(Part 3) Best plants in biological sciences books according to redditors

Start by picking a guide for your area and reading it thoroughly, especially focusing on the anatomy of a mushroom. Go hunting a lot bringing back what you find, take spore prints and work though the IDs. Also joining a NAMA affiliated club will help tremendously.

Regional guides

Alaska

Common Interior Alaska Cryptogams

Western US

All The Rain Promises and More
Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest

Midwestern US

Mushrooms of the Midwest

Edible Wild Mushrooms of Illinois and Surrounding States

Mushrooms of the Upper Midwest

Southern US

Texas Mushrooms: A Field Guide

Mushrooms of the Southeastern United States

Midwestern US

Mushrooms of the Midwest

Edible Wild Mushrooms of Illinois and Surrounding States

Mushrooms of the Upper Midwest

Eastern US

Mushrooms of West Virginia and the Central Appalachians

Mushrooms of Northeast North America (This was out of print for awhile but it's they're supposed to be reprinting so the price will be normal again)

Mushrooms of Northeastern North America

Macrofungi Associated with Oaks of Eastern North America(Macrofungi Associated with Oaks of Eastern North America)

Mushrooms of Cape Cod and the National Seashore

More specific guides

Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World

North American Boletes

Tricholomas of North America

Milk Mushrooms of North America

Waxcap Mushrooms of North America

Ascomycete of North America

Ascomycete in colour

Fungi of Switzerland: Vol. 1 Ascomycetes

PDFs

For Pholiotas

For Chlorophyllum

For parasitic fungi, Hypomyces etc "Mushrooms that Grow on other Mushrooms" by John Plischke. There's a free link to it somewhere but I cant find it.

Websites that aren't in the sidebar

For Amanita

For coprinoids

For Ascos

MycoQuebec: they have a kickass app but it's In French

Messiah college this has a lot of weird species for polypores and other things

Books that provide more info than field Mycology

The Kingdom of Fungi Excellent coffee table book has nice pictures and a breif guide to Fungal taxonomy and biology.

The Fifth Kingdom A bit more in depth

Introduction toFungi Textbook outlining metobolic, taxonomic and ecological roles of fungi. Need some level of biochemistry to have a grasp for this one but it's a good book to have.

Yes, this is overlooked in the romanticized story of early American conservationism.

There was also a class-based dynamic at play in that you had to be of a certain privilege to "experience nature". To flee the city and enjoy the beautiful emptied lands.

I first read about the history of public lands, conservationism and conflicts surrounding dispossession by the Federal government in:

Understories: The Political Life of Forests in Northern New Mexico, By Jake Kosek

Seconding u/theUnmutual6's recommendations, in addition to u/BlueSmoke95's suggestion to check out Ann Moura's work. I would like to recommend Ellen Dugan's Natural Witchery and her related domestic witchery books. Ellen is a certified Master Gardener and incorporates plants into much of her work.

Some of my favorite plant books!

Plant Science:

• Plant Physiology and Development (you can get away with the previous edition of this one!)
  
  
• Botany for Gardeners
  
  
• Essential Plant Pathology (do NOT get the first edition - the second edition is superior in almost every single way)
  
  
• American Horticultural Society Plant Propagation: The Fully Illustrated Plant-by-Plant Manual of Practical Techniques
  
  
  Foraging & Field Guides:
  
  
• A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: Eastern and central North America
  
  
• Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods From Dirt To Plate
  
  
• The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants
  
  Herbalism:
  
  
• Rosemary Gladstar's Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner's Guide: 33 Healing Herbs to Know, Grow, and Use (this is the first one I would recommend to novices)
  
  
• The Herbal Apothecary: 100 Medicinal Herbs and How to Use Them
  
  
• The Herbal Medicine Maker's Manual
  
  
• 300 Herbs: A Materia Medica
  
  
• Culpeper's Complete Herbal
  
  Ethnobotany:
  
  
• A Modern Herbal Vol I and Vol II (these could belong in the above section or here - I love love love these books. I think they are a must for any hedge witch or green witch!!)
  
  
• Folklore and Symbolism of Flowers, Plants and Trees
  
  
• Whispers from the Woods: The Lore & Magic of Trees
  
  
• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
  
  I also encourage y'all to look into fungi as well. I work with both plants and fungi and I think they bring a fascinating and fulfilling aspect to my work. Plus, hunting for mushrooms is super fun! I can recommend field guide books for folks who are interested, they just tend to be very region-specific so I'm not going to list all of them here.
  
