North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>]

Here's a review of a book that will help:

Wild Berries of the West by Betty B. Derig and Margaret C. Fuller. 235 pages, soft
bound, copyright 2001, Mountain Press Publishing Co., P.O. Box 2399, Missoula, MT
59806, Ph: 406 728-1900. ISBN 0-87842-433-4. $16.00.

The title of this book makes it sound fairly simple and straightforward, but Wild
Berries of the West is much more useful than it sounds.
There is an impressive number of species in the book, because it covers a wide
range of western environments. Even with having taken university classes in flora of the
west, there were many plants in this book I wasnÕt familiar with, or if I knew them, I wasnÕt
aware that they had edible fruit.
The book doesnÕt just list edible fruits, either. It rates the qualities of the fruits, letting
you know if the fruit is good to eat fresh, merely edible, but not very tasty, or if it needs
cooking or extensive preparation to even make it edible. For the best fruits, there is even a
section of recipes. At the same time, poisonous berries are well noted, so the user can
avoid them.
Descriptions are not technical or particularly difficult to understand, especially if you
have any experience with plants at all, and most of the plants are illustrated with very good
color photos.
Gardeners and people interested in ornamental plants will find value in the book too,
because many of the plants have notes about their value in wild gardens, or in the
landscape. Readers may be surprised to discover native landscape plants theyÕve had
for years are also sources of edible fruit.
Wild Berries of the West makes it fun to learn about fruits that are new or different. A
lot of them arenÕt going to win over many palates, but some have enough good qualities to
make them well worth exploring further, and this book is a good aid for that.

Grapes, writing, consulting, my book, The Grape Grower, at http://www.bunchgrapes.com  Winner of the Garden Writers Association "Best Talent in Writing" award for 2003.
On May 11, 2005, at 7:28 AM, Thomas Olenio wrote: