase the 2007 edition.

Photographic Atlas of Botany and Guide to Plant Identification by James Castern. Easy to read, with detailed color photographs that illustrate plant family characteristics, this guide is perfect for those who are really excited about botany and plant identification. The book is spiral-bound and quite hefty, so it’s more of a desk reference than an actual field guide. Some of the plant family classifications are out of date, but the general botany photos are still applicable, as is the bulk of the plant family photographs and descriptions.

Plant Identification Terminology: An Illustrated Glossary by James Harris and Melinda Woolf Harris. An excellent reference for those studying botany or wanting to use technical keys in the field, this guide clearly illustrates nearly two thousand botanical terms!

A Tour of the Flowering Plants by Priscilla Spears. Filled with high-quality color photographs, this is a wonderful reference for those who prefer visual learning. The author illustrates and explains over a hundred flowering plant families and includes a botanical glossary to help the beginner get started.
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Usnea (Usnea sp.) harvest

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Northwestern United States + British Columbia

The Boreal Herbal: Wild Food and Medicine Plants of the North by Beverley Gray. Part plant-identification guide, part food- and medicine-making manual, this book is a treasury of plants that grow throughout the north (and much of the temperate world). Excellent reading for beginners, experienced foragers, and anyone who loves herbs. Speaks to the heart and soul of wild food and herbal medicine. Features lots of photography and beautiful writing.

Discovering Wild Plants: Alaska, Western Canada, the Northwest by Janice Schofield Eaton. This superb field guide covers 147 wild plants, detailing their identification, range, traditional and contemporary uses, and medicinal properties. Each plant is accompanied by photographs and line drawings. The book is currently out of print, making used copies a bit more expensive than other field guides, but it’s worth the splurge!

The Jepson Manual: Vascular Plants of California, Second Edition edited by Bruce Baldwin et al. This is a hefty hardcover tome that covers both native and naturalized vascular plants throughout California. This is a technical key best suited to seasoned botanists; IT’S NOT A BEGINNER GUIDE! Unlike many technical keys, however, it features illustrations, and a new chapter on the vegetative history of California is included.

Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West by Michael Moore. One of several invaluable guides written by herbalist Michael Moore. This book covers plants ranging from Baja California to Alaska, featuring identification tips, medicinal uses, preparation, and contraindications for each herb—all infused with Moore’s characteristic wit and humor. Simple line drawings, maps, and some color photos are included throughout.

Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast: A Comprehensive Guide to the Fungi of Coastal Northern California by Noah Siegel and Christian Schwarz. A gorgeous and trustworthy guide to the mushrooms of coastal California, from Monterey County to the Oregon border. Splendid photographs and thorough information on identification, edibility, and toxicity. Easy enough for beginners, detailed enough for experienced mushroom hunters.

Northwest Trees: Identifying and Understanding the Region’s Native Trees by Stephen Arno. An easy-to-use guide with beautiful illustrations and species descriptions. Arno includes writings about the traditional uses of trees, ecology, as well as detailed descriptions, inviting the reader to slow down and take in each tree deeply. Highly recommended. This makes a good companion to a more traditional field identification guide for trees. Be sure to get the thirtieth-anniversary deluxe edition.

Pacific Seaweeds: A Guide to Common Seaweeds of the West Coast by Louis Druehl and Bridgette Clarkston. A beautiful guide to Pacific seaweeds. It features color photos, nutritional information, and accessible recipes—like seaweed kimchi and kelp chips. A lightweight book perfect for foraging trips to the coast.

Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, and Alaska by Jim Pojar and Andy MacKinnon. This user-friendly field guide features nearly eight hundred species of plants commonly found along the Pacific coast—from Oregon to Alaska—including trees, shrubs, wildflowers, aquatic plants, grasses, ferns, mosses, and lichens. The book encompasses the entire coastal region, from shoreline to alpine, and the western Cascades. Perfect for the beginner and experienced forager.

Trees and Shrubs of the Pacific Northwest by Mark Turner and Ellen Kuhlmann. This is Mark Turner’s companion guide to Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest. It covers 568 species of woody plants throughout Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and northern California with vivid color photographs, identifying characteristics, and range maps. This is an excellent book for beginners or those new to the region.

Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest by Mark Turner and Phyllis Gustafson. This colorful guide describes and illustrates 1,220 plant species that are common to the Pacific Northwest, from southern British Columbia to northern California, from the coast to the mountains and high desert. Plants featured include natives, nonnatives, perennials, annuals, and shrubs. Beautifully photographed, the book is small enough to carry in your backpack and is suitable for all experience levels.
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Field guides and foraging books for the Pacific Northwest and coastal British Columbia

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Regional California Guides

The Jepson Desert Manual: Vascular Plants of Southeastern California by Margriet Wetherwax. A comprehensive field guide focused exclusively on native and naturalized vascular plants of California’s southeastern deserts, including the Mojave Desert, Sonoran Desert, and southern Great Basin (including the White Mountains). This is a technical key, NOT A BEGINNER GUIDE!

The Jepson Manual: Vascular Plants of California, Second Edition edited by Bruce Baldwin et al. This is a hefty hardcover tome that covers both native and naturalized vascular plants throughout California. This is a technical key best suited to seasoned botanists; IT’S NOT A BEGINNER GUIDE! Unlike many technical keys, however, it features illustrations, and a new chapter on the vegetative history of California is included.

The New Wildcrafted Cuisine by Pascal Baudar. This is a truly groundbreaking book, with delectable imagery and recipes that push the edge of even wild cuisine (edible insects, for example). More cookbook than field guide, you’ll find a wealth of wild recipes arranged by foraging season. Most plants in the book can be found throughout the temperate world, but others are found only in Southern California and Mediterranean climates. This is a gorgeous book sure to spice up wild food conversation.

Sierra Nevada Wildflowers: Including Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon National Parks by Karen Wiese. A handy pocket guide meant to be used while plants are in flower. This is an accessible book for the novice botanist, and features easy-to-read descriptions and color photos, plus notes on range and bloom season.

Trees and Shrubs of Nevada and Placer Counties, California by the Redbud Chapter of the California Native Plant Society. The arboreal companion to Wildflowers of Nevada and Placer Counties (see below). Equally charming.

Wildflowers of Nevada and Placer Counties by the Redbud Chapter of the California Native Plant Society. A lovely little guide brimming with photos, brief ID descriptions, and plenty of interesting comments on ecological role. Edibility is briefly mentioned where applicable.

