The Barrel Cactus is one of the Sonoran Desert's most distinctive and rewarding wild foods — producing lemony-tart fruit, poppy-seed-like seeds, and edible flowers used by Native peoples for thousands of years, with fruit available fresh from summer through late fall.

Banana Yucca is one of Arizona's most historically significant food plants — producing banana-shaped fruit, asparagus-flavored flowers, and fiber-rich leaves used by virtually every Native culture of the Southwest for food, fiber, soap, and ceremony for thousands of years.

Ocotillo is one of the most iconic plants of the Sonoran Desert — a towering spray of spiny wands that erupts in scarlet flowers after spring rains, producing edible blooms, harvestable nectar, and a medicinally significant bark used by Native peoples for centuries.

Thistle is one of Arizona's most underestimated wild foods — all thistle species are edible, and under that intimidating spiny exterior lie edible roots, tender peeled stems, and artichoke-like flower heads used by Native peoples and foragers across the Southwest for centuries.

Manzanita — Spanish for "little apple" — is one of Arizona's most distinctive mountain shrubs, with smooth mahogany-red bark, urn-shaped flowers, and tart apple-flavored berries used for cider, jelly, and medicine by Native peoples for centuries.

Mullein is one of the most recognizable and useful wild plants in Arizona's mid-elevation forests — a towering biennial with velvety leaves and yellow flowers prized for respiratory remedies, flower tea, and yes, its legendary usefulness as nature's softest trail wipe.

Prickly Pear is one of Arizona's most rewarding wild foods — the deep magenta fruit, sweet pads, and edible flowers have fed desert peoples for over 9,000 years, and are easily harvested, prepared, and preserved from summer through fall.

Creosote Bush is the most common and medicinally significant shrub in the Sonoran Desert — a drought-tolerant evergreen with powerful antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant properties used by Native peoples for thousands of years.