Reddit mentions: The best botany books

Oo, I could rattle on for a while. Gimme a couple hours to get to a computer and I'll lay out a few though!

EDIT: Okay, found a computer. Here we go. I could go on about obscure things where you have to climb mountains to find things at the roots of certain trees or whatever, but I'll instead write about things your average Joe can find wherever they live.

First, pineapple weed. It's one of my favorites. It looks like this, and tends to grow in rocky areas (like the cracks in sidewalks) or in packed earth. If you mush those ball-like flowers between your fingers, it smells like pineapple! It can be used like a milder version of chamomile, where a tea made of it will help you sleep. It's also good for stomach upset.

Second, dandelion. I'm sure I don't have to tell you what they look like, haha! You can do a lot of things with it. For example, if you dig up the taproot, it can be roasted, ground up and used as a substitute for coffee. (It's best to mix this with chicory, as dandelion root has a sharper taste, and chicory is milder.) The heads can be washed and thrown into pancakes for a tasty and pretty camping breakfast. The greens are also very good lightly cooked, though it's better to get very young plants for this; older ones have to be boiled twice with the water thrown out in between to cut the bitterness. (You can also eat the young leaves in a salad.) The heads are a mild laxative, and also good for the urinary tract. (Tincture form is best for this.)

Third, the Scotch or Scottish thistle. The young plant's roots and leaves are edible, though the spines and "fur" must be removed before cooking them. The unopened flower buds are also tasty. Pull them open, remove the thistledown, and cook; they are small, but taste similar to artichoke hearts. Thistles aren't so useful to the layman as medicine, but they are pretty damn good to eat, if difficult to gather.

And lastly for this list, pine. The needles can be made into tea which is high in vitamin C - a handful of the needles steeped for five minutes or so will do it. (Not too long though, as the vitamins break down.) It's one of my favorite drinks around Christmas time. (Also note that Ponderosa, Norfolk Island and yew pines are poisonous, so don't use those! Make sure you can tell the difference before you go making teas.) The nuts from pine cones are also edible, and pretty damn good. The inner bark is edible too, and can be eaten raw or cooked. (Be careful not to take too much from a single tree, as this can kill it.) The resin of a pine tree is a good antiseptic for wounds, which is a good thing to know if you injure yourself while out in the woods. You can also use it as a firestarter. (Great for days where you just can't find enough dry wood.) And, if you take some sap, barely cover it with Everclear in a sealed jar, and wait about two months, you will have a good cough syrup. Seven or eight drop doses work best in my experience. (Make sure it's Everclear, and not a lower proof alcohol, since the sap won't dissolve in anything containing water.)

Bonus about pine: you can make pine vinegar by soaking the needles in apple cider vinegar for about six weeks. Make sure you wash the needles first, and use pasteurized vinegar - soak them in a sealed jar. It comes out tasting a lot like balsamic.

If you're interested in reading more on the subject, I highly recommend this book by Terry Domico. Great illustrations, great pictures, and great information in there!

Fruit by Stuppy and Kesseler is packed full of gorgeous scanning electron micrographs (and other pictures too) and a lot of very detailed but very readable information. I can not reccomend it highly enough. Seeds and Pollen are also very good. I have not read it (just found it now, going straight on my wishlist) but The Bizzare and Incredible World of Plants, also by Stuppy is almost certainly excellent.

It's a bit technical and dry, but Plant Form, by Adrian Bell is one of my favorite reference books of all time. The information is fascinating, and the diagrams are gorgeous. There's a free online copy available (legal, I think) if you would like to have a look, but I would highly recomend a physical copy, and it's pretty cheap as far as reference books go. Flip through the section on Tree Architecture starting at page 296 for a sample of how cool it is. Read and understand that section and you will be amazed at the things you will start noticing about plants around you.

For plant ID, I can not reccomend Botany in a Day highly enough for a quite comprehensive tutorial in how to recognize plant groups (which makes it orders of magnitude easier to come up with a more specific ID). It's a classic, and is a required text for just about every field botany class.

Getting a good guide to your local plants that is based on dichotomous keys and diagrams rather than photos and learning how to use it is an absolute must if you want to move past the basics for IDing plants in your area. Without knowing your location, it's impossible to give good recomendations, but the Jepson Manual is a good example of what you should be looking for, and by far the best guide to California plants. Unfortunately these sorts of books are usually fairly pricey, and can be pretty impenetrable without practice (helps a lot if you already have a general idea of what it is), so you might hold off on getting one until a much later date. You can get older editions for cheaper, but at least in the case of Jepson's, most of the changes involve more diagrams and easier to use keys, so it might not be worth it.

There are loads of others that are slipping my mind at the moment, I will add them later if I remember.

Book list:

Nature and the Human Soul by Bill Plotkin. The author discusses this same theme of The Great Turning. Argues that people in modern western society are pathologically orientated towards adolescent things, and among our main problems is that few of us mature fully, and few of us can ever be considered elders who guide each other towards a wise way of life. He also argues that we historically have developed equally in both nature and culture, but modern people spend their lives solely in culture, and lack understanding of the natural world.

Future Primal by Louis Herman. The author lays out a big picture view of human history and how the solutions for the future we face can be found in the past among primitive cultures. He links his own personal struggles to the planetary struggles we face, and shows that it is true that the personal and planetary are linked.

The Ascent of Humanity by Charles Eisenstein. Lays out huamn history, and "how the illusion of a seperate self has led to our modern crisises".

Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein. Looks at how primitive economies differed from our own, and how we can come to a different understanding of economics and wealth in our own society.

The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible by Charles Eisenstein. Lays out a vision for what the world could be and how we could organize ourselves in a wiser way.

Limited Wants, Unlimited Means an analysis of the economics of hunter-gatherer societies by an actual Economist. Very in depth look at the different foundational beliefs and practices. This is the most scientific and in depth book I've ever come across on this subject.

Eaarth by Bill McKibben. Goes into great detail on the the stark reality of the effects that climate change have already had and will likely have over the next decades and century. Finsihes by making reccommendations for how to make a life on a rough new planet.

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. A look at the deep history of our species. This book presents an understanding about what humans are and where we've come from that I think is hard to get anywhere else, really great work.

Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken. Very similar to the theme of my above post, the author explains how this new movement is much larger than you might think, and could soon become one of the largest cultural movements in all of human history.

Active Hope by Joanna Macy. On "how to deal with the mess we are in without going crazy".

Greening of the Self by Joanna Macy. An exploration into the idea that we are interdependent with the ecology around us.

Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken and others. A look at how we can start a green industrial revolution.

The Green Collar Economy by Van Jones. Lays out the idea that one solution- work on constructing a sustainable infrastructure- can fix our two biggest problems: the ecological crisis, and the rampant poverty and inequality in our society.

Spiritual Ecology: the cry of the Earth by Thich Nhat Hanh, Joanna Macy, and others. Outlines a spiritual perspective of what is happening to the world, and how we can remedy it, rooted in Buddhist thought.

Changes in the Land by William Cronon. A look at how the ecology of New England has been altered since Europeans first set foot there.

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. This is one of the classics of nature writing by a great naturalist. I include it here because I think it fits, and shows how much of this in not new thinking. Leopold talks about his experiences in nature and from living off the land, and lays out his own 'land ethic' for how best to coexist in nature.

The Evolving Self: a psychology for the third millennium by Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi. Explains the authors view of psychology and how to find meaning in the modern world. Talks about playing an active role in the evolutionary processes of life, and linking that up with your own personal evolution.

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimerer. Brings together scientific understanding, indigenous wisdom, and respect for nature and for plants, in a very poetic book.

The Future of Life by E. O. Wilson. Wilson is one of the greatest biologists of our time, and gave us many of the foundational concepts that we use today, such as popularizing the idea of "biodiversity" and the desire to preserve it. Here he talks about the future of life and the challenges we face in preserving the Earths biodiversity.

Half Earth by E.O. Wilson. Here Wilson lays out his strategy for saving the biodiversity of the Earth and preserving it through the hard times it will face in the future, by devoting fully half of the surface of the Earth to wildlife habitats. This book just came out so you might not be able to order a copy yet.

If you know of any other books or media in this sort of genre feel free to post it.

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 would not recommend the Audubon guide it is very out of date (this can range from outdated taxonomy all the way to toxicology that has changed over the years). It is useful because it lists species other guides lacks but you'll learn to hate it.

Buy a location specific guide. It depends on where you live. If you get really into field hunting buy some specific guides that give you a more in depth understanding and help you not to die. Joining a local mycological society is also an extremely valuable resource in understanding mycology.

