About Me

This site is about plants, not about me. But some people want to know about me anyways.

My name is John Williams. I have enjoyed hiking in the mountains for my entire life. In college I took a summer botany course, and that gave me the basic tools I needed to study the plants and do botany in the wild. This was a great addition to my hiking habit, and I have been studying plants for so long, I feel than I am a botanist now, although I sometimes say "amateur botanist". 

Around 2014 I was running out of new plants to identify and study, so in order to add a new dimension to my hobby, I decided to start eating the plants I was studying. Foraging has turned out to be great fun and because relatively few people do this seriously, I feel like I am able to make real contributions to what we know about edible plants. For example, very few people know how good Ballhead Waterleaf is to eat, partially because related species are very poor eating.

It is important to me as I write these articles to give my personal experiences with each of the plants. So many of the books and sources I look to for information are just repeating hearsay from other sources, without actually verifying whether the information is true. And my experiences show that much of this information is exagerated or incomplete, and in some cases simply false. Everything here has been personally tested by myself, often with good success, but some of these articles simply describe why you should not eat the plant.

I also study and use plants medicinally, but I don't write about medicinal plants here, because it is much harder to personally verify the medicinal effects. But if you are on a guided hike with me, I am always willing to talk about those plants.

I also lead hikes each year at the Wasatch Wildflower Festival. These hikes are more about identifying the flowers, rather that eating them. Here is a short Wildflower Festival Tribute video one of my guests made. 
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1429118888326311