Any suggestions on a good guide to begin identifying plant species? Specifically, Northern WI.
Thank you.
So, a book like Botany in a Day is super helpful so that you can learn to recognize the plant families, when you can do that you’ll find it MUCH easier to ID individual plants.
Then a good basic field guide like Golden Field Guides’ Wildflowers of North America, divided up by plant families, it’s small but works super well. I’m sorry to say I don’t know much in the way of specific field guides of that bioregion.
If you’re interested in edible and medicinal plants, I suggest Discovering Wild Plants by Janice Schofield, it’s primarily written for the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, but it has such a huge range of plants (esp. mountain and Northern plants) that it’s very useful for nearly everyone. Also, anything by Michael Moore (doubles as field guide and medicinal plant guide).
I could go on for hours on book based plant resources but I think the above will be really helpful to you… and of course finding a local plant person will do wonders as well, it’s much quicker to learn that way for most people.
I have yet to get my hands on Botany in a Day, but it has been highly recommended to me. For field guides for specific species, the Peterson’s Guides are great. I have the Peterson’s Guide to Eastern/Central Medicinal Herbs and Plants, and I really like it.
Thank you.
I didn’t really like Botany in a Day. I appreciate the whole concept of learning plants by their families, but as far as a field guide to help you get started (or even to continue your studies and broaden your learning) I didn’t care for it. Probably due to the format. Possibly due to the bioregional difference, though I noticed a lot of plants common to my region as well.
My first field guide was Billy Joe Tatum’s Wild Foods Cookbook and Field Guide. It doesn’t cover a lot of plants, but it covers them in a friendly way and gives you some recipes to get started with.
Steve Brill’s Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and Not So Wild) Places Has been a favorite of mine for a while. The production quality is low–expect it to fall apart if you take it out in the field much. But the writing quality is great. He gives great clues on identification and some wonderful information on nutritional and medicinal values. He also includes a lot of anecdotes that make the reading feel less cumbersome.
Bradford Angier is another big-time name in foraging. I don’t own any of his books, as I only recently learned about them, but I check them out from the library pretty often. He has one on Edible Wild Plants and one on Medicinal Wild Plants.
If you don’t mind getting really anecdotal, anything by Euell Gibbons is a great read.
I also usually keep Peterson and Audobon guides around as they have pretty good quality pictures and cover a wide range of plants.
You can see all my foraging book recommendations on my squidoo foraging lens: squidoo.com/foraging
Botany in a Day is definitely not terribly useful as a field guide unto itself. It’s amazingness revolves around how if you learn those plant families, your plant IDing world will suddenly make SO much more sense.
I don’t like Peterson much, well at least not their Medicinal Plant guides, they’re very alarmist, though the other info is mostly good, and the pictures seem way sub-par to me.
If at all possible, it’s great to get a bioregional field guide, it can make a big difference.
If at all possible, it's great to get a bioregional field guide, it can make a big difference.
Hear hear! I think that’s one reason I loved Billy Joe Tatum so much. She lives an writes in the Ozarks, so every single plant in her book literally lives in my neck of the woods.
I don't like Peterson much, well at least not their Medicinal Plant guides, they're very alarmist, though the other info is mostly good, and the pictures seem way sub-par to me.
Alarmist-ism tends to abound in a lot of the popular guides. Definitely temper your learning with more educated authors who aren’t as afraid of plants. And when in doubt, it seems like we have some really knowledgeable herbalists here on the forums now. Don’t hesitate to ask for help.
Botany in a Day is definitely not terribly useful as a field guide unto itself. It's amazingness revolves around how if you learn those plant families, your plant IDing world will suddenly make SO much more sense.
I should really revisit that book. A lot of the family relationships I was picking up on already, so I may have just felt slighted that it didn’t feel as amazing as I’d heard. But the whole concept of knowing plants by family definitely proves very useful.