Tom Brown's Guide to Wild Edible and Medicinal Plants (Field Guide) [Mass Market Paperback]

Tom Brown (Author)

Book Description

Series: Field Guide | Publication Date: September 1, 1992

For untold thousands of years, human beings have thrived on the nutritional and medicinal wealth of the plant life in the natural world. In these fascinating, wide-ranging, wonderfully informative stories, Tom Brown--director of the world-famous Tracking, Nature, and Wilderness Survival School--tells all about the uncommon benefits of the common trees, shrubs, flowers, and other plants we find all around us. This indispensible guide includes information on:

How to use every part of the plant--leaves, flowers, bark, bulbs, and roots

Where to find useful plants, and the best time of the year and stages of growth to harvest them

How to prepare delicious food dishes, soups, breads and teas from the riches of the great outdoors

An incredible range of experience-proven medicinal uses to treat headaches, burns, digestive disorders, skin problems, and a host of other maladies

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Tom Brown, Jr. began to learn hunting and tracking at the age of eight under the tutelage of an Apache elder, medicine man, and scout in Toms River, New Jersey, and is the author of 16 books on nature. Recently, he was the technical advisor on The Hunted, a major motion picture starring Tommy Lee Jones and Benecio Del Toro.   In 1978, Tom founded the Tracker School in the New Jersey Pine Barrens where he offers more than 25 classes about wilderness survival and environmental protection.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Trade (September 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425100634
• ISBN-13: 978-0425100639
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #26,352 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #25 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Biological Sciences > Botany
  • #45 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Hiking & Camping > Instructional
  • #61 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Biological Sciences > Ecology

More About the Author

Tom Brown, Jr is America's most acclaimed outdoorsman, and a renowned tracker, teacher, and author. When Tom was only seven, Stalking Wolf (Grandfather), an Apache elder, shaman and scout, began coyote teaching Tom in the skills of tracking, wilderness survival, and awareness. After Stalking Wolf's final walk, Tom spent the next ten years wandering the wilderness throughout the America's with no manufactured tools--in most cases not even a knife--perfecting Grandfathers skills and teachings. Tom came back to "civilization" and began looking for people interested in all that he had learned, but found none. He felt lost and confused until a local sheriff who knew Tom called him in to track a lost person. Tom found the missing person and, in the process, found his Vision.
Over the next few years Tom earned his reputation as "The Tracker" by finding lost people, and fugitives. He has since worked with many law enforcement agencies, throughout the United States and internationally, on cases involving abducted children, lost hunters and hikers, and fugitives. He wrote about his experiences in a book titled The Tracker, which was published in 1978. Soon after, Reader's Digest ran a condensed version of Tom's story and included information on the Tracker School. That was over thirty years ago, and today Tom Brown Jr's Tracker School http://www.trackerschool.com is teaching people from all over the world and from all walks of life. Since the success of The Tracker, Tom has authored 16 books on tracking, awareness, nature observation and survival, including, Grandfather, The Vision, The Way of the Scout and a series of field guides, which have sold well over a million copies.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An unusual plant guide, September 7, 2004

By 

M. Coppedge (North Carolina) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tom Brown's Guide to Wild Edible and Medicinal Plants (Field Guide) (Mass Market Paperback)

This book differs greatly from other edible-plant guides. First, it has no pictures of plants: neither drawings, nor illustrations or photographs. If you want to use this guide, you definitely need a second book that shows what the plants look like. Second, it is not about a technical description of plants but about their spiritual value. The author discusses every plant according to its "personality," which is a detailed account of his personal experience with the plant, childhood memories related to the plant, and teachings he got from an Apache elder. We then learn how the plant can be used as food and as medicine. In either case, the author shows clearly how the plant should be harvested, cooked, eaten, stored, prepared and prescribed. He also points to possible dangers if a particular plant can be easily confused with a toxic plant, or when a plant could trigger reactions in allergic people.

Although the spiritual approach may not appeal to everyone, this book is quite informative and in many ways better than the purely descriptive guides. It concentrates on about 45 plants you will find in meadows, fields, and (if you like weeds) in your backyard.

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Plant information not found elsewhere, January 17, 2001

By 

Doug Kramer (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tom Brown's Guide to Wild Edible and Medicinal Plants (Field Guide) (Mass Market Paperback)

In this Tom Brown, Jr. Field Guide, the reader is connected to plants in ways not explored in more scientific field guides. Mr. Brown shares stories, feelings and energies connected to various plants. In addition, there are medicinal and edible uses you WILL NOT find in other guides. These uses come from the Native American traditions so thoroughly explored by Grandfather Stalking Wolf and Tom Brown, Jr. himself. If you are a wild plant enthusiast, add this book to your library. If you have read Tom Brown, don't pass this one up.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great for the info it has, but not an identification and classification book, February 18, 2006

By 

Richard A. Hicks (Panama City, FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tom Brown's Guide to Wild Edible and Medicinal Plants (Field Guide) (Mass Market Paperback)

This book is written from the standpoint of someone who needs to use plants either for survival or bush medicine. It is not the best or most accurate filed guide for identifying or classifying plants. I found it best to use this book in conjunction with an Audubon field guide. The Audubon filed guide will give you a picture and a better description of the plant that you are looking for, Tom Brown's book tells you what to do with the plant when you find it.

Tom browns book is the more important part of this equation, what good is knowing what a plant looks like without knowing what it is used for? So, I recommend using a different field guide for finding a certain plant, and then using Tom Brown's guide and practice making the medicinal applications and teas that he has. This book was not designed to take the place of a standard photographic field guide. It is designed to be used first in conjunction with a standard field guide until you know the plant and can identify it, then the illustrations and such are only to jog your memory in the field if you are looking for a certain remedy plant but its been a while since you messed with it.