Wildflowers of the Eastern Sierra and Adjoining Mojave Desert and Great Basin by Laird Blackwell. An easy-to-use pocket guide for identifying regional flowers and shrubs. Each plant description is accompanied by color photos and information on habitat, bloom season, and viewing locations.
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Juliet’s library

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Southwestern United States

Common Southwestern Native Plants: An Identification Guide by Jack Carter, Martha Carter, and Donna Stevens. An easy to-use field guide with detailed line drawings and color photos that features both woody and herbaceous flowering plants. This book lives up to its name, introducing the most common species and not being thorough in its scope.

Cooking the Wild Southwest: Delicious Recipes for Desert Plants by Carolyn Niethammer. A flavorful cookbook and field guide that features hand-drawn illustrations, identification tips, harvesting instructions, and 150 southwestern recipes. Ideal for foragers and cooks of all skill levels.

Desert Wildflowers of North America by Ronald Taylor. A beautifully photographed pocket guide featuring range maps, descriptions, and commentary on the desert ecosystem. Geared toward amateur botanists.

Food Plants of the Sonoran Desert by Wendy Hodgson. A beautiful and well-researched hardcover book featuring the traditional uses of nearly 540 edible plants. Includes wonderful black-and-white photos and gorgeous drawings throughout. More ethnobotanical in scope and less how-to guide. Best accompanied by a field guide.

The Jepson Desert Manual: Vascular Plants of Southeastern California by Margriet Wetherwax. A comprehensive field guide focused exclusively on native and naturalized vascular plants of California’s southeastern deserts, including the Mojave Desert, Sonoran Desert, and southern Great Basin (including the White Mountains). This is a technical key, NOT A BEGINNER GUIDE!

Medicinal Plants of the American Southwest by Charles Kane. Like Michael Moore’s books, this guide blends herbal materia medica with plant identification, making it very handy for medicinal foragers. Along with botanical descriptions and suggestions for collection and preparation, Kane shares medicinal indications, herbal precautions, and dosages. There is a centerfold of color photos.

Medicinal Plants of the Desert and Canyon West: A Guide to Identifying, Preparing, and Using Traditional Medicinal Plants Found in the Deserts and Canyons of the West and Southwest by Michael Moore. A must-have guide for any herbalist or wild forager of the Southwest. Arranged alphabetically, the book features the medicinal plants of the region as well as simple line drawings and a centerfold of color photos. Excellent for both beginners and pros; features a therapeutic use index and a glossary to explain botanical and medical terminology.

Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West (revised and expanded edition) by Michael Moore. One of the very best medicinal field guides for the region, this guide is highly relevant to New Mexico, Arizona, west Texas, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and California. Moore writes with his characteristic dry humor but is completely thorough, discussing identification, range, medicinal use, preparation, and contraindications for each herb. The book features line drawings and a centerfold of color photographs and is light enough to easily carry into the field.

Plants of Arizona by Anne Orth Epple. The only complete guide to the rich and unique flora of Arizona, featuring more than nine hundred full-color photographs and detailed descriptions of each plant. Also applicable to much of New Mexico. Be sure to get the latest edition, published in 2012.

The Prickly Pear Cookbook by Carolyn Niethammer. A delightful cookbook devoted to one of the most treasured native foods of the Americas. Learn how to prep and cook the abundant prickly pear cactus.

Southwest Foraging: 117 Wild and Flavorful Edibles from Barrel Cactus to Wild Oregano by John Slattery. Highly recommended for southwestern foragers. This guide is wonderfully accessible to all skill levels and features a range of nourishing edible plants, from wild greens to cacti. The book is filled with full-color photographs and detailed information on identification, harvesting, and preparation.

Trees and Shrubs of New Mexico, Revised and Expanded by Jack L. Carter. Designed for use by both laypersons and plant scientists, this book includes illustrations, descriptions, distribution maps, and dichotomous keys for more than 430 native, naturalized, and cultivated trees, shrubs, and woody vines that are known to occur in New Mexico. A pictorial glossary provides much of the basic information needed to find the plants in question.

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Regional Southwestern Field Guides

A Guide to Plants of the Northern Chihuahuan Desert by Carolyn Dodson. This is a great book for beginning botanists or visitors exploring the region. Filled with photos, line drawings, and brief descriptions, it occasionally references edible and medicinal uses along with notes on toxicity.

Mojave Desert Wildflowers by Jon Mark Stewart. Most notable for its gorgeous photos, this is very small guide that’s easy to tuck in your daypack. A handy reference for identifying desert wildflowers in bloom.

Sonoran Desert Wildflowers by Richard Spellenberg. A light and handy guide to desert wildflowers (best used when plants are in bloom). Spellenberg shares brief plant descriptions, comments on ecological roles, and wee mentions on edible uses. Lovely photos throughout.
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The extensive library at Mountain Gardens in Celo, NC

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Western North America

Trees of Western North America: Princeton Field Guides by Richard Spellenberg, Christopher Earle, and Gil Nelson. A comprehensive and illustrated guide that covers 630 species of native and naturalized trees in the western United States and Canada as far east as the Great Plains. Features color illustrations and range maps. Small enough to put in your backpack.

Weeds of the West, Revised Edition published by University of Wyoming with multiple authors. A pictorial and descriptive identification guide for wild western weeds that shows the plants throughout their life cycle. A very useful reference, but a bit “down” on weeds in general—talks about spraying, eradicating, etc.

Western Trees by George Petrides and Olivia Petrides. A pocket field guide in the Peterson Field Guides tradition, with color drawings, photos, range maps, and identifying descriptions. Occasional, brief references to indigenous uses. One of the best Peterson Field Guides on plants.
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I can’t find the catnip entry in the darned index!

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Rocky Mountain North America

The Boreal Herbal: Wild Food and Medicine Plants of the North by Beverley Gray. Part plant-identification guide, part food- and medicine-making manual, this book is a treasury of plants that grow throughout the north (and much of the temperate world). Excellent reading for beginners, experienced foragers, and anyone who loves herbs. Speaks to the heart and soul of wild food and herbal medicine. Features lots of photography and beautiful writing. Especially relevant to the northern Rockies.

Handbook of Rocky Mountain Plants by Ruth Ashton Nelson. This book comprises fairly technical keys for wildflower identification and includes over 350 black-and-white illustrations. Small enough to take into the field; recommended for more experienced botanists and foragers.

Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West (the revised and expanded edition) by Michael Moore. One of the very best medicinal field guides for the region—highly relevant to New Mexico, Arizona, west Texas, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and California. Moore’s entertaining and completely thorough writing discusses identification, range, medicinal use, preparation, and contraindications for each herb. The book features line drawings and a centerfold of color photographs, and it’s is light enough to carry into the field.

