The Quick Guide to Wild Edible Plants: Easy to Pick, Easy to Prepare

This short but informative guide introduces readers to a small but intriguing variety of forageable edibles, beginning, wisely, with detailed descriptions and pictures of poisonous plants to avoid. Musselman, a botany professor, and Wiggins, an environmental scientist with the Army Corps of Engineers, have chosen plants that “are easy to identify and do not have any toxic look-alikes.” These include widely known tasties such as blueberries; flora that may be familiar in landscaping or as weeds but perhaps not as food, such as daylily, oak, red spruce, dock, and kudzu; less-known edibles like glasswort and nutsedge; and fungi. Descriptions include historical, botanical, collecting, and preparation information, as well as possible health benefits. The authors have put considerable work into discovering plants with enough edible content to make them worthwhile to collect and eat. As they admit, however, “Concocting these recipes drew upon our passion for plants more than our culinary expertise.” Although Boy Scout– and Girl Scout–types may enjoy the bare-bones recipes, slow- and wild-food aficionados may need to follow the authors’ advice to “use your own imagination in crafting recipes.” 116 color illus. (June)