  For general fungus reading I recommend the following:
  
  
• Magical Mushrooms, Mischievous Molds
  
  
• The Fifth Kingdom
  
  
• Mycelium Running
  
  
• Radical Mycology: A Treatise on Seeing & Working with Fungi
  
  
• Mushrooms Demystified

I love the Falcon Guides for wildflowers

Southern California Mountains Wildflowers

Mojave Desert Wildflowers

This book is stupid but very useful. It is just drawings of foot prints and poop.
Scats and Tracks of the Desert Southwest

Another stupid simple book. This time it is an animal next to the hole it makes.
A Field Guide to Desert Holes

I'm glad you asked! I love learning what things are, so I'm happy to share. This should be apparent by the time I'm done with my data dump. First off, when in Alaska and where? That will depend on how useful some of these things are.

I use PeakFinder for mountain names. The desktop version is free, but the app is $4.99 and worth every penny. It will only show peaks, and not lakes, glaciers, or other formations. I use the Delorme Atlas for those. That's too unwieldy to take on hikes, though.

For birds, I know the President of the Anchorage Audubon Society uses iBird for an app, so that must be decent. There's a free demo version, but the full app is $14.99. For the Anchorage coastal area, I mostly use this checklist. If you can tell a duck from a sparrow, you can narrow down your bird substantially and use websites to find the right one. Although the list is specific to Anchorage, and results are very different in places like Seward or Fairbanks. If you're into bird identification, you'll get farther learning how a few birds sound rather than how they look.

The Eagle River Nature Center has a few events throughout the summer that help novices with identifying plants, birds, trees, and other animals. There are also guided bird walks at Potter Marsh and Campbell Creek Science Center throughout the summer.

For flowers, I'm not aware of any great apps. I do know of some good books. This is the best pocket-sized book for berries. This is my favorite for flowers. For all types of plants, this book is amazing. It's thick and heavy, so you won't be taking it hiking, but it's a wealth of information. Outside of Discovering Wild Plants, I would buy the other books used at Title Wave in Anchorage.

Trees are easy. I'm not sure you need an app. Here's a pamphlet from the Forest Service. Basically, if it looks like a Christmas tree it's probably a spruce. If it has big glossy leaves, it's a balsam poplar/black cottonwood. If it has smaller serrated leaves, it's probably a paper birch. That covers 90% of what you'll see in Alaska for trees. There are others like willows, alders, hemlock, tamarack, but the pamphlet can help with those.

There are subreddits specifically tailored to identify things like plants, birds, insects, trees, etc., so if you're stumped, take some pictures and post it online.

Found that book I mentioned.

http://www.amazon.com/Edible-Medicinal-Plants-Great-Region/dp/0923568379

I love reading this stuff too. I’m a very outdoorsy person. So, if you want a nice non portable book about trees, there’s the david allen Sisley guide to trees. For portable, there are a lot more. The Audubon book is good, it just hasn’t been updated in a longtime. The Peterson guide is more recent and is good also. I’ll try to think of the books we have. My mom has a lot and has ones from her parents too. One that’s good is the national wildlife federation book on wildflowers. A new book that cool is one called wildflowers of the Appalachian trail. On trees, I really like an old edition of the golden guide to trees that we have. The Audubon guide to eastern us trees is good. I think Peterson is better than Audubon though. There is also a forestry department book on trees of around here that I have from middle school. Don’t worry, I’ll provide links to these books.

https://www.amazon.com/Sibley-Guide-Trees-David-Allen/dp/037541519X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524481660&sr=1-1&keywords=Sibley+trees

https://www.amazon.com/GOLDEN-GUIDE-Herbert-Alexander-Martin/dp/B000KIITZK/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524481704&sr=1-3&keywords=Golden+guide+trees

https://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Eastern-Trees-Including/dp/0395904552/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524481730&sr=1-1&keywords=Peterson+trees

https://www.amazon.com/Audubon-Society-Field-Guide-American/dp/0394507606/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524481747&sr=1-1&keywords=Audubon+trees

