Oregon Hikers

Can anyone recommend a good resource (book, website, app, etc) on learning about the edible plants in our region? Specifically SW Washington and NW Oregon; but general PNW would be OK too.

Pojar & MacKinnon's Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast isn't specifically about edible plants, but it includes a lot of ethnobotanical information and is a solid overall resource.

Agree with Adam on the Plants of the PNW book. It has lots of footnotes on what is edible, medicinal, useful, or poisonous.

John Kallas is a local portlander who teaches wild edible classes and also has a book.

For general wild edibles, I prefer Thayer’s Natures Garden

The only book I own on this is the Peterson Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants. It is for Eastern/Central North America but includes most of our species. However, since I'm not a forager/survivalist, I have been mainly interested in just snacking opportunities or emergency options.

There are numerous wilderness survival books, foraging books (e.g. Foraging Oregon by Falcon Guides), edible mushroom books, as well as the Army's Complete Guide to Edible Wild Plants. I can't attest to any of these, but it seems there's quite a lot out there depending on how specialized you want to get or what your exact interest is.

Awesome, thank you for the variety of options. I appreciate it. I'm mostly looking to learn more about the plants around us, identifying them and if edible, of course consuming. However, not really into survival-style, just more of a general learning and expanding my knowledge.

Thank you.

Not exactly what you asked for, but you might also find Pacific Northwest Medicinal Plants by Scott Kloos of interest. I didn't love it because I'm not inclined towards medicinals or wild harvesting, but I learned a lot about how a person might use any number of local plants.

Thinking of that, I'd be interested just in which berries are edible.

There are many plants that are only edible if cooked.

I have enjoyed using the free "Seek" phone app from National Geographic. It uses onboard AI to identify plants, insects, and animals by just pointing your camera at something. No internet required. Especially fun during wildflower season. It's not 100% accurate but its surprisingly good.

leiavoia wrote: ↑

February 15th, 2021, 9:59 am

I have enjoyed using the free "Seek" phone app from National Geographic. It uses onboard AI to identify plants, insects, and animals by just pointing your camera at something. No internet required. Especially fun during wildflower season. It's not 100% accurate but its surprisingly good.

Those apps do a decent job getting the ID down to genus level... but if species is important, forget it.

adamschneider wrote: ↑

February 15th, 2021, 10:08 am

Those apps do a decent job getting the ID down to genus level... but if species is important, forget it.

I would say its about ~90% accurate to the species. There are certain things it has trouble with. Basically, anything that a human would also have trouble with from a quick visual inspection: mushrooms, lupines, yellow asters... "They all look the same!"

But having an ID on a plant in the field 9/10 times is a huge plus for my hikes.