Plants of the Rocky Mountains: Lone Pine Field Guide by Linda Kershaw, Andy MacKinnon, and Jim Pojar. Over thirteen hundred species of trees, shrubs, wildflowers, grasses, ferns, mosses, and lichens are described and illustrated. The authors include notes on origin of name, ecology, native uses, edibility, and similar species. The book also features color-coded sections to allow for quick reference. Perfect for all skill levels.

Wild About Wildflowers: Extreme Botanizing in Crested Butte, Wildflower Capital of Colorado by Katherine Darrow. Applicable to the central and southern Rockies, filled with beautiful photos, identification tips, folklore, ecology, and occasional references to edible and medicinal uses. A useful pocket guide organized by plant family.
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Does this book taste as good as it looks?

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Midwestern North America + the Prairie States and Provinces

Edible Wild Plants of the Prairie: An Ethnobotanical Guide by Kelly Kindscher. A companion guide to Medicinal Wild Plants of the Prairie: An Ethnobotanical Guide (see below) that merges historical and modern knowledge of the wild food plants of the prairie.

The Forager’s Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants by Samuel Thayer. Thayer’s books are hands-down the best resources on wild foods, being enjoyable to read and very informational. Thayer shares detailed material on plant identification (accompanied by color photos) and food preparation, along with entertaining anecdotal stories. He specifically emphasizes wild foods and doesn’t discuss medicinal properties; however, his books are valuable field guides for identifying many herbs that straddle the food-medicine divide (elderberry, for example). Highly recommended. (Note: Thayer does not discuss medicinal uses.)

Incredible Wild Edibles: 36 Plants That Can Change Your Life by Samuel Thayer. Incredible Wild Edibles is styled in a similar fashion to Thayer’s other books but covers a completely new selection of herbs, roots, nuts, and berries. (Note: Thayer does not discuss medicinal uses.)

Medicinal Wild Plants of the Prairie: An Ethnobotanical Guide by Kelly Kindscher. An interesting guide for those who enjoy plant history; includes Native American uses, modern medicinal uses, cultivation, and identification characteristics. Black-and-white drawings and range maps accompany each plant. Includes common and traditional names.

Nature’s Garden: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants by Samuel Thayer. Did you notice we’re recommending another book by Sam Thayer? That’s because he’s simply one of the very best wild food writers around. If you can only purchase a book or two to get started, we suggest beginning with his guides. This is the companion guide to Thayer’s The Forager’s Harvest, featuring a fresh collection of plants. Equally essential and recommended. (Note: Thayer does not discuss medicinal uses.)

Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide by Lawrence Newcomb. Lawrence Newcomb’s system of wildflower identification is based on natural structural features that are easily visible to the untrained eye, enabling amateurs and experts alike to identify almost any wildflower quickly and accurately. This is a great first field guide for beginners and is small enough to fit in a very big pocket. More applicable to the eastern portion of the Midwest.

Trees of Eastern North America (A Princeton Field Guide) by Gil Nelson, Christopher Earle, and Richard Spellenberg. Illustrated and comprehensive, this field guide uses a simple botanical key. The book covers 825 species, including all the native and naturalized trees of the eastern United States and Canada as far west as the Great Plains, with mention of those species found only in tropical and subtropical Florida and northernmost Canada. Somewhat heavy, but small enough to tote into the field.

Wildflowers of Tennessee, the Ohio Valley, and the Southern Appalachians by Dennis Horn, David Duhl, and Tavia Cathcart. An excellent color photo guide that is tailored to the layperson. This book includes a few botanical keys as well as some edible/herbal tidbits, a little ecology, and the etymology of plant names. More applicable to the eastern portion of the Midwest.
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Ruby and the Morel (Morchella esculenta)

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Northeastern United States + Southeastern Canada

100 Edible Mushrooms by Michael Kuo. Engaging to read, Kuo’s book features a hundred of the most common edible mushrooms and includes color photos, edibility ratings, descriptions, poisonous relatives and look-alikes, and a recipe section in the back of the book. Not exactly a pocket guide, but small enough to accompany you into the field. Juliet’s favorite book on wild mushrooms for beginners.

Edible and Medicinal Mushrooms of New England and Eastern Canada by David Spahr. Filled with beautiful photos, this guide features easy-to-read descriptions of the Northeast’s most common medicinal and edible mushrooms. Includes harvesting and preparation suggestions.

Manual of Vascular Plants of Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada by Henry Gleason and Arthur Cronquist. A technical flora geared toward the experienced botanist or dedicated beginner. This is a technical key, NOT A BEGINNER GUIDE! Uniquely accompanied by a separate illustrated manual, which we recommend as a complementary resource: Illustrated Companion to Gleason and Cronquist’s Manual by Noel Holmgren.

Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide by Lawrence Newcomb. Lawrence Newcomb’s system of wildflower identification is based on natural structural features that are easily visible to the untrained eye, enabling amateurs and experts alike to identify almost any wildflower quickly and accurately. This is a great first field guide for beginners and is small enough to fit in a very big pocket.

The Smithsonian Guide to Seaside Plants of the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts, from Louisiana to Massachusetts, Exclusive of Lower Peninsular Florida by Wilbur Duncan and Marion Duncan. Includes nearly one thousand species of wildflowers, trees, shrubs, grasses, rushes, and sedges. A tad outdated at this point—especially the plant family designations—but still a good primer on the most common plants of the Gulf and coasts.

Trees of Eastern North America (A Princeton Field Guide) by Gil Nelson, Christopher Earle, and Richard Spellenberg. Illustrated and comprehensive, this field guide uses a simple botanical key. The book covers 825 species, including all the native and naturalized trees of the eastern United States and Canada as far west as the Great Plains, with mention of those species found only in tropical and subtropical Florida and northernmost Canada. Somewhat heavy, but small enough to tote into the field.

Wildflowers of New England by Ted Elliman and the New England Wildflower Society. A field guide that features a straightforward key for identifying over a thousand wildflowers throughout all six New England states. Each plant is accompanied by brief descriptions and a color photo. Pocket sized.
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Our favorite field guides and foraging books for the northeastern U.S. and adjacent Canadian regions

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Southeastern United States

A Field Guide to the Trees and Shrubs of the Southern Appalachians by Robert E. Swanson. A detailed field guide compiled by the authors over a decade of hiking through the region. Covers 280 species of trees, shrubs, and woody vines in a range of ecosystems. Applicable to the Carolinas, Georgia, and eastern Tennessee (including Great Smoky Mountains National Park). Features illustrated keys that can be used in all four seasons.

