Product Description

This delightful field guide to wild foods describes more than eighty edible plants that grow in Indiana and adjacent states and gives directions for delicious ways-many originals, all "tested in the field"- of preparing them. The guide provides a plant perspective of Indiana and a seasonal guide to foraging, which tells what plants to look for at each season of the year. A detailed description and a drawing are given for each plant or plant family, along with its preferred habitats, its distribution within the state,and information on the edible parts. What makes Wild Food Plants of Indiana special are the dozens of tempting recipes. The pleasure of spring include wild asparagus soup, evening primrose roots in sweet and sour sauce, poke salad, wild onion broth with cornmeal dumplings, and spring beauty fondue. Early summer brings rose butter sandwiches, wild strawberry roly-poly, and steamed cattail spikes (which taste like corn on the cob). In July and August you can relish chokecherry cornbread, day lily fritters, mulberry wine, and juneberry shortcake. Among the riches of fall are creamy hickory nut soup, hazelnut bread, and pawpaw ice cream.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #954000 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-13
• Released on: 2007-04-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

About the Author
Alan McPherson was born and raised in north central Indiana. He learned about medicinal and wild food plants from his pharmacist grandfather and country savvy grandmother. Exploring the countryside and enjoying what nature had to offer during the warm days of summer youth was a way of life. During graduate school, his motivation to co author Wild Foods of Indiana was inspired by Euell Gibbons, renowned author of Stalking the Wild Asparagus, who, at one time, lived in Indiana near Greenfield, Hancock County. One of McPherson's favorite outdoor pastimes is botanizing the cultivated and wild places and searching for edible wild plants. Sue A. Clark is also a native Hoosier from east central Indiana. She learned how to cook from her country grandmother and by her own experimentation. Growing up, she earned blue ribbon awards with her cooking skills. After graduating from college, she pursued the culinary arts and adventured in the plant kingdom. Clark's love of cooking and the outdoors, combined to create this outstanding regional wild food guidebook.

Customer Reviews

Wild Food Plants of Indiana & Adjacent States
Even though the name of the book states Indiana and adjacent states, this book tends to mostly talk of plants found in Indiana. It includes a map of the 8 areas the state has been divided into according to the landscape, in addition to a map of all the counties. It could use actual photos, however, instead of drawings of the plants. The ideas given for uses of the wild plants for food are basic, but good. It tells the season each plant can be found and used safely, but this book is more for those who know what to look for in the plants already compared to a beginner- in my opinion. If I was a beginner in wild plant foraging, I would look elsewhere for a better photo of a plant before attempting to use it for eating. A good book with photos (even though some are in black & white), and better information on wild plants would be, in my opinion, Edible Wild Plants: A North American Field Guide by Thomas S. Elias & Peter A. Dykeman.

I love this book!
I have had an older copy of this book for a long time. I have found it to be immensely helpful. I do live in Indiana, but I think anyone who lives where the plants covered in this book would benefit. Here is a list of the plants from the table of contents:

Ferns

Pine family

Cattails

Arrowheads

Bulrush

Chufa

Wild rice

Skunk cabbage

Day lily

Wild onion, garlic, and leek

Wild asparagus

Solomon's seal and false Solomon's Seal

Greenbriar

Walnuts

Hickories

American hazelnut

American chestnut

Oaks

Mulberries

Nettles

Wild ginger

Dock family

Lamb's quarters

Pokeweed

Spring beauty

Purselane

Chickweed

Mayapple

Pawpaw

Sassafras

Spicebush

Mustard family

Crab apples and hawthorns

Juneberries

Roses

Wild strawberry

Red raspberry

Black raspberry

Blackberry and dewberry

Wild cherries and plums

Alfalfa and clover

Sorrels

Sumacs

Sugar maple

New Jersey Tea

Wild grapes

Basswoods

Violets

Evening Primrose

Persimmon

Milkweed

The mint family

Elderberry

Jerusalem artichoke

Chicory

Dandelions

Mushrooms: comments and cautions

Morels

Shaggymane

Sulphur shelf puffballs

The recipes I have tried are great, and it's a pleasant read. I highly recommend this book!