Florida's Edible Wild Plants: A Guide to Collecting and Cooking

by Peggy Sias Lantz

“Peggy Lantz’s new book combines decades of real-life experience with the heartfelt passion of a true plant lover.  Easy to read and hard to put down, Florida’s Edible Wild Plants combines homespun anecdotes with practical botany and hands-on recipes to offer readers a dynamic handbook for anyone wishing to get to know the plants in their yards in a more intimate and tasty way. ”—Emily Ruff, director, Florida School of Holistic Living   “Helps you learn to appreciate the bounty that Mother Nature serves up, from weeds to trees.”—Ginny Stibolt, coauthor of Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida   “An easy way to enjoy the common, healthful, and tasty edible plants growing around you.”—Richard Wunderlin, coauthor of Guide to the Vascular Plants of Florida     Living off the land is a romantic idea, but in practice it can be confusing. So instead we buy nuts someone else picked for us, berries packaged hundreds of miles away, and greens that may or may not contain contaminants.
Fully illustrated with photos and drawings to help with identification, Florida’s Edible Wild Plants demystifies the process of foraging to help you discover the wonder of finding and eating wild plants that may grow right in your own backyard. Peggy Lantz shares her fifty years’ experience gathering and preparing wild edibles and bringing them to her family’s table. Practical knowledge is interspersed with recipes, and Lantz shares her own anecdotes about searching for and finding new plants, as well as serving “weeds” to her curious friends. 
From acorns to wild sorrel, from duck potato soup to elderberry champagne, this easy-to-use guide provides general information about the most common wild edibles in Florida that are not only good for you but also delicious. And the tips for preparing them are indispensable. Lantz offers specific advice for locating and harvesting the different edible parts of each plant, whether it’s gathering walnuts in the Panhandle or making jelly from coco plums in the Keys.

Genres: Reference, Nonfiction, Nature, Plants, Food

200 pages, Paperback

First published May 13, 2014

Reviews

[Mystical Enchantress · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would have been nice to see more colored pictures to help identify the plants mentioned. However there was a lot of information provided and recipes to try.

[Didi Delighted · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable to read, but I’d say it is intro level. I hoped for more drawings and pictures, but the content it does have is informative. This book is sort of like having an older relative relate stories about wild edibles to you, and I liked that because I felt I was retaining the information well. It has recipes, and enough edibles to get you excited and interested, but if you are seriously planning on wild harvesting you will want more books. This is dipping a toe in.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty decent book.. First book of it's kind that I've read. As the author alludes, it doesn't cover all Florida edibles, but it have many that I didn't know before reading it. I do like that it included both outline, black and white style pictures, and also a few color photos. I would definitely be interested in another release (part two) in full color. I took the book out for a walk today to see what I could spot, and a few species were super easy to identify using the outlined photos, but some weren't so easy. It does include several toxic species, which I definitely liked.

[Leann Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has become an old friend. I feel I am constantly reaching for it as it has the most Florida specific information of all of my herbal and foraging books. Florida is unique in that it has so many different habitats so most Florida naturalists end up referencing many books, some on the South East, some on Tropical, and some on Coastal/Gulf Coast. However, Mrs. Lantz has created a gem that brings all of that together into a single volume.

[Mikayla · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty comprehensive encyclopedia-like book regarding Florida’s edibles. Color photos of most plants. The cookbook offered some innovative ways to use the calamondins growing wild in my backyard! The illustrations leave much to be desired, since many of them only depict leaves or blossoms when the edible is the fruit or tubers. Still, a very handy guidebook to have in the field or on the shelf.

[Talyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this guide useful, especially the full-color photographs in the middle of the book. It was so enjoyably written that I read the plants section straight through instead of using it only as a reference book.

[Momo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very nice guide! I have been able to identify and memorize many edible species in my own backyard with the help of this book.

[Peggy Sias]

I'm surprised at the reviews that say there aren't enough photos. There is a color photo for every plant written about, and drawings that cover every questionable leaf.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

glossary, appendix, resources, recipes incl.