Flora of the Southern and Mid-Atlantic States by Alan Weakley. This is a technical flora (not for beginners; this is VERY technical) of the Southeast available for purchase as a print copy or free PDF from the UNC Herbarium. This is a weighty book and not easy to carry into the field.

Florida Ethnobotany by Daniel Austin. Nearly a thousand pages on the traditional and indigenous uses of southeastern herbs—medicines, dye and fiber plants, foods, and mystical tools. Includes line drawings and a selection of color plates. On the expensive side, but this book is worth the splurge if you live in Florida and are into bioregional herbs!

Medicinal Plants of the Southern Appalachians by Patricia Kyritsi Howell. An introductory medicinal guide written by a knowledgeable Southern herbalist. Herbal descriptions feature both traditional and modern medicinal uses, general ID, habitat descriptions, harvesting and preparation suggestions, dosage, and a sprinkling of recipes. No photos, and should be accompanied by a more detailed field guide for foraging.

Mushrooms of the Southeastern United States by Alan Bessette, William Roody, Arleen Bessette, and Dail Dunaway. A descriptive guide to the fungi of the Southeast, featuring ID characteristics, color photos, and comments on edibility. Simple enough to be used by any forager, this book has some extra features that make it appealing for more advanced mycologists (such as photos of microscope slides).

Mushrooms of West Virginia and the Central Appalachians by William Roody. A fantastic guide for Appalachian mushroom foragers. Includes detailed descriptions, notes on edibility, and vibrant color photographs. Small enough to be carried by hand in the field. Highly recommended for both novice mushroom hunters and experienced foragers.

A Reference Guide to Medicinal Plants: Herbal Medicine Past and Present by John Crellin and Jane Philpott. Based on the teachings of southern folk herbalist Tommie Bass, this guide is a treasury of old-timey herbal wisdom and little-used local medicinals. Featuring over seven hundred plants, the book blends folk wisdom with modern scientific research. An excellent reference for those interested in the historical uses of herbs.

Trees of the Southeastern United States by Wilbur Duncan and Marion Duncan. This field guide features excellent keys, species descriptions, ecological ranges, and color photos. It’s midlevel to technical and very comprehensive. The guide treats more than three hundred species—every one known to occur in the region—from the Coastal Plain to the highest elevations. Included are trees native to the region as well as those introduced and now reproducing.

Weeds of the South by Charles Bryson and Michael DeFelice. A guide to four hundred of the most common weeds of the southern United States, featuring range maps, color photos, and handy descriptions of both seedlings and mature plants. Includes notes on toxicity and habitat, but there is no medicinal or edible information. The authors label weeds as “troublesome,” so don’t expect a plant-positive experience (but we still think it’s a handy guide)! More of a desk reference in size.

Wildflowers and Plant Communities of the Southern Appalachian Mountains and Piedmont by Timothy Spira. A unique field guide! Rather than organizing plants by flower color or family characteristics, as most guidebooks do, botanist Tim Spira takes a holistic, ecological approach and organizes plants on the basis of their natural communities in the wild. His beautifully photographed book includes trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants. Not quite pocket-sized, but it’s still small enough to slip into your daypack.

Wildflowers of Tennessee, the Ohio Valley, and the Southern Appalachians by Dennis Horn, David Duhl, and Tavia Cathcart. An excellent and comprehensive color photo guide that is tailored to the layperson. This book includes a few botanical keys as well as some edible/herbal tidbits, a little ecology, and the etymology of plant names. The book is most specific to Tennessee but is applicable to most southern and mid-Atlantic states.
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The Southeast’s finest botanical field guides

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Florida

Florida Ethnobotany by Daniel Austin. Nearly a thousand pages on the traditional and indigenous uses of southeastern herbs—medicines, dye and fiber plants, foods, and mystical tools. Includes line drawings and a selection of color plates. On the expensive side, but this book is worth the splurge if you live in Florida and are into bioregional herbs!

Florida Wildflowers, a Comprehensive Guide by Walter Kingsley Taylor. A colorful field guide that discusses plant description, time of flowering, habitat, and Florida distribution. Often includes comments on related species, etymology, and even culinary, medicinal, and landscape uses. Features bright photography.

Florida Wildflowers in Their Natural Communities by Walter Kingsley Taylor. A unique field guide that features plants and their ecological communities. The book is filled with color photos and botanical descriptions that are accessible for both amateurs and more experienced botanists.

Florida’s Edible Wild Plants: A Guide to Collecting and Cooking by Peggy Sias Lantz. An easy-to-read guide to the edible plants of Florida, including their uses, basic identification traits, drawings, photographs, and recipes. A more detailed field guide should be used as a companion to properly ID plants.

Guide to the Vascular Plants of Florida, Third Edition by Richard Wunderlin and Bruce Hansen. This is a very technical key tailored to the experienced botanist; NOT recommended for beginners.

The Shrubs and Woody Vines of Florida: A Reference and Field Guide by Gil Nelson. A companion guide to the Trees of Florida, this book is written to help you identify plants in the field—you won’t find any edible or medicinal information. Easy to use, with simple line drawings and color photos. A bit on the technical side for absolute newcomers.

The Trees of Florida: A Reference and Field Guide, Second Edition by Gil Nelson. A comprehensive guide to Florida’s amazing variety of tree species. There are nearly six hundred color photographs and many drawings and range maps. And now included is a key to tree families that will help with field identification. A bit on the technical side for absolute newcomers.
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The best field guides for Florida

This article is a sneak peek into our 375-hour
Online Foraging Course: Edible and Medicinal Wild Herbs,
which begins in January 2018!

This groundbreaking program is shaping up to be THE most comprehensive online course on the topic of harvesting wild medicinals and edible weeds.

Registration for this online course runs December 20th, 2017 through January 15th, 2018 and is only open once a year. The course runs January 15th through November 1st, 2018!

Click for detailed story

The Ten Best Books on Foraging Wild Foods and Herbs

 General
Nov 172017
 

By Meghan Gemma with Juliet Blankespoor

The following article is a sneak peek into our 375-hour Online Foraging Course: Edible and Medicinal Wild Herbs, which begins in January 2018! The course begins with the basic ground rules of foraging safety and ethics, and then moves on to botany and plant identification. Before you know it, you’ll have the skills and confidence to safely identify and harvest wild plants.
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You’ll befriend THE most common edible and medicinal wayside plants, including dandelion, stinging nettles, violet, yarrow, burdock, rose, goldenrod, and many others. The printable manual is hundreds of pages long and filled with close-up photos for identification, medicinal uses, and loads of easy-to-follow recipes. In fact, most of our plant profiles contain more detail than you’ll find in any book on wild foods and herbs.

