Guide to Wild Foods and Useful Plants [Paperback]

Christopher Nyerges (Author), Ed Begley Jr. (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1999

An array of abundant wild foods is available to hikers, campers, botanists or anyone interested in living closer to the earth. Written by a leading expert on wild foods and a well-known teacher of survival skills, Guide to Wild Foods and Useful Plants is more than a listing of plant types—it teaches how to recognize edible plants and where to find them, their medicinal and nutritional properties, and their growing cycles. It also includes fascinating folklore about plants, personal anecdotes about trips and meals, simple and tasty recipes, and photographs.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Nyerges, an authority on survival skills, discusses 71 wild foods--from agave to yucca--and tells where they can be found. Some of the more familiar plants are chickweed, chicory, dandelion, fennel, grass, milkweed, nasturtium, prickly pear, thistle, and yarrow. Photographs, other illustrations, and textual descriptions of the various parts of the plants (stalks, stems, leaves, and flowers) make identification easy. In each listing, the author explains the plant's edible properties and medicinal uses, where to find it, and its growing cycle. The book also includes some plant folklore and several recipes. A few of the plants, such as poison hemlock, tree tobacco, and jimsonweed, are poisonous but have some medicinal value. There is a pictorial key to leaf shapes and one to fruits and seeds, as well as a glossary, If you're lost in the woods, the book could save your life; if you're interested in plant life and botany, the book is fascinating reading. George Cohen

About the Author

Christopher Nyerges is the codirector with his wife of the School of Self-Reliance, where he has taught classes on wild foods and survival skills since 1974. He is an associate editor of Wilderness Way and west coast editor of Wild Food Forum. He has published hundreds of articles on wild foods, gardening, self-reliance, and survival skills in American Survival Guide, Whole Life Times, Mother Earth News, Herbalist, and many other magazines. He and his wife, Dolores, live in Los Angeles. Ed Begley, Jr, is an actor and an environmental activist.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press; 1 edition (May 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556523440
• ISBN-13: 978-1556523441
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 0.5 x 5.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #325,613 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A great companion book... March 10, 2007

By Hawkeye

Format:Paperback

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

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Verbal content good but ... November 2, 2011

By Stephen Bach

Format:Paperback

I heard the author interviewed by Jill Cloutier on Sustainable World Radio (highly recommended), and I was very favorably impressed.
So I bought the book. I think the verbal content is good (I haven't gotten to the part mentioned in the earlier review where the author apparently confuses carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide), but there are two problems with this book:

1) the pictures are in black and white. For a book intended to educate its readers to identify possible plants to eat, I think this is a major shortcoming.

2) the book has no index. This is a grievous omission. If this is the publisher's doing, then the author should find another publisher for his work. A reference book like this should not be without an index. Truth in packaging: How many people would buy this book if in the description of it in the catalog it said, "Has no index." ?

So color me disappointed.

The publisher has a PDF format version of the book, but there's no indication that that version contains color photos. Since the author apparently owns the photos here's a suggestion for him: compress the color photos into a ZIP file and offer it for free on his web page for readers to download.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Useful info but not the photos so much... September 20, 2008

By Randy J. Mercurio

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

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