19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What you really need to play to safe with the wild stuff, July 15, 2001
This review is from: An Instant Guide to Edible Plants (Instant Guides) (Hardcover)
This book is both a treasure, and a literal life-saver. The value of careful, detailed, full-color illustrations to the wild food forager cannot be over-stated. Near misses in id'ing a plant can put you in the hospital, or worse yet in the morgue (the number 1 reason why I don't eat wild mushrooms).
The ladies who put this one together knew what questions the beginner would need answered and in simple to the point pictures, text and diagrams tell all.
The layout of the book makes for speed and ease in usage and the illustrations are lovely. You will be amazed at what you find within.
If you have only one wild edibles book in your house make it this one!
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good and bad, February 19, 2007
This review is from: An Instant Guide to Edible Plants (Instant Guides) (Hardcover)
The good: This guide
* is small and compact
* is hardcover, more durable
* is sorted by edible plants parts
* is concise. It provides the most relevant information for identification and edibility on a single page
The bad: This guide
* has laughable distribution maps. They should be ignored. The distribution maps are extremely east-coast-centric, so it gives the appearance that all plants are either spread out over the entire continent, or are only on the east coast. The entry for blackberries, for example, says they don't grow here in Oregon. Anyone who lives on the west coast knows that blackberries are one of our major domestic and wild crops. They grow wild everywhere here. Same thing for the white oak entry.
* does not list any of the scientific names for any of the plant entries, one of the cardinal sins when constructing a nature guide. This makes it a bother to cross reference the entries in this book with other volumes. This is particularly useful when trying to determine whether something is a poisonous look-alike or not, dangerous when those scientific names are absent. Common names often are not the same when going from region to region. To make this book more useful I had to figure out and write in the family/genus/species names where appropriate so I could use it with other references.
Recommended but only as supplement to existing guides, such as Bradford Angier's Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants or a National Audubon field guide.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
not so good book, August 25, 2009
This review is from: An Instant Guide to Edible Plants (Instant Guides) (Hardcover)
It needs real pictures of the plants not drawings. someone could eat the wrong things with out proper photos to id the plants also there are a hell of a lot more edible plants than these.
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