resources
I taught myself most of what I know about wild edible plants and mushrooms through YouTube videos, books, podcasts, and other free or inexpensive media. Here you'll find some of my favorite resources for starting out with – and deepening into – themes of foraging, botany, mycology, critical ecology, natural history and beyond.
Got a resource you think should be on this list, or want to be featured yourself? Please get in touch!
books
Robin Wall Kimmerer - Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Jessica J. Lee - Dispersals: On Plants, Borders, and Belonging
Merlin Sheldrake - Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures
Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodriguez - Let's Become Fungal: Mycelium Teaching and the Arts
Jasmine Donahaye - Birdsplaining: a Natural History
David Abram - The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World
Donna Haraway - Staying With the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene
projects & schools
Edible Alchemy - probiotics & fermentation school
Waldsamkeit - offering walks and courses on foraging, birds, trees and more (in German)
NABU Naturgucker Akademie - phenomenal resource with over 20 completely free courses on different animals, plants, and fungi (in German)
Mycelionaires - offering mushroom cultivation workshops in Berlin (in English and German)
podcasts
For the Wild Podcast - a podcast on ecological renewal and resistance, reconnection, and intersectional storytelling, featuring many of the authors listed here
field guides and ID apps
Der große BLV Pilzführer - my recommendation for a comprehensive, easy-to-use mushroom field guide (in German)
The Forager's Calendar by John Wright - an entertainingly-written guide to foraging both plants and mushrooms, organised by seasonality
123 Pilze - an enormous digital field guide for mushrooms, also available as an app (in German)
Picture Mushroom - the most accurate AI-assisted mushroom ID app, in my experience (though never 100% reliable)
Pl@ntNet app - incredible resource for plant identification
Merlin app - a phenomenal bird call identification app
blogs, websites, and channels
Alexis Nicole / blackforager - wildly informative and warm foraging tips & recipes
Mark Williams / Galloway Wild Foods - incredible website full of wild food knowledge and inspiration, as well as foraging workshops in the UK
Alan Bergo / Forager | Chef - loads of foraging recipe inspiration (based in the US, but still with lots of relevant plants)
Buschfunkistan - YouTube channel, on foraging (in German)
Wild Food UK - they have a good little digital Hedgerow Guide and Mushroom Guide
Henriette's Herbs - an enormous online resource for herbalism
UK Wildcrafts - YouTube channel on foraging
Pilzwelten - YouTube channel with deep dives into mushroom species and identification (in German)