I have a book on 1000+ of the most common edible plants in America including 275 poisonous plants. It has all the popular plants and common medical herbs- such as common chickweed, apple, highbush blueberry, huckleberry, yellow nutsedge, chuperosa, milkweed, prickly pear cactus, sapadilla, common blackberry, common purslane, common plantain, ginseng, elderberry, wild yam, dandelion, wild lettuce, sow thistle, yarrow, wild cucumber vine, dragonfruit, papaya, paw paw, groundnut, custard apple, mimosa, scarlet runner bean, wild carrot, lotus, water lily, wapato, ginger, aloe, yucca, burdock, yellow dock, common wild grape, wild plum, wild pear, wintergreen, juneberry, black walnut, butternut, common hickory, hazel nut, chamomile, valerian, joe pye weed, birds foot trefoil, red clover, yellow wood sorrel, currant, gooseberry, goji berry, sumac, daylily, avocado, common rose, common prickly ash, ash, mountain ash, chickory, common yew, common periwinkle, red oak etc... Most of these plants are particularly of the midwest, correct? I live in Michigan and all my foraging has been in Michigan so far. I went down to vacation in Florida for a week or so, and I noticed when I got there that many of the plants in my book are not here in Florida. I was looking for chickory, common daylily, common yarrow, common lambsquarter, common mallow, or amaranth or thistle and could not find it down here. Instead I see sea grape, sea purslane, pink flower forms of purslane, peppervine, lots of myrtle, cactus, muscadine grape, madagascar periwinkle, balsalm apple, palms, etc... A lot of the plants in Florida are not familiar to me. I bought 3 books for Florida - one book called Florida Wildflowers. To cover most of the US- should I get a book on California wildflowers, and then Texas Wildflowers and then Montana wildflowers, or should I just by one book for a general covering of wildflowers and plants from the west?
You'll need several regional guides, one for each of the major floristic regions: Northeast States Southeast States (except southern Florida) Southern Florida (tropical specialities) Great Plains States Rocky Mountains Pacific Northwest California Mexican Border (southern AZ, southern NM, southwestern TX)
I find this book for the Pacific NW - Washington, Oregon, British Columbia & Alaska. "Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast" by Jim Pojar and Andy MacKinnon, for the B.C. Forest Service Research Program very popular.
I second Pojar & MacKinnon's book for the northwest. You'll find a bunch of the regions you're wondering about are covered in Michael Moore's (the late herbalist) field guides: they are exclusively focused on medicinal plants, but in doing so end up covering a bunch of native plants in each region, and have decent botanical info. with an eye towards where to find them, and how to ID. As it would seem by your reading list thus far, you're tending towards the edible/medicinal anyhow, so they might be just what you're looking for. You'll find all of them on Amazon....
