'Useful Wild Plants' - Saunders (1920) FREE pdf

[Moonraker]

Found this very nice, freely downloadable version of an 'old but good' classic recently. Full title is:

Useful Wild Plants Of The United States And Canada by Charles Francis Saunders (1920)

Click on link for page to download in PDF format (split into separate chapters).

Info from the page:

Although little known these days, Saunders (1859-1941) cast a large shadow in the first several decades of the 20th Century, writing many widely read books on western wildflowers, the Anasazi, edible plants, and the Indian, Spanish and Anglo folklore and culture of California, the Sierras and the Southwest. He was also a major and influential contributer to Sunset Magazine in its salad years. Although couched in a genteel "Revisionist Manifest Destiny" tone with echoes of "White-Man's Burden", his folksy non-threatening style helped humanize the dimished remnants of the First Americans to the growing middle class of white Americans, and were firmly founded in a voracious curiosity about the usability of fast-vanishing traditions. Without using the ersatz Injun fables of E.T. Seton or the austere fake-machismo of Zane Grey, Saunders introduced much of the American public of his era to a person-sized understanding of the remnant "Old West".

This is a 273-page book and, in response to a few complaints about the size of several of my Acrobat files elsewhere, I am offering it up in subject slices, adding them as I go. A good book, filled with personal observations. Several of my books have been lumped into the limbo of "Popular Ethnobotany", and this is a similar type of work, much of it written from first-hand experience. Some form of this book has been reprinted and is currently available...I haven't seen it so I don't know if it's the same book (check Amazon.com)...I just know this original edition from 1920.

Chapter Headings

• Wild Plants With Edible Tubers, Bulbs Or Roots
• Wild Seeds of Food Value
• The Acorn and Some Other Wild Nuts
• Little Regarded Wild Fruits and Berries
• Wild Plants with Edible Stems and Leaves
• Beverage Plants
• Vegetable Substitutes for Soap
• Some Medicinal Wildings
• Miscellaneous Uses of Wild Plants
• Certain Poisonous Plants

There is a lot of useful stuff in here for bushcraft. Just remember that it is 85 years old so some of the botanical nomenclature will have changed and also it is USA centric, so some of the common names are different to those used in Britain. But many are the same or found with a little persistence. Also scientific thinking may have moved on from that of the day so worth double checking before venturing onto new plants. Finally, as with all things edible or medicinal, if you are not sure about something, IF IN DOUBT, LEAVE IT OUT!

Happy reading!