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I don’t know how many people are into this, but I would love to share some of my foraging! Foraging for local edible plants is my favorite thing that’s not Lupin, I love going out into wooded areas, tromping around the roadsides and identifying plants and then eating them. Here’s a few of my photos from across the past 4-5 years of doing this.
Pollen from various plants is safe to eat (though for people with pollen allergies I don’t recommend it
)
An easy source of pollen where I live is cattails, which have a few days in spring where they have massive pollen accumulation on the tops. You can see here the yellowy spike at the top.
I went into a marsh with a bag and shook these into a large bag to get a container of pollen. I had to sift out fluff and bugs of course, but here’s how it looked after about 40-50 cattails shaken and sifted!
Some people make pancakes or other baked goods, but the end I made muffins with about 2:1 flour to pollen ratio. The pollen is such a vibrant yellow!
I have also brewed my own alcohol. This year I made mead, from apple juice and honey. Earlier my friend and I picked wild grapes and made wine. The grapes are small and took a lot of processing, but here’s the end wine too!
A favorite of mine, black raspberries. In many places in the world there’s a wild bramble fruit and many are safe to eat! The ones that are local to my area are blackberries and black raspberries. Black raspberries are pretty similar to red raspberries but they’re smaller and I love the flavor more than red raspberries, probably mostly because they’re very fresh.
Another wild berry local to my area is called Serviceberry! They flower beautifully in spring and are common in landscaping too. I’ve found Serviceberries in downtown Indianapolis AND in the woods. They taste somewhat like an almond and an apple? Hard to describe the flavor. I like them!
These I only tried once because they seemed too small a harvest to warrant killing these lovely little flowers. These are Spring Beauties, the tuber is edible when washed and fried. I thought it tasted nice, but my understanding is that the tubers take multiple years to form and of course digging them up means killing the whole plant. So I haven’t tried them again.
These are pheasant back mushrooms, polypore mushrooms with a taste sort of like a cucumber or watermelon rind? If you find them early in their growing, and before they get huge and too tough to chew you can pick and eat them. Super fun to collect, and they’re decent cooked. I want to do more mushroom hunting but I still need time to learn my identification.
A local nut tree that I adore, Shagbark Hickory. They take a long long time to grow and produce nuts. They often don’t start growing nuts until they’re 40 years old, but they live a very long time. I think their nuts are delicious. They’re related to pecans, but I find they have a distinct sweetness like maple syrup. I love them. This is how the ground looks on a mast year when they drop lots of nuts. Lots of discarded shells lol
Last disclaimer here, I totally encourage others to get into this hobby BUT you should only eat things that you are 100% of what plant they are. Especially mushrooms can be very dangerous. Learn identification before you put anything in your mouth and if it tastes bitter or bad, spit it out immediately.
Pollen from various plants is safe to eat (though for people with pollen allergies I don’t recommend it
)An easy source of pollen where I live is cattails, which have a few days in spring where they have massive pollen accumulation on the tops. You can see here the yellowy spike at the top.
I went into a marsh with a bag and shook these into a large bag to get a container of pollen. I had to sift out fluff and bugs of course, but here’s how it looked after about 40-50 cattails shaken and sifted!
Some people make pancakes or other baked goods, but the end I made muffins with about 2:1 flour to pollen ratio. The pollen is such a vibrant yellow!
I have also brewed my own alcohol. This year I made mead, from apple juice and honey. Earlier my friend and I picked wild grapes and made wine. The grapes are small and took a lot of processing, but here’s the end wine too!
A favorite of mine, black raspberries. In many places in the world there’s a wild bramble fruit and many are safe to eat! The ones that are local to my area are blackberries and black raspberries. Black raspberries are pretty similar to red raspberries but they’re smaller and I love the flavor more than red raspberries, probably mostly because they’re very fresh.
Another wild berry local to my area is called Serviceberry! They flower beautifully in spring and are common in landscaping too. I’ve found Serviceberries in downtown Indianapolis AND in the woods. They taste somewhat like an almond and an apple? Hard to describe the flavor. I like them!
These I only tried once because they seemed too small a harvest to warrant killing these lovely little flowers. These are Spring Beauties, the tuber is edible when washed and fried. I thought it tasted nice, but my understanding is that the tubers take multiple years to form and of course digging them up means killing the whole plant. So I haven’t tried them again.
These are pheasant back mushrooms, polypore mushrooms with a taste sort of like a cucumber or watermelon rind? If you find them early in their growing, and before they get huge and too tough to chew you can pick and eat them. Super fun to collect, and they’re decent cooked. I want to do more mushroom hunting but I still need time to learn my identification.
A local nut tree that I adore, Shagbark Hickory. They take a long long time to grow and produce nuts. They often don’t start growing nuts until they’re 40 years old, but they live a very long time. I think their nuts are delicious. They’re related to pecans, but I find they have a distinct sweetness like maple syrup. I love them. This is how the ground looks on a mast year when they drop lots of nuts. Lots of discarded shells lol
Last disclaimer here, I totally encourage others to get into this hobby BUT you should only eat things that you are 100% of what plant they are. Especially mushrooms can be very dangerous. Learn identification before you put anything in your mouth and if it tastes bitter or bad, spit it out immediately.
