The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants [Paperback]

Samuel Thayer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 2006

A practical guide to all aspects of edible wild plants: finding and identifying them, their seasons of harvest, and their methods of collection and preparation. Each plant is discussed in great detail and accompanied by excellent color photographs. Includes an index, illustrated glossary, bibliography, and harvest calendar. The perfect guide for all experience levels.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Forager's Harvest Press; 1 edition (May 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0976626608
• ISBN-13: 978-0976626602
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (95 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,783 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #2 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Biological Sciences > Plants
  • #4 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Agricultural Sciences
  • #22 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

379 of 381 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best available book on edible plants!, December 13, 2006

By 

Washu-chan (St. Louis, MO USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants (Paperback)

I am a botanist and I'm in love with this book. Admittedly, it treats only a few dozen plants, but each is described in detail, with methods of distinguishing it in the field from similar species, harvesting, and preparing it. Numerous color photos are very useful. There are good general discussions of plant identification, harvesting, and preservation. The author complains about previous edible plant references, which exhaustively list hundreds of plants but give inadequate information on each, and frequently recycle information from previous literature, allowing misinformation to creep in (an undeniable problem). Thayer proposes that writers on edible plants should provide only information from their own experience or else specifically referenced information, a praiseworthy code of conduct and one that really makes this book shine. When he gives you detailed instructions for when and how to gather and prepare a plant, you know that he's actually done it himself and it worked. I like his standards for the plants as well: Food should taste good! If it doesn't taste good, he says, don't eat it! So, while other books provide long lists of "survival foods" that would gag a goat, Thayer discusses only the plants that he actually enjoys eating. He tells you what sort of quality to expect in the final products, and whether they will be worth the work you put into them. The only volume I can recall seeing of remotely similar quality was Steve Brill's book, which dealt with a different set of plants (emphasizing the common "weedy" species that Thayer is not particularly interested in), so if you already have Brill, you can buy this too. Otherwise, if you want to start learning to use edible wild plants, start with this volume.

221 of 221 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The BEST book for a beginner, October 19, 2006

By 

William Smith "Will" (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants (Paperback)

I have 3 books on wild food foraging, including Angier's Wild Edibles and Gibbons Stalking the Wild Asparagus. Both those books are very good for plant details except they rely on hand drawn depictions for the plants, which it makes them close to useless for accurate identification. Forager's Harvest is the BEST book of the three for getting a beginner started. Lots and lots of nice color photographs of the plants. When choosing a book in getting started in foraging, you must have color photographs, there is no substitute.

Forager's Harvest, unlike Gibbons and Angier books, does not overwhelm the reader with large numbers of edible plants, choosing to focus on a lower but still fairly good number of readily found and easily identitified plants for foraging. This increases the reader confidence and starts them off gradually.

If you are starting out in foraging, this is the book you should get. If you are botanist and have no problems identifying plants them Gibbons or Angier books might suit you better. As I am a beginner, I can say that of the three books, Forager's Harvest if the book that I will be using in my plant foraging expeditions. I wish I had gotten this book first.

138 of 138 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Source for Information on a few plants..., February 18, 2007

By 

Erik M. Smith (Spokane, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants (Paperback)

This book offers an excellent introducion to the practice of wild plant harvesting. Not only are the plants discussed (in great detail), but the author includes many personal experiences and additional information (the first 75 pages - timing, storage, etc.) - including recomendations on further book resources. The descriptions of the two dozen or so plants are extensive. The book gives information on ID, range, harvesting, and preparation. I live in Washington State, though, and I have only found about 11 of the plant species readily available here (Choke Cherry, Wapato, Butternut(in urban settings), Black Locust, Cattail, Stinging Nettle, Serviceberry, Sumac (Staghorn), Linden (urban ornamental), Burdock, and Thistle). The book is still a wealth of inforomation and a very valuable resource.