Here's a bit of everything

Regional guides

Alaska

Common Interior Alaska Cryptogams

Western US

All The Rain Promises and More
Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest

Mushrooms Demystified This is an old book, while still useful it definitely needs updating.

The New Savory Wild Mushroom Also dated but made for the PNW

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

Common Mushrooms of Florida

A Field Guide to Southern Mushrooms It's old so you'll need to learn new names.

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 (Advanced) 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 A series of 6 books.

Fungi Europaei A collection of 14 books.

PDFs and online Guides

For Pholiota

For Chlorophyllum

American species of Crepidotus

Guide to Australian Fungi If this is useful consider donating to this excellent set of guides.

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

For Hypomyces

Cultivation

The Mushroom Cultivator: A Practical Guide to Growing Mushrooms at Home (If your home is a 50,000 sq ft warehouse)

Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation: Simple to Advanced and Experimental Techniques for Indoor and Outdoor Cultivation

Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms

Mycology

The fifth kingdom beginner book, I would recommend this. It goes over fungal taxonomy Oomycota, Zygomycota and Eumycota. It also has ecology and fungi as food.

The kingdom fungi coffee table book it has general taxonomy of the kingdom but also very nice pictures.

Introduction to fungi Depends on your definition of beginner, this is bio and orgo heavy. Remember the fungi you see pop out of the ground (ascos and basidios) are only a tiny fraction of the kingdom.

NAMA affiliated clubs

http://www.amazon.com/Pretty-Modern-Beauty-Plastic-Surgery/dp/0822348012 - Less about medicine, more of an ethanography, there was a huge brazilian population where I used to live.

>http://www.amazon.com/Improvising-Medicine-Oncology-Emerging-Epidemic/dp/0822353423 - your call, I've read others that are similar in the past (dark african hospitals, mom was a doctor, it came up) but this is apparently more popular now. 10 years ago it was the horror of aids, those books are almost unreadable, if it were any other subject you'd simply have trouble suspending disbelief. http://www.amazon.com/The-Paradox-Hope-Journeys-Borderland/dp/0520267354 is another similar book.

http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Shamans-Apprentice-Ethnobotanist-Medicines/dp/0670831379 - Is probably better if you don't want all the doom/gloom view of african medicine.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10235.Mountains_Beyond_Mountains - Figure you've read this, it's highly recommended and extremely popular now, part of the whole 're-imagining medicine' movement.

>http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/161121.My_Own_Country - Speaking of my mom, she was a doctor near here, it's definitely a different world.

http://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Mistook-His-Wife/dp/0684853949 - Read it because of the neuroscience aspect, but I suppose you could consider it a very specialized ethanography of sorts.

Honestly the most popular nowadays is probably the one about the Hmong girl in my first post. I'd recommend it more because I've known a few Hmong and the cultural differences are fascinating.

His 'secret' isn't what he knows so much as his entire attitude to learning.

What sets 'experts' apart is that at some level they question everything instead of taking it at face value. Questioning something forces you to really think about it: you have to turn the idea around a few times and examine it from all angles. You can't help but gain an understanding of the reasons for something - not just of the thing itself. Teaching others works in a similar way - being able to clearly explain an idea requires deep understanding.

It sounds condescending, but that really is what it comes down to - curiosity and critical thought.

Nothing we deal with requires more than a high school knowledge of science - for example, while you need to know that light levels and frequencies affect photosynthesis, you don't need to know the exact quantum/biochemical processes involved. You might be curious though, so it becomes a new avenue for you to research - and what you find out might change what you thought you knew, or might lead you on to new things.

Think about what you don't know that you wish you did - and then go try and find it out. Who knows what else you'll discover in the process?

Now, as for some specific learning sources - for the basics you're looking at things like Jorge Cervante's classic Indoor/Outdoor Medical Growers Bible. Beyond that, there's Reddit - eg SAG's own /r/HandsOnComplexity (googling everything you don't understand) - or some kind of introduction to Botany - the Botany For Dummies book is pretty good. College classes might also be an option.

There isn't a huge amount of current scientific research material - largely due to the War On Drugs making it less attractive. That said, if you go back a way it does exist and is now being reprinted - for example Michael Stark's Marijuana Chemistry and Robert Clarke's Marijuana Botany. Both were originally printed back in the 70s, but were fairly extensively researched. They are dated in places - but the scientific rigor was solid, and they both have wonderful bibliographies of research papers that I hadn't come across elsewhere. Newer papers can be found on Google Scholar. (As a general rule, trust scientific publications over books and books over unsourced websites.)

