Sam Thayer’s Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants of Eastern and Central North America

by Samuel Thayer, 736 pages, 6⅓x9¾, softcover. My wife and I do a lot of wild foraging, and Thayer’s three previous compendiums have always come with us, even though it’s like bringing a library every time we go wandering. Not any more. This new field guide, written for the lay forager, describes more than 600 species of wild edible plants with precise identification keys. It contains all the species from his other books, plus hundreds more, many not found in other foraging guides. Complete with color photos and range maps, optimal harvest windows, visual keys to harvestable parts and their uses, as well as clear descriptions of any similar-looking plants to avoid, this is an excellent plant ID book in its own right. The format is that of a true field guide, with condensed half- to full-page write-ups instead of the in-depth multi-page treatises you may be familiar with from his other books. This guide will now be the one we confidently take when we’re on the move, leaving all other plant ID books at home to reference at a more leisurely pace. -ND