Customer Reviews

Food Plants of the Sonoran Desert

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is not an "edible plants" field guide. It is an in depth review of Arizona, Sonora, and Baja desert plants useful as food and for other purposes. It is useful for building short term survival skills, for adding desert plants to ones diet, and as an ethnologic look at the indigenous population of the Sonoran Desert. It is an excellent book and one I am very happy to own.

I divide wild food books into two types: those based on personal experience (or at least that pretend to be), and those based on research of ethnology. Hodgson's book falls into the latter category, and I think it is the best such book ever written, at least for any part of North America. Food Plants of the Sonoran Desert covers hundreds of species--all or virtually all that are known or strongly suspected to be used (or have been used previously) for food in this region. The diversity of plants covered is amazing. Some are discussed with very short entries because little is known about their use, while others receive lengthy treatment (mesquite, acorn, Stenocereus cactus) because they were staple foods and much has been recorded about their use. The book is done in an admirable scholarly fashion - sources are not only cited, but contradicting sources are sometimes quoted in juxtaposition and discussed.

To those who already have wild food field guides, you will be amazed at how many interesting and useful plants you'll find in this book that you might have never heard of. There are probably more species in here than in most field guides intended to cover the whole continent. (This should be a lesson for those unrealistic foragers who think they'll be able to find a field guide covering a whole continent or country (or even half of one) and thoroughly discuss every wild edible. It just can't fit in one book.) Of course, the Sonoran Desert is only a tiny fraction of the US, and this book also covers the Sonoran parts of Mexico, but many of the plants discussed range well outside this bioregion. I live 1,500 miles from the Sonoran desert and only get there about once every two years, but I still find it fascinating to read.

This is a great book for those interested in natural history, plants, ethnobotany, and the Sonoran Desert in particular. For survivalists, it provides sufficient information for the plants to be actually utilized, at least in many cases.

Although the photos are black and white, they are generally good. That said -- this is NOT AN ID GUIDE.

I wish every bioregion had a book like this. But then again, the ethnographic record in the Sonoran is far better than that in many other parts of the continent.

I found this book to be very well researched and written. For the price I would(and did) expect color photos; a black and white photo backed up with a drawing of the plant just does not cut it and leaves lots of room for question. This is one aspect of the book that has me really disappointed!

This book, though a little scientific in its language for a lay person, is a wonderful source for discovering the food that is all around us in the Sonoran Desert. I will use this book as a "map" of sorts through my home yard and wilder desert locations. Impressive!

This book is very good - very thorough. I do wish there were more pictures...color pictures at that, but it has so much good information that it still doesn't detract from 5 star rating.

I had been searching for an authoritative, exhaustingly-researched book specific to the ancient food plants of the Sonoran Desert and this is easily the definitive volume.

The book's catalog has three sections: Gymnosperms, Amniosperms: Monocots, and Angiosperms: Dicots, and there are 151 illustrations. Appendices include Plant Species and Parts Used (13 pages), Fruiting Periods of Selected Species Providing Edible Fruit (4 pages), Fruiting Periods of Selected Species Providing Edible Seeds (3 pages), Common Names (Non-English) (7 pages), and Literature Cited (18 pages). A good thorough Index is always helpful and this one includes Common Names in English and many other references for a total of 14 pages.

The amount of writing for each plant varies, likely corresponding with the frequency of its usage as a food source. For example, Sonchus (sow-thistle) gets less than half a page, while Yucca is more thoroughly explored on a full seven pages.

Ms. Hodgson's approach to the subject matter can be seen in her preface, which begins with a quote from Mary Austin: "When I'm out with the Indian women, gathering roots and materials for basket making, it's not that i expect to make baskets or drink their medicine, it's the things you sort of soak up from the earth while you're with them, it's the things that make women wise. I don't know if I can explain -- it's not as if they learned about the willows and the grasses in order to make baskets, but as if they learned to make baskets by knowing willows. I guess men used to learn that way once -- learned to make bows by knowing the junipers, the way the branches bend and spring back. But now they try to do all their learning in their heads." An excellent quote to start an ethnobotanical study of the plants eaten in the Sonoran Desert before modern agriculture sowed the land with species from other places and poured chemicals all over them and the soil to aid in the temporary appearance of artificial adaptation.

This well researched book is organized alphabetically by Latin family name with the common name beside it. A description of physical characteristics of 530+ plants is followed by descriptions covering how the plant was used by various native tribes as researched by the author. All references are present and turned me onto many other good sources of similar information (often the sources were some obscure portion of notes from a ways back..happy not to need to sort through it all). The photographs are not bad, but not great either however, the drawings are first rate, large, clear and with plenty of detail. The book covers not only the various food plant families in the Sonoran Desert, but also distinguishes where different plants in the same family require different preparation.
The Appendixes in the back cover in easy to read tables, the fruiting period of some of the species that provide edible fruit and seeds. Also covered in the same fashion is a table showing the plant species and part used. While the price of the book was off putting, I finally bit the bullet and am glad I did.

I had high expectations for this book which would have been fulfilled if there weren't blank pages scattered throughout the book in the sections I was most interested in. It looked like the printer hiccuped and just missed pages here and there throughout the text. I had just gone through another bad experience with a text book through amazon and didn't at all want to go through that again so I just ended up keeping the damn thing.