Customer Reviews

Tom Brown's Guide to Wild Edible and Medicinal Plants (Field Guide)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This one, in particular, is kind of like reading the earliest Tom Robbins novels (Another Roadside attraction, etc.). Beyond nostalgia, this is a wonderful book - a little too large and poorly illustrated to carry CARELESSLY into the woods - yet very useful and unique. Tom gives us a pre-New Age understanding of his plant friends - the ones we might most need or want to know - while spinning sentimental and spiritual threads that may help bind us to our use of this new knowledge. Collect the Peterson's and indepth holistic herbals, but don't pass up on Tom's.

This book doesn't have the impersonality of other edible and medicinal plant books. It doesn't have a lot of pictures or good descriptions, but it shows the other side of gathering wild plants, the spiritual experience. It also gives a good introduction to Tom Brown's philosophy. If you want a stuffy book with lots of pictures and blunt descriptions, without any feeling, get another book. But if you want to know what it felt like to our hunter-gatherer ancesters, read this one.

I was very disappointed by this book. It is a field guide, yet contains no pictures for identification. If you don't already know what plant you have, this book is no use. If you already know, you probably don't need this book.

I love Tom Brown, and his stories about plants are an important part of how I practice herbal medicine. But this book would have been much much better if it had illustrations or at least drawings. As a result, I leave the book at home and read it for enjoyment, cross-referencing it with a field guide if need be.

This is an excelent book just like all of Tom's books. It takes you past the usual explainations and gives you a chance to really "Know" the plants. It's not meant to take the place of other identification guides, it goes much more in depth, every plant has a fantastic story on it's use and Tom's personal experience with it. I have read most of Tom's books and plan to read them all, this one is no exception it's great.

This book is not something that you can throw in your bag, take it to the woods, and identify plants with. It has very few pictures, and the few pictures it contains, are just colorless sketches. That being said, this book contains wonderful information about many types of plants. Tom brown even says that this book is meant to be used in combination with other field guides. He also recommends several wonderful guides in the book. Once you can successfully identify a plant, then you can use this book's vast amounts of useful information to learn what, food and medicinal values that the plant has. In addition to wonderful information, there are many wonderful stories about Tom's personal experience with each plant. I highly recommend this book to any person who is looking to a expand their information about plants, or needs a companion to another field guide.

In this book Tom isn't really trying to make a field guide to identify edible/medicinal plants. He is trying to get you to enjoy those plants, not just use them. Each plant that he talks about has a story that goes along with it. Whether it is the first time he took a sip of catnip tea or an adventure down the river on a raft made from sassafras trees that had been cut down. I have found this book extremely helpful in enjoying and getting to know the types of plants described. Which i find in turn helps me a lot with identifying them from look a likes and really appreciating what i do find to eat.