Southwest Foraging: 117 Wild and Flavorful Edibles from Barrel Cactus to Wild Oregano (Regional Foraging Series)

This book would be more useful in a printed version as I would never bring my Kindle with me on a hot sandy desert for fear of damaging it. I would have liked seeing more photos from better angles as seeing just the flowering top of just the prostrate forms of many high-tech varieties are not really clear for identification..you might want to bring a well photographed foresters botanical handbook with you for added safety and ...you should never eat but a tiny sample with at least a tour to six your delay after ingestion to ensure it is what you thought it is. Even so I, even after living on the edge of the Desert for over twenty years, still took several long field plant identification classes that included physical foraging and later preparation as good before venturing out on my own. Doing this I never got sick of had to drive to an emergency room with a swollen tongue or worse. Oh..never ever go alone on foraging trips in the southwest as you can easily fall into heat cracks in the soil or into thorny bushes when your enthusiasm for having 95% identified Roddenberry from ground wild raspberry only to be unable to drive home, getting stuck in sand filled seemingly solid washes or a irritated snake,s bite can ruin a good outing, but it you're careful and read this book as ONE of several guides and bring with you a good (over 15$) field desert plant identification guide and a friend, you should be okay.

I have the Kindle version and this book has sooo many plants! It's indexed by name, so you really need to be able to ID a plant before this book will be helpful in identifying how to use it.

I have started a collection of books about the finding and uses of plants in the Sonoran Desert. So far this is by far my favorite. It's full of photos, when, where, and how to find each plant, and what parts are edible and or medicinal. After quickly browsing through it the first time, my dogs and I were off for a hike through the desert, and I was amazed at how many edible plants I could recognize immediately. I had considered several to be nothing but weeds before. I love this book and I am thrilled to be able to apply it to real life and real use. My guests for dinner are often amazed at how tasty my wild gatherings are and how much food the " barren" desert has to offer. I will be utilizing this book for a long time and I can't wait for seasons to pass so I can harvest new and tasty desert plants. This book is loaded with good photos making plant identification easy. If I am not sure about a plant I take a photo of it and then compare it to the book. Now I am putting a plant harvesting backpack together, so I can carry the book and necessary tools with me for harvesting. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know what to fine dine on safely out in the wild desert. I have even found several tasty plants right in my yard! How amazing is that? This, in my opinion, is the ultimate in healthy organic eating, and the price is perfect!

This book was wonderful.What appealed to me the most was how much this book is aimed at actually USING the knowledge given. Quite often, I find books on foraging that are aimed more at giving you the idea that a food is edible, but without much practical knowledge on how to use it.This is the exact opposite. The plants are listed alphabetically, but in the beginning is a listing of all 4 seasons and every plant that is ready to be harvested during that season is listed. What can be eaten or used on a plant is mentioned explicitly. There were also frequently tips on how to harvest more easily, how to prepare foods for cooking, or even how to cook/prepare the food itself. Pictures were clear, and a description of where to find the plants was very useful as well.Just overall a really practical, dead useful guide for foraging for the beginner, or for someone who might be more of an experienced amateur forager.

This is generally not a bad book. It does cover a huge geographic range that has many ecosystems, which leads to it being vague in parts. It tends to have one page or article to cover an entire series of similar plants, without many pictures showing the different species. And, well, in general the pictures are not very helpful. Often there is only one, and it may be a close up of the fruit, without a lot of different views to help with identification. For instance the elderberry article has a long-range picture of a bush that could be almost anything, and a close up of a berry cluster- no discernible picture of a leaf. Oddly, there is NO section covering poisonous plants of the region as it usual in such books, so that readers can avoid them. So for instance one plant description warns not to harvest it until it flowers so that it can be differentiated from Death Camas, yet there is no picture of Death Camas anywhere in the book. Hmm. Bit of an omission, that. So, those are my biggest complaints. A lesser complaint is that the author seems to have a preference for rare and unusual plant names. For instance the acorn article is titled "bellota", and the huckleberry article is titled "farkleberry." What the heck? Why not use the most common names that most people know? Heck, "mast" would have been better than "bellota"! A few use the genus name, such as "capita" instead of saltbush, but come on, list it as saltbush- that's the most prevalent common name in the U.S. If only to try to keep some consistency with 99% of the other foraging books on the market. And then, in places where the genus name would arguably be most appropriate- in the articles that cover many similar species- it is NOT used. For instance, opuntia instead of prickly pear. Very inconsistent.

I'm from Arizona and want to know more about using the medicine and edible plants in the desert, since we have possible food shortages in our future. This is an excellent source for identifing and how to use southwest plants.

Ottimo per le schede e per l'apparato fotografico, come tutta la collana (da seguire solo quando scende sotto i 15€ a volume); in questo volume vengono coperti gli Stati sud occidentali (Arizona, Nuovo Messico, Oklahoma, Utah e Nevada del sud, Texas).