Foraging for Edible Wild Plants: A Field Guide to Wild Berries

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Two of the best field guides carry the same name.

Edible Wild Plants, A North American Field Guide (Sterling, 1992) by Eilas and Dykeman. By a pair of Ph.D. botanists, a readable and authoritative guide. Color photos of nearly all plants. A first choice.

Edible Wild Plants (Houghton Mifflin, 1977) by Lee Allen Peterson. By the son of field-guide inventor Roger Tory Peterson, in the familiar field guide format with excellent line drawings by the master and son. A close second choice (though you'd do best to rely on both).

Keep in mind that regional guides are essential for many parts of the continent. Take care to consult them before picking.

Guide to Wild Foods and Useful Plants (Chicago Review Press, 1999) by Mother Earth News contributor Christopher Nyerges. A key to 70 plants common to Southern California from a lifelong survivalist with a flair for the unexpected recipe.

Food Plants of Interior First Peoples (UBC Press, 1997) by Nancy J. Turner. Iron Eyes Cody said of this book, "Every Boy Scout should have a copy." Accompanied by the companion volume covering foods of shore tribes, it makes an informative guide to the myriad wild foods of the upper Pacific Northwest.

Old-Time Know-How from the Deep South (Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1973), Eliot Washington, ed.

WHAT'S NEW IN THE BERRY PATCH

In the continual, often problematic, march of agricultural science and technology are several recent developments in growing berries.

CUSTOM BERRY GROUND MICROFLORA

We organic gardeners depend more than many of us realize on a group of soil microflora (tiny plants) with the two-dollar name mycorrhizae (my-co-risé-ae), a term that encompasses many related species of microscopic fungus that inhabit healthy, living organic soil in a symbiotic (mutually beneficial) relationship with the root systems of nearly all living plants, berry plants included. For the past half-billion years, these tiny, underground relatives of mushrooms have evolved in concert with sun-loving green plants.

Like all fungi, mycorrhizae contain no chlorophyll, so lack green plants' ability to synthesize sugar from water and sunlight. They obtain nourishment by tapping into host plants' roots. In return, they exert a beneficial mechanical and chemical influence on the surrounding soil by extending root fibers and converting raw soil components into forms more readily absorbed and metabolized by their host plants. In addition, the fungi facilitate water intake and transpiration while moderating intake of salt and other chemical soil pollutants. Plants growing in soil inoculated with the appropriate species of mycorrhizae will survive transplantation more easily and will grow and produce better, faster and more uniformly.

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