There are many great plant and mushroom books aside from the ones listed below. These are just some of my favorites. You can find all of my book recommendations on my Amazon Store Page, and if you're looking for out-of-print books, check out AbeBooks! 

 

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• Foraging Mushrooms of the Rocky Mountains by the Colorado and Pikes Peak Mycological Societies. I was a contributing author for several of the chapters in this book!

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• The Forager's Harvest, Nature's Garden, Incredible Wild Edibles, and Samuel Thayer's Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants by Samuel Thayer are the best resources for edible plants around North America, in my opinion. If you're new to foraging plants, these books should be your first ones! 

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• Backyard Foraging, The Wildcrafted Cocktail, and The Forager's Pantry by Ellen Zachos are all really excellent and fun books! The second is a must for anyone interested in creating cocktails from foraged ingredients!

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• Botany In a Day by Thomas Elpel is a really well-done crash course on botany. If you want to understand what it means when someone says, "Plants in the Brassicaceae family can be characterized by cruciferous flowers with four sepals and six stamens, four tall and two short," then you should pick up this book!

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• Foraging the Mountain West by Thomas Elpel is a great option for anyone looking for a more local option. He covers all sorts of species that can be found around Colorado and the surrounding states.

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• Mountain States Foraging and Mountain States Medicinal Plants by Briana Wiles are also some lovely books that cover plants more local to the Colorado and Rocky Mountain region. Briana owns the Rooted Apothecary shops in Crested Butte and Gunnison, CO.​​​

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• Best-Tasting Wild Plants of Colorado and the Rockies is a great book by Cattail Bob Seebeck, but unfortunately, it seems to be out of print and expensive. Try looking on AbeBooks.

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• Mushrooms of the Rocky Mountain Region by Vera Stucky Evenson is the best mycology book for Colorado. It does lack some notes on edibility, but that doesn't take away from the great information within. The first edition, Mushrooms of Colorado and the Southern Rocky Mountains, has slightly better notes on edibility but is out of print and thus more expensive.

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• The Essential Guide to Rocky Mountain Mushrooms by Habitat by Cathy Cripps, Vera Evenson, and Michael Kuo is my second favorite mushroom book for Colorado. Categorizing our mushroom species by habitat is a nice way to learn about them, and this book does have a few notes about edibility. ​

• My friend Erica runs a great foraging website and Facebook page called Wild Food Girl. She is local to Colorado and offers the occasional foraging class. I have been to a few of her classes and highly recommend them!

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• The above-mentioned author, Ellen Zachos, also has a great website and Facebook page called The Backyard Forager. She has some wonderful recipes and really great information!

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• If you're interested in learning more about mushrooms, especially morels, look no further than Modern Forager! I use their amazing Burn Morel Maps to decide where I'm going to look for morels! As I detail in my Burn Morel Article, picking the right burns and picking where to go within those burns will offer the highest chance for success. I was in Oregon visiting friends, and we decided to look for morels on a whim. I pulled up the Modern Forager Burn Maps, selected a couple of high-rated nearby burns, and we picked over 300 morels that same day!

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• Adam Haritan's Learn Your Land is another excellent resource for foraging, botany, mycology, and more. His YouTube Channel is one of my personal favorites! He's located in Pennsylvania, so his focus is on species that are more commonly found in the eastern parts of the US, but many are also relevant for Colorado!

I love​ learning about plants and mushrooms, but the main reason to forage is the food! I've always loved cooking and find inspiration from all sorts of places and people! The following are some of my favorites.

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• Hank Shaw is the man behind Hunter, Angler, Gardener, Cook and has always been a source of recipes and culinary inspiration for me. I own all of his Books and regularly browse his site for new ideas.

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• Alan Bergo, also known as Forager Chef, is another source of foraging and cooking knowledge that frequently leads me to new ideas and preparations. His cookbook, The Forager Chef's Book of Flora, is one of my favorites! 

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• Pascal Baudar is my go-to source for wild fermenting inspiration. His Instagram Page is a treasure trove of knowledge. He also has several books all about fermenting and brewing with wild ingredients. They can be found on Amazon.

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• My friends at Modern Forager published a wonderful mushroom cookbook! Wild Mushrooms: A Cookbook and Foraging Guide is a lovely complication of recipes and tips from 25 different foragers around North America, including me! Kristen and Trent compiled the recipes, tested and photographed them, and made it all come together in this awesome book! ​