When I went into the woods today, I found an edible surprise....

August 16, 2008 9:13 AM

What is the best/easiest/clearest guide book to edible wild plants, especially or specific to Western Canada? I want to go into the woods prepared to come out with real food.
posted by Kickstart70 to Food & Drink (3 answers total)

Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons (interview) is the classic text on foraging and this guy from Wild Food Adventures has a neat little website and pointers to a lot more good stuff. If you scroll down on that page there are a lot of good search terms that if you're new to this type of thing, may be useful to you in refining searches online or at the library.
posted by jessamyn at 9:41 AM on August 16, 2008

I'm fond of Edible Native Plants of the Rocky Mountains,
by Harrington, illustrated by Matsumura. Try to get a full size
hardcover edition, because the illustrations will suffer in the smaller
editions.
It was this book that taught me how much better botanical illustrations
can be than photographs when it comes to plant identification.
posted by the Real Dan at 9:42 AM on August 16, 2008

Harvesting the Northern Wild, by Marilyn Walker, is pretty good. As the title says, it's focused on plants in northern Canada but useful in other parts of Canada as well.

It's out of print but you might be able to find a copy at a used bookstore.
posted by meadowlands at 10:57 PM on August 16, 2008