Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (And Not So Wild) Places

This is a great book for the inexperienced forager. It covers a few hundred of the most common and useful edible and medicinal plants in North America. It is not exhaustive, but very usable and practical. Folk wisdom, first-hand practical experience, and scientific fact are blended with humorous and interesting anecdotes that help make this a very readable guide. Its main drawback is the lack of color photos for plant identification (relies on beautiful black-and-white drawings), so you may wish to combine with one or two of the other recommended guides.