Plant / Tree ID

[Paul_B]

Probably been asked before but since trying needle tea recently (scots pine) and liking it I have checked out the collins gem SAS survival book and spotted the medicinal plants in it. I was looking to see if it had other plants, leaves, bark, etc. that could be used for tea. The book gives some drawings of medicinal plants but not good enough to ID. If possible I'd like handy guides to ID trees and plants, ones that make it really easy to ID things as I am a newbie to it.

I'd quite like to get into the foraging side of things but as I'm new to it without good ID books that can be carried to check I'd be at a loss as to what is what. Also any foraging books out there? Especially ones that might give medicinal plants or plants useful for other than just eating. I'm quite interested in plants good for intestinal complaints as I've tried a shop bought bark infusion before that kind of worked so I reckon there must be something you can find in UK good for that too.

Sorry if it has been in threads before but I can never find anything good with search functions on sites for some reason.

 

[Geoff Dann]

Best book for foraging plants information is Miles Irving's "The Forager Handbook." It is totally useless as an identification guide though, because the pictures are black and white, and generally not very good.

Unfortunately there are no shortcuts to being able to identify everything you find, or for finding what you want to find. It's not easy. You have to do it a bit at a time - one species at a time. And you'll need several books. You have to do what botanists do: try to narrow down the group, the genus, then the species.

 

[21st century pict]

Richard Mabey.
Food for Free.

The foragers bible for nearly 40 years, With its availability calendar month after month, the book covers edible plants, trees, herbaceous plants, fungie, lichens, seaweeds and shellfish no razor clams however and recipes. Glossary and indexed.

Thomas Laessoe. Mushrooms.

This is a great field guide, well laid out with a very good introduction covering useful fungi, classification, cap features and spores. 2,300 very clear photographs with descriptions, occurrence and similar species a detailed key covering family, species, dimensions, spore colour, growth season and edibility.

A. C. Campbell. The Seashore and shallow seas of Britain and Europe.

If you’re new to shore foraging for seaweed and shellfish there’s no better starting point than this comprehensive pocket guide. With 320 pages 1,000 finely detailed hand painted colour illustrations and line drawings, illustrated key, types of seashores lines, (the 46 pages covering green, brown and red algae is particularly useful) responsible collecting and conservation, a vast section on the marine animal kingdom, extensive bibliography, glossary and scientific index.

And as Geoff Dann said you will need some good dedicated field guides. I use around 10 guides tracks ,butterflies, trees, wild flowers, birds, seashore, mushrooms ,just all the usual stuff.

 

[Smith28]

IMO, the BEST book for pure identification (-not got any information of edibles or things of that nature) is Francis Rose - Wild Flower Key. It also has more than just flowers which I like.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wild-Flower...1754/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326737996&sr=8-1

All you need to use it is a pocket magnifying glass and half a glass of common sense and you're there.

As far as edibles go, the "Food for Free" by Collins is my one and only book along those lines! Excellent read.

 

[winst0nsmith]

Collins Nature Guide - Wild Flowers of Britain and Northern Europe

Title is misleading, it covers alot more than just flowers. Detailed descriptions, good photos and colour coding makes it really easy to use. It packs in more info than some big books on uses- culinary, medicinal, dyes and more, also gives the vitals on whether or not it's poisonous or protected and fits in a pocket.

Food for Free is interesting with good info for the price but is lacking on detailed plant discriptions and more importantly, colour photos, making it a coffee table/reference book and not a useable field guide in my experience, still well worth a fiver though.

Nothing beats going out and about with someone experienced though, take the carrot family for example, you wouldn't want to be going after some cow parsley or alexanders and end up with hemlock; they're fairly easily confused. If you aint 100%, leave it alone.