https://www.amazon.com/Wildflowers-Shenandoah-Valley-Ridge-Mountains/dp/0813908140/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524481845&sr=1-3&keywords=Blue+ridge+wildflowers

https://www.amazon.com/National-Audubon-Society-American-Wildflowers/dp/0375402322/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524481845&sr=1-10&keywords=Blue+ridge+wildflowers

https://www.amazon.com/National-Wildlife-Federation-Wildflowers-America/dp/1402741545/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524481922&sr=1-2&keywords=national+wildlife+federation+field+guide

https://www.amazon.com/Peterson-Field-Guide-Wildflowers-North-central/dp/0395911729/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524481968&sr=1-1&keywords=Peterson+wildflowers

https://www.amazon.com/Wildflowers-Appalachian-Trail-Leonard-Adkins/dp/1634040902/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524481991&sr=1-1&keywords=Wildflowers+of+the+Appalachian+trail

http://www.shopdgif.com/product.cfm?uid=2051408&context=&showInactive=N

I’m going to post again once I go look at our bookshelf. This was just off the top of my head. Oh and it’s not a field guide, but you should read a walk in the woods by bill bryson.

Awesome! One of my favorite books, pages 270-272. Yep. It's not listed in it for Harrison County either. You should send this find to Dr. Evans at Marshall. [email protected]

Ok, I really found this one easy. Your stone mortar and pestle, and one or two of the test tubes, to go with my book, on poisonous plants, something I've been into for years. I actually collect poisonous plants, mostly ones I grow, and that have medicinal usage too.

Yeah, I have a fair amount of plant knowledge, and submitted 750 calflora observations so far. But since I am mostly self-taught from looking at pictures I imagine it will be rough.

I bought Roadside Plants of Southern California, Flora of the Santa Ana River and Environs With References to World Botany and A Flora of Southern California in case I got myself in over my head.

Here's Comet! I meant to include a menorah because I'm Jewish gorramit, but I forgot. Pretend it's there.

A book.

Illustrated Book of Trees by William Carey Grimm. It's only for eastern North America (works for me), but in addition to identification guides for leaves, bark, twigs, etc and excellent drawings, has explanations of growing habitats, uses of the wood, rot resistance, workability, etc. And it's big enough that the leaves I find from interesting trees I can press into the pages of the book. I'm a dork.

I really like the way this book is presenting information https://www.amazon.com/Smithsonian-Handbooks-Mushrooms-Thomas-Laessoe/dp/0789489864/

--edit:
link to newer 2002 edition

Mushrooms (Eyewitness Handbooks) (Flexible Binding) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0789433354/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_UnU2CbWFW95SH

Get a used version of this for like 10 bucks.

in the intermediate range (not as advanced as a Flora w/ keys, but better than most "pretty-picture" field guides)

http://www.kswildflower.org/ and book http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/hadwil.html
Falcon Guide: Tallgrass Prairie Wildflowers http://www.amazon.com/Tallgrass-Prairie-Wildflowers-Midwest-Wildflower/dp/0762737441

have fun -- it's a neat place to visit

http://www.amazon.com/Peterson-Field-Guide-Ferns-Northeastern/dp/0618394060

This book has been on my list for awhile.

I love moss.

It’s so hard to grow indoors, almost impossible to keep it alive long term. Tip: you need to use rainwater or distilled water since any hardness/minerals in the water just kills it over time.

I had some success in a terrarium for about 6 months but it eventually failed. I’m going to try again though.

Common Mosses of the Northeast and Appalachians (Princeton Field Guides) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691156964/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_tai_r8TIAb69P8C54

The Audubon Society has a number of field guides. I have the ones for Western and Eastern birds both (along with a couple others of theirs) since I live in Oklahoma, and I absolutely love them; they're small enough that I can fit 2-3 in my camera bag along with my camera and all it's gear- including extra lenses and the like... They're easily one of my favorite gifts I've been given.

I also recommend a cute, plain ruled notebook that she can write down her observations in; I have this one by Designworks Ink and I love the quality, but any hardcover journal like that would work- though I'd really recommend getting one with archival grade paper. It'll make sure the journal lasts for a while without yellowing, etc, if she wants to keep it around for a long while. (I do, personally; I love looking back at my observations from years ago).

No idea on binoculars, though, as I don't use them personally. But Audobon has guides for both Binoculars and Spotting Scopes. Those might help.

There's also this.