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)