National Geographic Backyard Guide to Edible Wild Plants

Step into the bountiful world of your backyard with this reliable and engaging guide to foraging more than 100 delicious edible plants that bring a touch of the wild into your kitchen.

Joining National Geographic's long line of successful nature guides, National Geographic Backyard Guide to Edible Wild Plants is a colorful, appealing handbook to more than 100 common wild plants that can be foraged for delicious food and drink. From superstar sunflowers to spicy field mustard to alluring wild grapes, this book identifies a wide variety of flavors and textures that even novice foragers can learn to harvest with care, safety, and sustainability. From there, creative uses abound, including the how-tos behind:


elderberry jam
chickweed salad
sunchoke soup
sassafras tea 
wild carrot cake
homemade backyard cider

This guide is divided into seven sections based on the parts of the plant most relevant to foragers: roots, leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds, shoots, as well as the "backyard superstars"—a dozen plants that are common, easy to identify, and abundant in their culinary possibilities. Every plant is photographed, illustrated for ease of learning, and described in detail thanks to authors Mimi Prunella Hernandez and Heather Wood Buzzard, who bring botanical authority and kitchen creativity to every entry.