You're (sort of) on the right track from a scientific perspective. If you are looking for further reading, check out Michael Pollan's 'Botany of Desire'

Here is a summary of the book:
"In making his point, Pollan focuses on the relationship between humans and four specific plants: apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes. He uses the history of John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed) to illustrate how both the apple's sweetness and its role in the production of alcoholic cider made it appealing to settlers moving west, thus greatly expanding the plant's range. He also explains how human manipulation of the plant has weakened it, so that "modern apples require more pesticide than any other food crop." The tulipomania of 17th-century Holland is a backdrop for his examination of the role the tulip's beauty played in wildly influencing human behavior to both the benefit and detriment of the plant (the markings that made the tulip so attractive to the Dutch were actually caused by a virus). His excellent discussion of the potato combines a history of the plant with a prime example of how biotechnology is changing our relationship to nature. As part of his research, Pollan visited the Monsanto company headquarters and planted some of their NewLeaf brand potatoes in his garden--seeds that had been genetically engineered to produce their own insecticide. Though they worked as advertised, he made some startling discoveries, primarily that the NewLeaf plants themselves are registered as a pesticide by the EPA and that federal law prohibits anyone from reaping more than one crop per seed packet. And in a interesting aside, he explains how a global desire for consistently perfect French fries contributes to both damaging monoculture and the genetic engineering necessary to support it.

Link to book on Amazon --> http://www.amazon.com/Botany-Desire-Plants-Eye-View-World/dp/1501245759

Not sure about desert plants exactly, but I've found the kind of resource you're looking for for my area. Texas is pretty arid so perhaps some will be useful:

http://www.foragingtexas.com/

I also bought a good book on the subject a few years ago that I recommend:

Edible and useful plants of Texas and the southwest

This field guide is very good for native species. Many in the arboretums are not necessarily native species. I'd recommend a visit to the World Forestry Center near Washington Park (it's across from the Zoo and the Children's Museum) as well. It's has a lot about forestry practices and the forests of the Pacific Northwest. They have smoke-jumper and timber jack simulators that are pretty fun and a nice map of most all of the nature areas in the metro area.

From R.C. Clarkes Marijuana Botany: Propagation and Breeding of Distintive Cannabis
"Seeds are allowed to dry completely and all vegetable debris is removed before storage. This prevents spoilage caused by molds and other fungi. Seeds preserved for future germination are thoroughly air dried in paper envelopes or cloth sacks and stored in air-tight containers in a cool, dark, dry place. Freezing may also dry out seeds and cause them to crack. If seeds are carefully stored, they remain viable for a number of years. As a batch of seeds ages, fewer and fewer of them will germinate, but even after 5 to 6 years a small percentage of the seeds usually still germinate. Old batches of seeds also tend to germinate slowly (up to 5 weeks). This means that a batch of seeds for cultivation might be stored for a longer time if the initial sample is large enough to provide sufficient seeds for another generation. If a strain is to be preserved, it is necessary to grow and reproduce it every three years, so that enough viable seeds are always available."

This being said, virtually ALL seedbanks use a fridge/freezer for long-term storage. Humidity is the big evil in a fridge... After they are well dried, pack them into the smallest opaque/airtight container that will hold them. If you are going to put them in the fridge/freezer, add a silica packet or rice as a dessicant inside each sealed container.

sidenote: Hermaphrodites tendencies are passed through genetics, but often show after the plant is stressed. Receiving light during the dark cycle and heat are the 2 most common causes. though some will start kicking the male flowers out late into flowering to try and ensure survival of the species. Starting with seeds from a hermi will mean all future plants have a higher than normal chance of developing this trait. If you're just learning, probably not a bad place to start... If you were wanting to make $$$ or a career out of this I would buy/obtain better genetics it will save you a million headaches.

RC Clarkes Hemp diseases and pests is another great book

I recommend "Data Analysis: A Bayesian Tutorial". It's pretty short and easy to read and has examples and pseudocode for many of the discussed methods. Use whatever programming language you're most comfortable with (MATLAB does have nice built in functions for dealing with large matrices). Depending on the amount of data, I'd avoid excel and just load ASCII data files from your code if possible.

