A couple of the books I have found helpful in foraging:

Botany in a Day - not an edible plants book or a field guide, but it gives you a great overview of learning plant families by common features(i.e. anything with a square stem and opposite leaves is in the mint family), which makes identifying plants a lot easier. This book also has some basic info on medicinal components of plants, and does have some info on edible uses of plants.

All The Rain promises and More - this is an excellent mushroom field guide the northwest, but many of the species are common elsewhere, and you can learn a lot about mushroom hunting in general from this book. Contrary to popular beleif, eating wild mushrooms is very safe as long as you use your brain and are careful(in other words don't eat something unless you are absolutely sure what it is). FYI mushroom season is just getting underway, so now is a great time to start learning.

The Foragers Harvest - Covers relatively few plants, but in great detail, at least several pages per plant, from ID to harvest to preparation. Definitely worth reading.

One thing I've found helpful is to use a local flower or other plant guide to identify the plants, and then look those up in a separate edible plants book or online. There are a lot more guides to flowers and plants than there are books that focus on edibles, so this can really make identification easier.


I have the Petersons guide but it is the least useful guide I own, and I own a lot of field guides. I do not find it helpful in identifying plants, and there is very little information on how to use the plants. The one nice thing about it is that it covers a great many plants, but what use is a long list of plants if you can't identify or properly use them?