March 28, 2008

• Wildforaging 101

  Wildforaging, or wild foraging, means eating weeds.  Weeds grow just about anywhere, even in cities.  Some weeds are poisonous.  Some weeds are edible but not palatable.  Others taste okay, and are nutritious, but can be difficult or hazardous to gather.  The trick to being a successful forager is knowing all the tricks:  which ones are good, which parts of each are good to eat, how to collect, prepare and store them, what to avoid and why.

  There are a number of different ways to learn what you need to know. 

  One way is to take a walk around your neighborhood with someone who knows.  Take along a camera and a notebook so you don’t need to remember every detail.  If you use this strategy, don’t just take one walk, but take several at different times during the growing season.  That’s important for several reasons.

  • Many edible leaves are only palatable when very young and tender, so you need to find them as soon as they sprout in spring.
  • While you are out picking spring greens, you can be scouting for plants that will have edible flowers or fruit later in the season, but that effort will be wasted unless you go back later to gather the flowers and fruit.
  • A plant’s appearance can change drastically during its life cycle, and successful foraging depends on being able to recognize what you’re looking for when you see it.
  • There must be more reasons.  If you think of any, let me know.  …oh, right!  You need the exercise.

  Another way to do it in your neighborhood is to acquire a field guide to take on your walks.  I know from experience that walking around that way, examining plants and flipping through the pages of a field guide can earn one a reputation as a klutz.  Be careful.  It can also result in bruises, sprains and broken bones.

  If the pickings are slim in your own neighborhood, or if you travel a lot, acquire field guides for other regions you visit.  Regional and specialized field guides for edible species are preferable to more general reference books, mainly because they are small enough to carry.  On a shelf here at my elbow is a copy of Hortus Third, a “concise dictionary” of cultivated plants of North America.  It is over 3 inches thick, bulky and heavy, and any compendium of wild species would be even bigger.

  I have spent most of my life in Western North America, and have done most of my foraging in Alaska.  Some of the books that have been most useful to me are:

  • Wild, Edible and Poisonous Plants of Alaska from the Cooperative Extension Service, University of Alaska
  • Western Edible Wild Plants by H. D. Harrington
  • Alaska Wild Berry Guide and Cookbook from Alaska Northwest Books

  Medicinal plants are another interest of mine.  The following are books I use and appreciate:

  • Alaska’s Wilderness Medicines by Eleanor Viereck
  • Back to Eden by Jethro Kloss
  • A Modern Herbal by M. Grieve

  Flickr has an online guide to flowering plants, but no information about edibility, etc.  If you know the name of a plant you’d like to try, and want to find out what it looks like so you can see if it grows in your area, a Google image search should return some pictures.   The weeds you are most likely to find in an urban or suburban setting are the invasive sort, and there is an illustrated invasive plant database at invasive.org.

  If you find a plant growing somewhere, but cannot identify it, identification from online sources is possible but more difficult.  In such cases it helps to know botanical jargon such as bract, sessile, cotyledon, achene, ciliate, etc., so you can enter the plant’s botanical description in the search box and have some hope of returning an identification.  Some field guides include illustrated glossaries, and I found glossaries (without illustrations) at invasive.org and UCMP.

  At this season, I’m not sure what might be sprouting where you are.  The only signs of life outside my windows are pussywillows, and not many of them.  Two of the earliest greens I look for as soon as things start growing here are fireweed and dandelions.

  I captured this image on May 10, 2007.

  

  Fireweed shoots are good to eat as long as they are tender and red/purple.  The shoots can get to be as much as six inches tall before they turn green.  It is color and tenderness that matter, not size.  After they turn green, they are bitter and stringy.

  

  Most people know what dandelion leaves look like.  Last summer, when I was photographing dandelions, I wasn’t thinking “leaves” or “field guide.”  The very young and tender leaves make good greens for salad or steamed, but they’re bitter.  I like mixing them with sorrel, which can be found wild in the Lower 48, but does not grow wild here, so I have grown it in my garden.

  It is okay to get greedy with dandelions.  Take all the leaves you want, more will come from the deep tap roots.  Someone might even pay you to remove them from a lawn.  If you are too late to get the tender young leaves, you might collect a few gallons of flower petals and make dandelion jelly or wine.  The flavor and fragrance are splendid, exceptional, superb, and yummy.  Another plus to taking the flower petals before they go to seed is to prevent the spread of this invasive species.
  

  

  

  Viola epipsela, violets, johnny jump ups, might be out in some warmer places now.  Every part of these plants is edible and sweet, but don’t get greedy with them.  Always leave behind the biggest, healthiest specimens and leave more than you take, so there will be some next year. 

  Where you are, lambsquarters might be out already.  If you want to know
  what they look like, google for an image or wait around for a few
  months and I can post one, after the snow goes away here.  By that time, in temperate areas, the leaves will already be past prime eating, but you’ll be able to identify them and collect the seeds in fall.

  That’s it for the intro to weedeating.  Let me know if you want me to focus on any specific aspect of foraging next time.

  

  • 9:09 pm
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