Sam Gribley, the protagonist of My Side of the Mountain, survives quite well by finding and identifying many edible plants in the Catskill woods. While he gets most of his protein from fish and woodland animals, he also gets nutrition from many plants, which he learned about from books and visits to the botanical garden in New York.

Some of the plants he makes use of are the bulbs of the dogtooth violet and acorns from oak trees. He obtains salt by boiling hickory sticks. He makes a sort of flour from the bark of the poplar tree.

Sam mentions quite a few more plants when discussing the meal he has prepared for Christmas. This includes mashed cattail tubers, honey locust bean, and hickory nuts. He also makes use of dandelions and spring beauties in the spring. In the fall he finds ample apples to eat.

In the chapter entitled "The Old, Old Tree", Sam finds dogtooth violets, which are "little yellow lilies on long slender stems with ovel leaves dappled with gray (and) wonderfully tasty bulbs".  He also discovers spring beauties, which "taste a little like lima beans", and dandelions, whose greens and roots "are good (but) a little strong and milky".  He also, in the previous chapter  called "I Find Many Useful Plants", eats the fruit of apple and walnut trees, as well as cattails and arrow-leaf, which turn out to be "good starchy foods".

Later in the book, in the chapter entitled "The Autumn Provides Food and Loneliness", Sam describes gathering bulrush roots and "the nutlike tubers of the sedges" in addition to arrowleaf bulbs and cattail tubers.  He also finds some wild onions.