Holy moly yes I love plants, specifically botany and biology, though only as a hobbyist. My favorite plant is the apple tree, such an amazingly diverse and vital plant. Angiosperms in general blow my mind, our entire world and culture are shaped by them and as soon as they showed up they kicked ass all up and down evolution. Angiosperms finally gave warm blooded animals the fuel we needed to become the food chain dominators we are today.

This book absolutely changed how I see everything and is responsible for my adult fascination with plants.

Read. read. read. read. read. read

Dont waste money on good seeds right now. Use bagseed. It will give you the chance to learn the ropes and if you fuck up, you won't have wasted your good genetics.

I would seriously recommend setting up an account at ICmag. They are some of the most knowledgeable people on the web. It became the spot where most of the old OG members went after it got shut down. If you post a growlog there, read as much as you can, ask lots of questions, post pictures (carefully... just plants with nothing identifying in the background, etc.), you will learn a ton and grow some good weed.

As others have said. don't tell a soul. Loose lips sink ships. Check the legal forum and see how many people get in trouble because they got ratted out. That forum is a great place to learn from other people's mistakes. If you want to do this properly, you will likely have to change many aspects of your life that you may not be aware of.

Stay safe.

Godel, Escher, Bach is an entertaining read that will cover a lot of the basics or first order logic in an accessible way. Beyond that it gets difficult. A friend of mine, who is a practicing logician, once thought about writing a decent logic textbook while she was finishing her PhD, but her adviser told her not to until she had tenure somewhere, as people would assume that if she were writing textbooks for undergraduates she wasn't up to doing real logic. Of course the funny thing about that is that he himself, wrote a few logic textbooks. His Possibilities and Paradoxes is a little dense for someone to work through on their own, but with some dedication and work, it can be done.

Peter Suber teaches a class called "Systems Logic," and has a lot of material available online here. Between that and GEB (as it's called), you can get a good feel for what logic is all about.

Pojar and Mackinnon is probably the best. Not purely edible but a great field guide with ethnobotanical tidbits.

Feigelson & Babu is a great read, with lots of applications using R.

If you're looking for something a bit more "cookbook" style then this book is good. The authors also have the solutions to all the problems on their website.

For general statistics and data analysis (without a focus on astrophysics) Sivia & Skilling is also good.

[I love this book](https://www.amazon.com/Midwest-Foraging-Flavorful-Edibles-Regional/dp/1604695315) and [this blog](https://honest-food.net/) is also great.

^This is good advice. This book is really helpful for learning basic plant families and such. Start with this and a good color-picture field to your area and you can ID damn near everything you find. To be fair, theres a huge number of plants out there that are of no or only marginal use to humans, so ID'ing them won't help your foraging. Its just fun!

Anthropology here, I recall reading something about this in the book Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice.

The writer was in the South American jungle talking with a clergy man (iirc) whose hobby was to listen to stories from members of the various tribes he came in contact with. These tribes had rarely (if ever) had any contact with the outside world and so their stories were through oral tradition, passed on verbally from generation to generation. According to that man one of the more memorable ones he heard was a tribal legend about a time when their ancestors had traveled long distances hunting large animals and had to cover their entire bodies in animal skins to keep from dying.

The author speculates that if that story held true it could have been an actual oral tradition of the crossing of the Bering Strait, preserved through storytelling. So, in hot, humid environments like the Amazon the concepts of snow and ice may have been lost through time but actions their ancestors had taken to survive it could have stayed in the stories. They would have at least had the idea that some factor had been there that necessitated those steps even if they didn't really understand the meaning or purpose behind it anymore.

Edit: I want to point out it was the author's speculation, not mine. As much as it's an amazing idea to think the crossing could have been retold for that long, it's also unsubstantiated.

I'm doing this same thing right now. I let my plants mature to 10 weeks. I just put the clones out yesterday. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

I normally let my plants mature to 12 weeks before they go into flower, this is on regular and feminized seeds. I read that sexual maturity is reached by week 12 on average. I'm hoping for early maturity with these plants.

I found that info in this book. Marijuana Botany

Data analysis: a Bayesian tutorial is really nice. It starts off with continuous parameter estimation and then moves on to model selection. Unlike Peter Lee's book it feels like a clean break from classical stats.

I assume you already have a copy of the Jepson Manual and / or are familiar with eFlora. Sort of the de facto gold standard for California. You can get a used older edition pretty cheap and other than moving a few species around it's still a very usable, if not very portable book.

