Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25723 in Books
• Published on: 1998-11-11
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 570 pages

About the Author
McGraw-Hill authors represent the leading experts in their fields and are dedicated to improving the lives, careers, and interests of readers worldwide

Customer Reviews

Very good resource for basic plant information +
This plant book has a wealth of basic information.Yet,it could be more extensive and colorful.The book was first published back in the mid 1970s.There is a lot of ethnic historical information about each plant.But,not so much scientific information.Luckily,i am a student of some Latin studies and enjoyed reading the root words for each plant.If you have read other plant books in tandem with this one,it would help you out greatly.As a single book on plants,it's lacking on profound research data for each one.I found the book to be impractical as far as preparing a wild edible plant for medical or comsumptive use.There are throughly good examples of warnings on the dangers of improper uses of the edible plants.
If prepared correctly,then the plant can be a boon to the body.If carried out incorrectly,the cure can be as deadly as your aliment.I would recommend reading ,'Grieve's Herbal Encyclopedia A-Z',first.And use this book,as a back-up reference.This book suffers from trying to cover too much information in one volume.And straying into other ethnic areas,outside of the North America focus.Alma Hutchins' book on 'Plants of the Native Americans' ran into the same problem.Couplan's plant book is still worthy of inspection by anyone interested in edible native plant studies.

only for botanist
I found this book totaly usless for my purposes. The drawings were useless, and descriptions would help no one in the outdoors other than those persons already familiar with the plants. The entire book (for me at least) was totally self serving for the writer & the editors view. not recommened. Try "Living Off The Land" by McNabb.

An Encyclopedia, best used as a cross reference.
This book is what it says it is, an encyclopedia. It provides very detailed descriptions on a very large database of plants. It would be close to impossible to use alone as a means of identifying plants in the field, so it is best used as a cross reference to a field guide. Recommended field guides would be "A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: Eastern and Central North America" by the Petersons, and "Edible and Medicinal Plants of the West", By Gregory L. Tilford for the western region. I have all three of these, and use the two field guides for identification purposes, and the Encyclopedia for verification and usage.