American Black Nightshade is one of the most misunderstood plants in North America — widely dismissed as deadly when in fact the fully ripe black berries are edible and have been eaten by cultures worldwide for centuries. The critical distinction is ripeness: green berries are toxic, fully ripe black berries are not.

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.

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.

Blue Dicks is one of the most widely distributed and ecologically important spring wildflowers of the American Southwest — a slender perennial growing from an edible underground corm, producing brilliant blue-purple flower clusters from February through April in Arizona's desert grasslands, canyon edges, and shrubby slopes, with a long history as a significant starch food source for Native peoples across California, the Great Basin, and the Southwest.

Wild Grape — known as Canyon Grape across the Southwest — is a deciduous woody vine of Arizona's canyon bottoms, stream banks, and shaded riparian areas, producing small clusters of dark purple grapes in summer and fall that have fed Native peoples, wildlife, and foragers across the Southwest for thousands of years.

Christmas Cholla is one of the most distinctive and slender cacti of the Sonoran Desert — a pencil-stemmed cholla whose brilliant red fruit persists through fall and winter, dotting the bare spiny branches like ornaments and producing a small, sweet fruit used by Native peoples and foragers across the Southwest.

Coyote Mint is one of the most intensely fragrant wild herbs in Arizona's mountain forests — a low-growing perennial of rocky slopes, canyon bottoms, and open forest at high elevation, smelling of mint and marjoram combined, with beautiful purple pom-pom flower heads in summer and a long history of Native American culinary and medicinal use across the western mountains.

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.

Dandelion is arguably the most useful wild plant a forager can find — every part of the Dandelion is edible, it grows from desert washes to mountain meadows across all of Arizona, and its documented medicinal properties for liver health, digestion, and inflammation are among the most well-researched of any wild plant.

Desert Chia is the original chia of the American Southwest — a small native sage whose tiny seeds pack extraordinary nutritional density, used for centuries by Native peoples as a staple trail food, endurance fuel, and medicinal remedy across the Sonoran Desert and California chaparral.

Desert Globemallow is one of the most recognizable and beloved wildflowers of the Sonoran Desert — a drought-tolerant perennial shrub producing brilliant apricot to orange bowl-shaped flowers from spring through fall, with edible leaves, flowers, and roots, significant medicinal properties, and a long history of use by Native peoples across the Southwest desert.

Fendler's Buckbrush is a native evergreen shrub of Arizona's mountain forests and sky island ranges — a significant medicinal plant known to herbalists as Red Root for its distinctive red-tinged root bark, with documented lymphatic, immune, and digestive applications, and exceptional wildlife value as a primary browse plant for mule deer and elk across the southwestern mountains.

Indian Paintbrush is one of the most recognizable and beloved wildflowers of Arizona and the greater Southwest — a hemiparasitic perennial of desert slopes, canyon rims, and mountain meadows whose brilliant red to orange flower bracts appear to have been dipped in paint, with edible flowers used cautiously by Native peoples and significant ecological value as a hummingbird nectar plant.

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.

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.

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.

Desert Hackberry is one of the Sonoran Desert's most important wildlife plants and a reliable wild edible — a spiny shrub of desert washes and rocky slopes producing small bright orange berries with a sweet-tart flavor that have fed birds, reptiles, mammals, and people across the Southwest for thousands of years.

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.

Wild Blackberry — the native Arizona Dewberry (Rubus arizonensis) — is a thorny sprawling shrub of Arizona's mountain stream banks, canyon bottoms, and shaded riparian areas, producing clusters of dark red to black berries in summer that have fed wildlife and people across the Southwest for thousands of years.

Wild Raspberry is one of Arizona's most rewarding high-elevation foraging discoveries — a thorny cane shrub producing intensely flavored red berries in summer at 7,000 to 10,000 feet in the mountain forests of the Mogollon Rim, White Mountains, and sky island ranges, with a long history of Native American food and medicinal use across the Southwest.

Wild Rhubarb — known across the Southwest as Canaigre Dock — is a robust desert perennial with rhubarb-like stalks, broad leaves, and massive starchy roots that served as a critical tanning agent, food source, and medicine for Native peoples across Arizona and the greater Southwest for centuries.

Wolfberry is Arizona's wild answer to the goji berry — the Southwest has its own version of goji berries, and it's been growing wild right under your nose this whole time. Nine native species produce small red berries across the Sonoran Desert with two fruiting seasons — spring and monsoon fall — used as food and medicine by desert peoples for centuries.

Woodland Strawberry is one of the most rewarding finds in Arizona's mountain forests — a tiny, intensely flavored berry with the concentrated essence of a garden strawberry magnified several times over, found in dappled shade beneath firs, spruces, and aspens from the Mogollon Rim to the Sky Islands.

Wild Rose is one of Arizona's most rewarding high-country foraging plants — a thorny mountain shrub producing fragrant pink flowers in summer and brilliant red rose hips in fall that are among the richest natural sources of vitamin C available from wild plants, used for centuries by Native peoples across the Southwest for food, medicine, and ceremony.