Registration for this online course runs December 20th, 2017 through January 15th, 2018 and is only open once a year. The course runs January 15th through November 1st, 2018!

The best way to learn about wild plants–right at their side

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Every season speaks to the heart in its own way, and the brisk days of fall beckon us—one leaf at a time, and in the most ancient manner—to fill our pantries with nourishing food and medicine and softly burrow in. While the squirrels are thriftily gathering black walnuts and acorns, my family is doing the same. By the time winter blows in, we have a rich and wild supply of food—jars of nettles pesto, baskets of nuts, stores of hawthorn berries and rosehips, bottles of elderberry syrup; the list goes on. These are our winter treasures, unpacked one by one as the dark days unfold.

This makes winter a season of literally tasting and counting our blessings. It’s also a time for other slow and gentle pleasures, like curling up with a great book or delving into new studies. At the Chestnut School, we’ve been brewing nourishing cold-season treats to share with our herbal community: a reading list, a collection of fresh blog posts, and a brand new online course. The theme for all this seasonal inspiration? Wild food and medicine foraging.

If you’re curious about foraging, we recommend one of the first things you do is cultivate an ethos centered in sustainability and reciprocity. See our article Foraging for Wild Edibles and Herbs for more on this. Next, set yourself up with a stack of great foraging guides (see the resources listed below) or, better yet, apprentice yourself to a seasoned forager. As we spin into 2018, we’ll be offering our own mentorship to you in our 375-hour Online Foraging Course: Edible and Medicinal Wild Herbs. This program is shaping up to be THE most comprehensive online course on the topic! The printable manual is over 500 pages long and filled with close-up photos for identification, medicinal uses, and loads of easy-to-follow recipes. You can also check out the wild foods section of our blog, and our Online Herbal Immersion, which features an entire module on foraging.

Meanwhile, in the spirit of cold-season stockpiles and cozy reading nooks everywhere, we’ve gathered a list of our most cherished books on wild food and herb foraging. Plenty of fantastic field guides and wild food books didn’t make it into this post. But keep your eyes peeled for our upcoming features on regional wild food books and our top picks for free online foraging resources. We don’t receive any compensation for promoting the books in our list—they are simply our personal favorites. We’ve included links to purchase directly from the author, when applicable, but you can find almost all of these books online or order them through your local bookstore. Note that some of these books cover medicinal and edible uses, whereas some cover only wild foods.
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Juliet’s top shelf library and reading nook

1. Foraging & Feasting: A Field Guide and Wild Food Cookbook by Dina Falconi, illustrated by Wendy Hollender (Botanical Arts Press, 2013).

We treasure this book for its beautiful illustrations and delicious recipes. It’s easily our most reached-for wild foods cookbook. The book is divided into two main parts: botanical drawings paired with key identification tips, followed by a bounty of herbal, wild foods recipes. Many of the recipes are flexible to work for a variety of diets—gluten free, dairy free, sugar free, raw—and Dina includes an array of master recipes that can be adapted to different plants throughout the seasons. There’s also a brief medicinal discussion of each herb as well as some nutritional tidbits. Many of the featured plants are common in the herb garden (elderberry, rose, bee balm, etc.), so this is an excellent resource for the gardener and forager alike.

If you love Dina’s recipes, you can catch more of them in our Online Foraging Course—she’s a contributor! You can purchase her book and access her blog via Botanical Arts Press.
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2. The Forager’s Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants (Forager’s Harvest Press, 2006) and Nature’s Garden: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants (Forager’s Harvest Press, 2010) by Samuel Thayer.

Thayer’s books are hands-down the best resources on wild foods, being enjoyable to read and very informational. These two are companion guides, each featuring unique plants. Thayer shares detailed material on plant identification (accompanied by color photos) and food preparation, along with entertaining anecdotes. His books apply widely in the United States and Canada and include many plants found elsewhere in the temperate world. Thayer emphasizes wild foods specifically and doesn’t discuss medicinal properties; however, his books are valuable field guides for identifying many herbs that straddle the food-medicine divide (elderberry, chickweed, and raspberry for example). Highly recommended. You’ll need to buy the books separately, and they can be purchased directly from the author here.
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Samuel Thayer’s books are indispendable for the wild foods forager

3. Incredible Wild Edibles: 36 Plants That Can Change Your Life by Samuel Thayer (Forager’s Harvest Press, 2017).

Did you notice we’re recommending another book by Sam Thayer? That’s because he’s simply one of the very best wild food writers around. If you can only purchase a book or two to get started, we suggest beginning with his guides (Note: Thayer does not discuss medicinal uses). Incredible Wild Edibles is styled in a similar fashion to Thayer’s other books but covers a completely fresh collection of plants. And it’s equally wonderful and essential. You can purchase Thayer’s books directly, and check out his blog here.

4. Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants by “Wildman” Steve Brill and Evelyn Dean (William Morrow Paperbacks, 2010).

You can gather an immense amount of wild food knowledge from this book. Over 500 edible and medicinal plants are organized by harvesting season, with identifying characteristics, detailed preparation information, and beautiful line drawings to accompany each one. This was one of the first books on foraging Juliet owned, she’s learned more about wild foods from this book than any other. In the back of the book, you’ll find a collection of Steve’s recipes. You can purchase the book and visit Steve’s blog here.
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“Say what-I’ve never come across that before!”

5. Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods from Dirt to Plate by John Kallas (Gibbs Smith, 2010).

This is one of the finest books on wild edible greens, with thorough species descriptions, beautiful photographs, nutritional profiles, and lots of recipes. Wild greens are an abundant food source in nearly all temperate places—including cities—so this book is a valuable resource for foragers everywhere. Kallas himself is a botanist, teacher, nutritionist, and wild foods expert who has foraged throughout the United States, Canada, and the European countryside. We appreciate that the book covers fewer plants in greater depth, which is more helpful than superficially covering hundreds of plants. This book focuses on identifying and harvesting wild foods; it doesn’t explore medicinal uses. More about John’s work can be found on his Wild Food Adventures website.
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The library and apothecary at Mountain Gardens in Celo, North Carolina

6. Ugly Little Greens: Gourmet Dishes Crafted from Foraged Ingredients by Mia Wasilevich (Page Street Publishing, 2017).

There’s nothing ugly about this book, which spoofs on the common misconceptions about weeds. It’s packed with fancy wild food recipes and sumptuous color photos. Many of the recipes are easy to prepare, but in general, this book is ideal for the epicurean forager, with dishes like nettles benedict and cattail pollen madeleines. Not just limited to greens, it features a diverse collection of plants that grow in most temperate to subtropical climates. The book blends plant identification with preparation but dials in on the recipe side of things. Therefore, it’s best accompanied by a field guide that features a lot of identification.