I'd point out that California has one of the richest floras in the world. In some ways though, it's characterized by a large number of species and subspecies within many of the genera. So if you can learn to recognize for example a plant from the genus eriogonum or arctostaphylos at a glace, keying it out to the specific species will be much more simple. Learn to spot the major genera of the area because the exact species you will encounter might be different than you would see just a few miles away and you will never remember them all, the book is 1600 pages.

You do need statistics, but if you have a physics degree, you should be able to pick up the necessary statistics fairly quickly. I would recommend going through introductory statistics homework assignments to learn the very basics.

I'd also heavily recommend learning Bayesian statistics and understanding where the loss functions actually come from (ie why do we minimize the sum of squared errors in linear regression). The best book on introductory Bayesian statistics I've read was Data Analysis: A Bayesian tutorial.

Wow, you really have nothing at this point, Lidocaine.

Pick up these books to get yourself a solid foundation:

https://www.amazon.com/Biology-Dummies-Ren%C3%A9-Fester-Kratz/dp/0470598751/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Dummies-Fester-Kratz/dp/0470430664/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Botany-Dummies-Ren%C3%A9-Fester-Kratz/dp/1118006720

It's aimed at physicists, but [Sivia's book] (http://www.amazon.com/Data-Analysis-Bayesian-Devinderjit-Sivia/dp/0198568320) is extremely good.

Otherwise as actual papers http://bayes.wustl.edu/sivia/how.many.lines.pdf or (ahem) something of my own.

That being said, this is the best book ever written in regards to the cultivation of cannabis.

http://www.amazon.com/Marijuana-Botany-Advanced-Propagation-Distinctive/dp/091417178X

Well, this is aimed at senior undergraduates and research students in science and engineering: http://www.amazon.com/Data-Analysis-A-Bayesian-Tutorial/dp/0198568320

But really everything you learn should result in you realizing what else you want to learn related to it. The same is true for statistics. Learn some, and that should let you think... oh I wonder if I can find any publications on....

Here's a very brief rundown of some basic breeding info. It's actually enough to get you started as at it's most basic, you simply have to use pollen from a male plant, apply it to a female plant's buds and you're breeding.

For more in-depth and advanced coverage though, The Cannabis Breeder's Bible and Marijuana Botany are both good books with tons of info to get you started.

This is a great book w a chapter on apples and Johnny: https://www.amazon.com/Botany-Desire-Plants-Eye-View-World/dp/1501245759

The most successful plants in the world fall into this category: apples, marijuana, wheat, etc. Read this: http://www.amazon.com/Botany-Desire-Plants-Eye-View-World/dp/1501245759

I asked this question over in /r/marijuanaenthusiasts just the other day.

This Jepson Manual looks like the authoritative text for California, at least. I'm sure with some googling you could find a similar text for your area

Delena Tull's book on edible plants is a classic--- I suggest a copy of it if you are interested in the subject.

One of the things that people tend not to collect and use are acorns. I made about 20 pounds of acorn flour last year and make muffins and biscuits with it 50-50 with wheat flour. Acorn flour can cost up to $20 per pound if you can find it. I make mine mainly from trees near town lake. Takes time but it's very worth it.

http://www.amazon.com/Edible-Useful-Plants-Texas-Southwest/dp/0292781644

http://www.wildflower.org/collections/collection.php?collection=centex_edible

http://www.foragingtexas.com/

this is the correct answer.

along with Robert C Clarkes book, that you already have, are the two most important books in cannabis.

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Jeff Lowenfels also has "Teaming with Nutrients" and "Teaming with Fungi"

Robert c Clarke also has Marijuana Botany: An Advanced Study: The Propagation and Breeding of Distinctive Cannabis .

The book presents scientific and horticultural principles, along with their practical applications, necessary for the breeding and propagation of Cannabis and in particular, marijuana. It will appeal not only to the professional researcher, but to the marijuana enthusiast or anyone with an eye to the future of Cannabis products.

I believe this book is a sort of abridged version of the authors dissertation on Marijuana botany.

This one is a quite good book: Sivia, Skilling - Data Analysis: A Bayesian Tutorial

It's quite pragmatical, as opposed to the forementioned Jaynes for instance.

Another book is D.S. Sivia's Data Analysis: A Bayesian Tutorial. It's more expensive than when I first got it, though (sorry I don't have a free reference). The examples in the beginning of the book are easily done in PyMC, as well!

