Top Foraging Books for the Eastern and Southeastern U.S.

Whether you're just beginning your foraging journey or you're a seasoned herbalist, this guide is crafted especially for those exploring the wild abundance of the Southeastern United States. While many of these titles are useful across the Eastern U.S., I’ve chosen books that truly shine in the Southeast’s unique ecosystems.

In this article, I’m sharing 10 of my favorite foraging books—a mix of practical, inspiring, and thought-provoking reads that will deepen your connection to the land and the plants around you.

You’ll find them organized into four helpful categories:

🌿 General Foraging Guides
🌿 Plant Identification Books for Foragers
🌿 Recipe Books & Wild Foods
🌿 Thought-Provoking Foraging Reads

Let’s dig in!

The Best General Foraging Books

Southeast Foraging | by

Chris Bennett

This foraging book is great for beginners to experienced foragers. It is practical for anyone who wants to learn more about foraging in Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas, Florida, Mississippi, and nearby states. It includes great pictures and detailed descriptions of each plant. Bennett focuses on plants native or naturalized in the Southeast, accounting for the region's unique ecosystems, humidity, long growing seasons, and biodiversity. What I also love about this book is that it gives ample tips on harvesting and preparation as well as any potential toxic look-alike plants.

Southeast Medicinal Plants | by

Corey Pine Shane

This book is one of my favorite herbal and foraging books because of the beautiful pictures and unique descriptions. It presents a practical, ethical, and accessible approach to wildcrafting medicinal plants across the Southeastern U.S. Corey Pine Shane is a Southeast regional herbalist who specializes in Southeastern medicinal plants and is a wealth of knowledge. He explains in depth the best harvesting times and practices, offering advice to anyone interested in Southeast foraging and medicinal plants.

Foraging: Explore Nature's Bounty and Turn Your Foraged Finds Into Flavorful Feasts |

by Mark Vorderbruggen

This book has excellent in-depth instructions for sustainable and ethical foraging practices. It is very user-friendly and offers extremely detailed photos of each plant. Every time I open this book, I am always impressed with the concise and clear information. Vorderbruggen also offers 30 recipes that have simple instructions and result in delicious food packed with flavor.

The Best Plant Identification Books for Foragers

Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants of Eastern & Central North America |

by Samuel Thayer

Samuel Thayer is one of the most famous authors in the foraging world. Although he has several foraging books, this one in particular is one of my favorites for its meticulously detailed descriptions tailored for serious foragers in the various regions stretching from the Atlantic coast to the Midwest. Thayer offers a monumental amount of plant identification descriptions, making this the perfect book to have with you as you identify various plants. It is particularly helpful to stay safe and accurately identify plants before consumption. This is one of the most comprehensive, photo-rich field guides available.

Peterson Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs of Eastern and Central North America |

by Steven Foster and James A. Duke

This book is a classic for any plant identification in the Southeast and Eastern U.S. All of my botanist friends have a copy of this field guide because it has been considered the gold standard for field identification for botanists and land managers for decades. Over 530 species are featured throughout this book, including native and non-native medicinal plants found throughout Eastern and Central U.S. There are rich, detailed photos of each plant as well as range maps to see if a species usually occurs in your area. Plants are grouped by flower, fruit color, and plant type (shrubs, trees, vines, ferns, and grasses), making the identification process easier. Each plant monograph includes traits, habitats, medicinal uses, and key warnings, including toxicity, allergenicity, and drug interactions.

Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification | by Thomas J. Expel

This book revolutionizes plant identification by teaching you to recognize families of plants through shared "patterns" rather than just memorizing individual species. Botanists and ecologists like myself, go through rigorous plant taxonomy courses to understand different plant families throughout the world and how to identify them. Elpel offers a simplified approach to understanding plant families so that you can become better at plant identification. He teaches how to recognize structural traits unique to major plant families (e.g., Mustard, Mint), enabling learners to immediately identify unknown plants at the family level. This book is for anyone who is interested in plant identification, no matter where you live.

The Best Foraging Recipe + Wild Food Books for Foragers

Foraged & Grown |

by Tara Lanich-LaBrie

I could spend hours just gazing at the gorgeous photography in this book! Launch-LaBrie provides vibrant seasonal cookbook that blends herbalism, foraging, and culinary creativity. Drawing on historic folk traditions and her own transformational journey, Tara showcases 100 gluten- and dairy‑free recipes infused with wild and home‑grown plants to nourish both body and spirit. The recipes are grouped by season, but because she lives in Colorado, it doesn’t perfectly match up with the Southeast. The book still provides ample information of plants found in the Southeast, so I wanted to still include it on this list. She offers both savory and sweet recipes to satisfy everyone.

Wild Remedies: How to Forage Healing Foods and Craft Your Own Herbal Medicine | by Rosalee de la Foret & Emily Han

This book is packed full of recipes for foragers. It includes many weeds and invasive plants, which means that this book applies to most of the United States. Plants highlighted in this book are often found right outside your back door. Overall, this is an engaging, seasonally organized guide that empowers readers to dive into foraging and herbalism with wild (and garden-grown) plants. It blends practical identification with heartfelt philosophies, creative recipes, and herbal remedies.

The Best Thought-Provoking Foraging Books

Invasive Plant Medicine | by Timothy Lee Scott

This book changed my perspective on invasive plants. I was taught throughout my ecology education that invasive plants were nothing but destructive villains of ecosystems that needed to be eradicated. Scott challenges the common view that invasive plants are mere ecological threats. Instead, he invites us to see them as potential allies capable of healing damaged landscapes, supporting biodiversity, and offering powerful medicinal gifts to humans. While I still believe we have a responsibility to manage and sometimes remove invasive species, this book opened my eyes to their complex, and even beneficial, roles in our ecosystems. Scott doesn’t just theorize—he dives deep into each plant’s historical medicinal use and shows how we can work with them to support our healing. It’s a refreshing and provocative take that challenges fear-based thinking and encourages a more balanced, reciprocal relationship with the wild plants around us. Most of the plants mentioned can be found throughout the Southeast, thus great for Southeastern Foragers looking to benefit their local ecosystems by harvesting invasive plants.

Wild Plant Culture | by Jared Rosenbaum

If you have land and want to restore the ecosystems around you, while also building a forageable food forest, this book will help you make it a reality. Rosenbaum offers such an inspiring and deeply practical read that merges ecological restoration, herbalism, foraging, and permaculture to help readers foster rich native plant ecosystems in Eastern North America. Rosenbaum brings together ecological principles and personal restoration experience to help repair our ecosystems and cultural narratives. This book explores how to read the land, explore human-land relationships, and create healthy, thriving ecosystems.