We’re excited to say Mia is a recipe contributor in our Online Foraging Course! You can check out her blog and schedule of classes at Transitional Gastronomy.
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These wild foods books focus on the culinary aspect of wild edibles

7. Wild Food by Roger Phillips (Little, Brown, 1986).

This wonderful classic was written by a British family who spent time in North America, camping and preparing wild foods and drinks. A wide range of wild edibles are covered, including mushrooms, herbs, seaweeds, flowers, roots, greens, nuts, and berries. The book features loads of simple recipes accompanied by sublimely staged photos of wild foods dishes in their native habitat. (Think glamping, with a wild foods twist.) Be sure to purchase the 1986 edition of this book, which is affordable to purchase used and offers more recipes and species profiles than the newer edition.
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Everyone LOVES to key plants out

8. The Wild Wisdom of Weeds: 13 Essential Plants for Human Survival by Katrina Blair (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2014).

We love the spirit of this book. It covers fewer plants than your average field guide but takes you on a deep journey of discovery with each one. It includes edible and medicinal uses for many of the most common weeds found worldwide in the temperate climate, along with ethnobotanical information. Some tips on identification are included, but we recommend using a field guide along with her descriptions to make sure you have the right plant. This is a great resource for both urban and rural dwellers. You can order the book here.
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Burdock harvest (Arctium minus)

9. The New Wildcrafted Cuisine: Exploring the Exotic Gastronomy of Local Terroir by Pascal Baudar (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2016).

Baudar’s book is truly groundbreaking, with delectable imagery and recipes that push the edge of even wild cuisine (edible insects, for example). In this light, we recommend his book for the curious and adventuresome cook, or for anyone wanting to take their wild food dishes to the next level. Arranged by season, the book balances progressive recipes with traditional preparations; lots of pictorial how-to’s feature fermentation and food preservation. Most plants in the book can be found throughout the temperate world, but others are found only in Mediterranean climates. This is a gorgeous book that is sure to spice up wild food conversation. You can read more about Pascal here.
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“That looks good enough to eat!”

10. Discovering Wild Plants: Alaska, Western Canada, the Northwest by Janice Schofield Eaton (Alaska Northwest Books, 2003).

Don’t let the title of this book put you off—it’s relevant to temperate climates around the world. And it’s a superb field guide. The book covers 147 wild plants, detailing their identification, range, traditional and contemporary uses, and medicinal properties. Each plant is accompanied by photographs and line drawings. The book is currently out of print, making used copies a bit more expensive than other field guides, but it’s so good that it still made our top 10!
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Juliet’s herbal and botanical library

Do yourself a favor and also read: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Milkweed Editions, 2015).

This book will grow your heart and soul, and we recommend it to absolutely everyone. Though not technically about foraging, Kimmerer’s writing on our relationship to land, food, medicine, and legacy will change how you live and, yes—forage. Prepare yourself for incredible storytelling, immense beauty, and possibly a lot of tears.

Do you have a favorite wild foods book that didn’t make it onto our list?

We’d love to hear about it (including any regional guides that you enjoy)! There are so many wonderful books on this subject that we couldn’t include them all here. However, we’ll be giving a shout-out to even more wild foods and medicines resources on the blog soon, so stay tuned.

Felines enjoy the finer points of wild food identification

This article is a sneak peek into our 375-hour
Online Foraging Course: Edible and Medicinal Wild Herbs,
which begins in January 2018!

This groundbreaking program is shaping up to be THE most comprehensive online course on the topic of harvesting wild medicinals and edible weeds.

Registration for this online course runs December 20th, 2017 through January 15th, 2018 and is only open once a year. The course runs January 15th through November 1st, 2018!

Click for detailed story

Foraging for Wild Edibles and Herbs: Sustainable and Safe Gathering Practices

 Uncategorized
Nov 072017
 

Foraging for Wild Edibles and Herbs:
Sustainable and Safe Gathering Practices

Text and photography by Juliet Blankespoor

The following article is a sneak peek into our 375-hour Online Foraging Course: Edible and Medicinal Wild Herbs, which begins in January 2018! The course begins with the basic ground rules of foraging safety and ethics, and then moves on to botany and plant identification. Before you know it, you’ll have the skills and confidence to safely identify and harvest wild plants.
–
You’ll befriend THE most common edible and medicinal wayside plants, including dandelion, stinging nettles, violet, yarrow, burdock, rose, goldenrod, and many others. The printable manual is hundreds of pages long and filled with close-up photos for identification, medicinal uses, and loads of easy-to-follow recipes. In fact, most of our plant profiles contain more detail than you’ll find in any book on wild foods and herbs.

Registration for this online course runs December 20th, 2017 through January 15th, 2018 and is only open once a year. The course runs January 15th through November 1st, 2018!

Chinese chestnut (Castanea mollissima) harvest

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We herbalists have a unique take on the commonest of herbs: instead of dismissing them as mundane or maddening, we choose to embrace wily botanicals with enchantment and enterprise. These medicinal and edible weeds—vulgar villains to most—are the herbalists’ beloveds. This alchemical perspective, transforming the unplanned and uninvited into a veritable treasure, is a handy approach in life that needn’t be limited to weeds.

But before I start waxing weedy, let me share a story. When I was in my twenties, I spent a good bit of time living in the woods, traveling and picking weeds, and growing food and medicine. Yes, I was a total hippie (of the back-to-the-land variety)! During that time, one of my home bases was a little organic farm community in New England. We grew lots of veggies and garlic and sold prepared foods from our crops at the farmer’s market, including fresh salsa, pesto, and garlic sauce. Over the years, in my travels through Mexico and Guatemala, I noticed how people sold edible weeds at markets and, being an enterprising sort, endeavored to do the same back home.