Get serious about statistics, it's a huge part of astrophysics. This is tricky, because stats / probability is often taught from a terrible, unintuitive, seemingly non-rigorous approach where you learn various prescriptions for different scenarios, like a cookbook.

I've found this text to be perhaps the most broadly useful thing when it comes to really understanding data analysis: http://www.amazon.com/Data-Analysis-A-Bayesian-Tutorial/dp/0198568320

I have this book...
http://www.amazon.com/Midwest-Foraging-Flavorful-Edibles-Burdock/dp/1604695315
It's decent. I don't think you're going to find anything specifically made for the Huron National Forest. Midwest or Michigan is likely as targeted as you can and need to find. For more detailed information, it would be good to find someone who teaches classes and has local knowledge. I don't know how you'd find that person. Maybe ask at the DNR?
Also, at the right time of year, blueberries and serviceberries are abundant in the HNF.

Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice by Mark Plotkin is a good read about his work with Amazonian people and their medicines.

I've always liked this one: http://www.amazon.com/Marijuana-Botany-Advanced-Propagation-Distinctive/dp/091417178X

Not all books, but if I had to choose only 5, these would be them:

• "Possum Living" by Dolly Freed (living very cheaply)
  
• Botany in a Day (pattern method of plant identification)
  
• Dmitri Orlov's Blog (creative solutions to housing, skills, self-employment)
  
• Deconstructing Dinner (Best radio show on the food system and the models rising to replace it)
  
• When Technology Fails (here because it's such an empowering book, shows you how to do everything yourself if you ever have to.)
  
  
  

i can recommend this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Data-Analysis-Bayesian-Devinderjit-Sivia/dp/0198568320/ref=pd_sim_b_4

it doesn't cover bayes networks, but it explains the bayes theorem and shows how it can be used.

Books have been written:

http://www.amazon.com/Marijuana-Chemistry-Genetics-Processing-Potency/dp/0914171399/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371525096&sr=8-1&keywords=chemistry+of+marijuana

How do you feel about The Botany of Desire?

I used to have a small book with almost that exact name...Wild Harvest: Edible Plants of the Pacific Northwest.

• http://www.amazon.ca/Wild-harvest-Edible-Pacific-Northwest/dp/088839022X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1427331068&sr=8-2&keywords=edible+plants+pacific+northwest

Book, here is one you can afford,

http://www.amazon.com/Botany-Day-Patterns-Method-Identification/dp/1892784157

Once you've read https://www.amazon.com/Marijuana-Botany-Advanced-Propagation-Distinctive/dp/091417178X and Hashish you can talk out of your ass.

> statistics was the real killer.

Maybe it's because statistics is usually presented as a bunch of recipes with no unifying principles.

Try "Data Analysis: A Bayesian Tutorial" by Sivia:

http://www.amazon.com/Data-Analysis-Bayesian-Devinderjit-Sivia/dp/0198568320

Learning statistics without Bayes' theorem is like trying to learn mechanics without Newton's laws.

Frequentist statistics does use Bayes' theorem, all of the measure theoretic results are identical between the philosophies. It is the inclusion of a priori knowledge (or information attempting to express a lack thereof) that demarcates the primary modeling differences.

If you would like a solid background in bayesian statistics I would recommend BDA3 by Andrew Gelman and Machine Learning: A Probabilistic Perspective by Kevin Murphy

One can of course not forget Hastie et al.'s Elements of Statistical Learning as well.

If you would like a general introduction, however, I would recommend the following text by Sivia.

Probability theory itself is consistently axiomatized under the Komolgorov axioms. But the philosophy regarding how to perform inference is not.

There is not an obvious inconsistency in the mathematical formulations, but there are inconsistencies with how each of the philosophies treats various issues.

A brief overview of differences is here:
http://www.stat.ufl.edu/archived/casella/Talks/BayesRefresher.pdf

In short though, there is nothing mathematically wrong with the Frequentist approach--but I would personally argue there are things that are philosophically wrong with certain applications of those methods--not the least of which are issues where generating processes are non-stationary (though similar issues can be stated for Bayesians) or where simply the formulation tends to lead practitioners to drawing mistaken conclusions by mistake. You can make a Rube Goldberg machine of computation and still have it preserve all information and be mathematically consistent, but the likelihood of humans misinterpreting it is much higher than a simpler framework.