Customer Reviews

The Illustrated Guide to Edible Wild Plants

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Good little book that covers quite a lot. Gives good information on those plants in the wild that can be used for food. Along with this it gives excellent clear color close up pictures of the plants with a description of their botanical structures, habitats and distribution, edible parts and other uses such as making baskets, rope, medicines, etc. Also gives good photo descriptions of the most dangerous and poisonous plants and how to identify and recognize them.

although this book describes many many plants, it is very vague which is not good for a beginner. the book is very nicely organized and can be a very nice quick reference. for someone who already knows what they are doing this could be a 5 star book. but for me, i need the details such as descriptions of the poisonous look-alikes. that one bit of information is just as important as the description of the plant itself. a better book for beginners would be "the foragers harvest". that book describes less plants but with MUCH more detail. i love that book. but i am glad that i also have this book so i can identify any plant that comes along but if i had to choose one book id go with "the foragers harvest".

While the book informs us about edible plants, it warns that there are similar plants that are poisonous -- and doesn't give any description for them! I'd have to be really, really hungry before I would risk using this book.

The book is small and easy to pack. Each plant has a color photo, and in most cases there is a listing of the region(s) in which the plant is found. There is a separate section for poisonous plants.

This product was not very helpful. It doesn't cover enough practical plants and it wasn't that descriptive. I wished the pictures were a little better. It was hard to tell what some of them were. I sent this one back because it just didn't encompass as many plants from North America as I would have liked. I figured since it was done by the US Army it would at least be thorough but guess not. So as my final thought I would say it is not worth it if you are using it for overall survival purposes. It is great to flip through once.

This is an excellent book on the few plants that it covers. Not only does it tell you what parts are edible, but also what other uses the plant has.

Nice pictures but was lacking info. Descriptions of locations and habitats were vague. Mostly tropical plants, which helps me very little being that I live in the Rocky Mountains.

This is a handy and interesting little book. I bought it mainly to recognize poisonous plants when I camp out, but it makes for an interesting read if you like outdoors activity. I will take it along when I go camping--it will be fun to read when there is some down time. This book is FULL of really great full page pictures of the plants, leaves, etc.

This book fulfills it's purpose quite well. It was inteneded to provide the soldier guidance in finding edible plants regardless of location. It does a good job at this. It could, however use better illustrations.

On page 3 figure 1-2 "Leaf Shapes", show all the plant leaf shapes, eight
different shapes you will need to learn in order to help choose the right plant
to eat or not to eat. But, after your are into the book many pages the author
starts referring to an "arrow shape" which in not one of the "Leaf Shapes" on
page 3. All together there are about five locations in the book where "arrow
shape" is use to discrib the shape of various plants.
On page 116 is a picture of what the author is describing as a yam and pictures
of the yam leaves. This is not a yam that I have eaten, nor dose it look like
any that I have seen and not eaten. So I did a search on Google Images(and found the one on page 116) and there are many many different yams, not just one as shown on page 116.
I can not believe that the Department Of The Army purchased and used this book
without checking it out, but maybe they did!
I do not think this book should get a single star, it is badly written.