Overjoyed to spread the good word of weedivory, I set out at market pretty baskets filled with tidy bundles of pigweed, purslane, and lamb’s quarters, accompanied by little handwritten signs that explained the preparation and nutritional value for each of the wild greens. I offered a yummy sample of wild greens pâté to inspire people to move beyond any fears of eating an unknown vegetable, especially a “weed.” As it turns out, we didn’t develop a wild following—or even a tiny demand for our weeds—but people went crazy for the sample. Wild greens pâté sold just as quickly as our fresh salsa and pesto and became a stable source of income for our farm for many years.
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Stinging nettles pâté

That story is just one example of how edible and medicinal weeds can play an important role in the local foods movement. These useful herbs can be incorporated into herbal and vegetable CSA shares and sold at market, alongside their cultivated kin. Feral greens deserve their rightful spot on the menus of farm-to-table restaurants, right next to wild mushrooms. Many adventurous chefs are hungry for new foods, especially if they’re familiar with their local history and importance. Tapping into the vast resource of local wild weeds also reduces the environmental impact of packaging and transportation.
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Freshly harvested stinging nettles (Urtica dioica)

Which brings us to an important topic that is especially dear to my heart. I’ve seen more than one herbalist make blanket statements about moratoriums on wildcrafting, which stem, in part, from concern about wild plant populations. Overharvesting plants is a serious issue of our times, along with habitat loss and the pressures plants face with climate change. We introduce our Herbal Immersion students to the work of medicinal plant preservation by giving them complimentary memberships to the United Plant Savers organization and teaching them how to cultivate rare woodland medicinals. (Here’s an article I wrote on the subject.) This is to say that I too share the deepest regard for the future of native plants, including medicinals, but I think it’s a mistake to lump rare woodland medicinals together with opportunistic plants that have a worldwide distribution.

What if a well-meaning herbal newbie reads a “NO WILDCRAFTING” meme on social media and starts to think she shouldn’t be harvesting any wild plants (including seriously invasive weeds) because it’s bad for the earth or hurting the plants? Perhaps she’ll decide that instead of harvesting the nonnative, invasive roses growing as a brambly mess in her backyard, it is ethical to purchase dried rosebuds in the herbal bulk bins from her local food co-op. The co-op procures its dried roses from a large, reputable herbal distributor, which happens to purchase its organic roses from Turkey. Those rosebuds came across the sea in barrels on a gigantic barge and then were shipped across the country. Maybe even back again for delivery! Meanwhile, those petals weren’t getting any perkier. This isn’t to say that the co-op or the herb distributor wouldn’t carry local dried roses if they were available. Problem is, they aren’t available because there aren’t enough domestic growers. And many people don’t want to pay the higher price for domestically grown herbs. In the United States, domestic herb production doesn’t even come close to filling the demand for raw herbs.

MOST OF THE HERBS CONSUMED IN THIS COUNTRY ARE GROWN ABROAD AND MAY HAVE BEEN SPRAYED, ADULTERATED, CONTAMINATED, OR GROWN AND HARVESTED BY SOMEONE WHO
WASN’T FAIRLY COMPENSATED.

Learning how to use abundant weeds as medicine can lessen the demand for herbs grown overseas, which means less waste and lower fossil fuel use and higher herbal quality. Another consideration when comparing cultivated versus wild medicinals is the farmland it takes to grow herbs. Where did the farmland come from? From land that was once a forest, a prairie, or a floodplain. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be growing herbs. On the contrary! It’s just to say the issue isn’t so simple as “No Wildcrafting.”
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Gathering hawthorn flowers (Crataegus sp.)

Learning how to forage is a major game changer for any human. These skills are our birthright, but sadly most of us didn’t grow up learning them. Gathering medicine and food from the wild connects us to the natural world, our ancestral heritage, and our wild animal selves. When we are more personally involved with our foods and medicines (by growing or gathering), we can be assured that they are fresh, of high quality, and harvested in a sustainable fashion. We also weave ourselves indelibly into the great food chain of life, which instinctively encourages us to steward and tend our sources of sustenance.

In my mind, the most sustainable way to gather food and medicine from wild places is to hone in on a particular array of plentiful, generous, and nourishing plants. These herbs are the wild weeds, the common flora, the invasives—the prolific volunteers that are often tossed into the compost pile. These are also some of our most superb medicinal allies and nutrient-rich wild foods! I’m talking about plants like chickweed (Stellaria media), dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), wild rose (Rosa spp.), burdock (Arctium minus, A. lappa), cleavers (Galium aparine), violet (Viola spp.), blackberry (Rubus spp.), and stinging nettles (Urtica dioica). Believe me, getting to know these plants is a bit like working a magic spell—the ordinary suddenly becomes extraordinary, astounding, beloved.
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Violet flowers (Viola sororia)

And here’s a fact to put in your pocket: wild weeds, in general, are significantly more concentrated in nutrients, minerals, and antioxidants than their cultivated cousins. This means that everyone, especially folks who don’t typically have access to high-quality produce, can revitalize their diets.

Tending these weedy plants is even in our blood: most of our indigenous ancestors sustainably managed wild ecosystems to provide nutritious, abundant sources of food throughout the year. So how do we echo their practices in the modern world?
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Illustration by Jill Barklem from her Brambly Hedge children’s book series

1. Only forage abundant plants with a large, widespread population.

In my practice, I favor plant species with a sizable population—preferably widespread over a large geographical area—and avoid using rare or less populous species. I won’t harvest rare plants from the wild at all, and I teach my students the same. Along these lines, you can start by avoiding the harvest of woodland medicinals and instead favor the weedy medicines of field and pasture. If you’re unsure whether a food or medicine is abundant in your area, you can consult resources like the United Plant Savers and state and federal listings of endangered and at-risk species.

Never harvest a plant without first assessing its population and the pressures it might face from habitat loss or commercial demand. For example, a plant may be locally abundant, but if there’s a widespread demand, it can quickly disappear, its population decimated from overharvesting.

2. Favor harvesting plants that are nonnative.

One of the first things I consider when choosing which plants to forage is whether a plant is native and tied into local food webs or is an escapee from other lands. Nonnatives displace native species by competing with them for natural resources. These opportunistic plants haven’t evolved locally with the same checks and balances that native plants have experienced, and so they often flourish. This makes them prime forage for us humans, especially because they stick close to places we inhabit, thriving in cities, gardens, fields, and the like. In the southeastern United States, many of our most common wild weedy medicinals are nonnatives, including multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora), Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica), mimosa (Albizia julibrissin), burdock (Arctium minus), and many species of blackberry and raspberry (Rubus spp.).
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Freshly harvested burdock root (Arctium minus)

3. Tend the spaces “in between.”

For those of you who grow a garden, wild weeds will naturally come and make themselves at home—and can peacefully cohabitate with planted veggies and herbs. You can employ plenty of tricks to help them play nice, and, as a reward for acting as a botanical referee, you’ll harvest even more food and medicine from your garden! This is the bounty that grows in between: the medicine and food that you didn’t plant yet still get to reap. My plant friend Frank Cook, who has passed on, used to teach in his classes that more than half the bounty of a garden could be found in the “in between” in the form of useful opportunistic plants. People all around the world capitalize on this abundant resource, casually “cultivating” weeds in the in-between spaces.

Let’s take lamb’s quarters as an example of this useful-weed-and-planted-crop-polyculture method. Lamb’s quarters—also called wild spinach—has more fiber, beta-carotene, vitamin C, zinc, and calcium than cultivated spinach. Why would you weed out such a nutritious plant that doesn’t need special care or insect control to make room for less nutritious vegetables that are harder to grow?

In my garden, I leave the wild spinach that comes up between recently planted vegetable and herb crops. After harvesting the wild spinach for a few weeks or a month, the veggies fill out, and then I pull out the lamb’s quarters and use them as mulch for the planted crops. Wild spinach requires no cultivation after it finds its way into the garden and is relatively disease and insect free.

4. Be a steward.

Even when you gather plentiful (possibly pesky) plants, attune to a code of ethics. You’re interacting with living, breathing beings, after all. Take only what you need, leave beauty in your wake (leave no trace), and bring an offering to make before you go—a song, some water, your hair, a handful of grain. An offering invites a feeling of gratitude, reciprocity, and reverence. If you’re more science-minded, perhaps you’ll take a moment to breathe intentionally, meditating on the reciprocity of plant-human gas exchange, cellular respiration and photosynthesis. You might feel silly at first, but allow yourself the opportunity to be surprised. This is how we participate in the ancient plant-human dance of mutual connection, communication, and care.

If the plant you’re harvesting is native—and you’ve already assessed that it’s abundant enough to harvest—be extra conscientious about not overharvesting. If you’re harvesting an herbaceous plant with multiple stems, take only a stem or two from each plant. Spread your harvest out over a larger area and be sure to leave plenty of flowers and fruit for the plants to reproduce. If you’re harvesting roots, replant the root crown or take only a portion of each plant’s root system. When digging up roots, be sure to cut back the aboveground parts so the plant doesn’t become stressed for water with a root system that no longer matches its aboveground growth. These regenerative practices don’t necessarily need to be followed for invasive weeds with global distribution.

5. Harvest in areas where you know nobody has sprayed herbicide.

It’s important to avoid gathering plants near roads, railroads, and power lines, as the surrounding soil is typically contaminated with lead, herbicides, and other toxins. Always harvest at least 30 feet from the road and make sure you are not harvesting in an area with environmental toxicity (such as the flood banks of a polluted river). Even hay fields that appear to be untended might be sprayed with herbicides.

The foundations of older homes are also problematic, as they are typically sprayed for insect control or weeds. If you live in the city, consider visiting a local organic urban farm or community garden, where you’re likely to find an abundance of yummy weeds, along with gardeners who are happy to share the bounty.
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Harvesting garlic mustard, an invasive weed in North America (Alliaria petiolata)

6. It’s essential to properly identify any plant before you harvest it for food or medicine.

If in doubt, do NOT harvest! Consult your local extension agent, master gardener, or trusted herbalist if you need help with identification. If someone else shows you a plant, do your own homework and make sure that they are right before you harvest! Spend time with plants over the seasons—double-checking both photographs and written descriptions—before you make your move. Learn the poisonous species in your region. Chant to self: COMBINATION OF CHARACTERISTICS FOR PROPER IDENTIFICATION. This is crucial. Identifying plants requires that you look at a combination of specific traits (rather than one or two traits alone), essentially differentiating your plant from the herd.

I’ve learned from teaching wild foods classes over the years that the beginners are often the ones who are appropriately cautious, whereas the folks who know a little more can get bold, lose their cautiousness, and make the wrong move. One wrong move can end up being your last move! There are over a thousand species of poisonous plants in the world, some of which are so poisonous that one to two bites are enough to kill an adult.

Here are a few poisonous plants to learn before you start foraging. This is not a comprehensive list of poisonous plants, which will vary depending on your bioregion. Consult local field guides, governmental websites, and extension offices.

7. Legal and neighborly considerations

Always ask for permission from the landowner if harvesting on private land. If you want to harvest on governmental land, you can check with the managing agency for regulations and permits. Be aware of the different classifications of land management. In the United States, national parks are often visited for their natural beauty and are not generally logged or leased for grazing cattle. The U.S. National Forests are often managed for resources and may be clear-cut and grazed by cattle. You can often obtain permits to gather wild plants for personal use from your local U.S. Forest Service.
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Now, before you grab your foraging basket and pruners, keep in mind that there are other things to consider. In addition to an understanding of plant identification and how to safely forage in appropriate places, you’ll also want to know when and how to gather each wild food and herb. We’ve created an engaging online Foraging Course that will provide you with all the know-how you need to safely and artfully gather sustenance from the world around you. The course releases early in 2018, so sign up for our newsletter to stay in the loop!

In the meanwhile, we’ve got some exciting articles coming down the pike this season: The Ten Best Books on Foraging Wild Foods and Herbs, The Best Regional Books on Plant Identification and Foraging Wild Foods and Herbs, and The Best Free Resources for Learning About Foraging for Wild Foods and Herbs.
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Here are some of my articles on wild foods, including on sochan and lamb’s-quarters.

Our Pinterest Board on Wild Food and Wild Medicine

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My friend Frank Cook used to say, “Eat something wild every day!” I think it’s a reasonable goal, even if it’s just a little nibble. It brings us outdoors and closer to the heart of our sustenance—the elements and the plants that sustain each of us with every breath we take.

Happy Foraging! May your baskets be full and your pantries plump with the bounty and beauty of weeds!

Ruby’s cauliflower mushroom harvest (Sparassis sp.)

This article is a sneak peek into our 375-hour
Online Foraging Course: Edible and Medicinal Wild Herbs,
which begins in January 2018!

This groundbreaking program is shaping up to be THE most comprehensive online course on the topic of harvesting wild medicinals and edible weeds.

Registration for this online course runs December 20th, 2017 through January 15th, 2018 and is only open once a year. The course runs January 15th through November 1st, 2018!

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