One of the websites that is great for explaining which wild plants are safe to eat, as well as how and when to eat them, is Green Dean's Eat the Weeds website and youtube videos. Although I like the idea of foraging for natural wild plants , I don't have as much of an opportunity for doing that here in town as when we lived out in the country. We do have lots of wild violets in the spring, and both the leaves and the blossoms are edible. I have used them in salads, and even sauteed the leaves and added them to scrambled eggs. One very healthy survival food is pine needles. I think that most of the evergreen needles are fine to use, so either fir or spruce might work as well as pine needles. I have made pine needle tea, which is supposed to have more vitamin C than a whole lemon has. I also made some pine needle vinegar, which smelled and tasted almost like balsamic vinegar. I just gathered and washed some fresh pine needles, cut them into short pieces with my scissors, and then put them in a glass jar and added the vinegar. I have read that it is even better flavored if you add just a tiny bit of coconut sugar (brown sugar would probably work about the same way), so next time I make some, I will add that as well. I used it to make viniagrette salad dressing, and it gave the dressing an interesting taste and fragrance.
How interesting to forage for food in the forest. Locally in Hawaii we can't do much foraging for everything is protected these days. We need permits for fishing too. Land is owned by the State or privately, so you got to be careful what you do and where you do it. We got pumpkin to pick at farms at Halloween, that's about all, sad but that's the way it is locally. Very few places on the outer island that you can find food from the ocean or the forest, but again you got to know where and probably got to have a permit to pick things. Some people have found guava to forage: * http://the3foragers.blogspot.com/2012/01/wild-edibles-in-hawaii-common-guavas.html * http://the3foragers.blogspot.com/2012/02/mushrooms-in-hawaii.html This particular blog has information about mushrooms, hmm, guess you can forage in Hawaii, it's just that I wouldn't forage...feel safer going to supermarkets. Though I do look for broad leaf plantain to grow in my little back yard in pots. I found the seeds of this medicinal plantain way on the other side of the island of Oahu in the town of Kahaluu. Now I have leaves to make tea with. Thanks I've learned something about home that I wouldn't have known about until I read your post!
Back in my lean years I did a lot of foraging. Living beside the Mississippi river, fish were plentiful and easy to come by. In the summer, our cemetery is overrun with rabbits and a few squirrels. My .22 air pistol put a lot of meat on my table. The back edges of the cemetery had lots of blackberry bushes growing wild. So, I had fish, meat and fruit. In the winter months, I legally hunted whatever game was in season. Back in those days, I was newly divorced and only working part time as a rent-a-cop. Made barely enough to pay rent on a cheap hotel room and a bit of gas for my old block of rust Vega.
About the only wild foods, I have foraged for is berries, and I used to do a lot of that when I was young. I have had dandelion greens in a salad though. One thing I wish I could find is gingseng, not for my own personal use but to sell it, as it is worth so much money nowadays. You can sell it for something like 600 dollars an ounce or some kind of bizarre amount of money. I think they have it in this state, but it is primarily in the mountains.
I forage quite a lot. We have wild asparagus just coming in at this time of year - it's delicious. There are also plenty of herbs and edible greens growing wild around the edges of the vineyards. Most summers I never have to buy cherries as there are a lot of cherry trees along the river. In the forest above Reims there are hundreds of fungi - but I don't know enough to go foraging alone. A friend of ours is an expert and I feel safe eating what he tells me i can pick.
Blackberries I definitely foraged. If I would have know how much I would like mushrooms as an adult...I would have probably foraged some of those too, although I would definitely have to know which ones are edible and which were posionous. We used to find sasafras and make some tea out of that sometimes too.
Although pine tree is rare here, I am amused to know that it is edible and has vitamin C as well. What I know of the pine tree is the pine nut which is the favorite nut of my husband. It is also the most expensive nut here and seldom available. There is a place here called Mountain province which is about 6 hours drive from Manila. It has lots of pine trees. I love the smell of pine trees that's why we have them for our Christmas tree in the past (live pine tree is so expensive though). I may not be able to relate with the other edible plants and herbs because I live in a tropical country. But I'm sure we have our share of the exotic edibles in the forest. However, I'm not the authority in that field although I have learned some already like the mulberry which is considered a wild plant (or tree?) and the dwarf passion fruit that is yellow and smaller than the playing marble. It's nice to discover such edibles when you are in the wild.
I pick lots of blackberries every year. A small amount of elderberries and wild cherries. We had wild asparagus at our last home but now have it in the garden, As for things like wild violets, dandilions and such I say yuk. I mean it's fine if you're alone in the outdoors and starving but otherwise there are so many tasty greens that are so easy to grow. Pine needles? We have over a thousand pine trees on our property and I've never heard of eating pine needles. I'll check it out.
I totally forgot about elderberries. I picked them along old dirt roads that were no longer maintained. Those were not sprayed like on busy roads. My granny was living with my parents in those days. She would make me pies and jelly out of elderberries. DELICIOUS! Later, my mother-in-law did the same. She always treated me well.
Wow, that's interesting about pine needles, I never know it. We had a nice pine tree in our yard when I was growing up. We picked it out when we were young and planted it, and it grew tall and strong over the years and provided a nice amount of shade for us. I had no inkling that the needles could be so useful, or provide vitamin C. I have some pine trees here on the walking trails, and when I start walking again, I might try collecting some and see what I can make with them. I like the idea of using them in vinegar, especially if it works out to be like balsamic, which I adore.
We've had a lot of rain recently and we were helping the man who knows all about which mushrooms are safe to clear his two vineyards of the sudden influx of snails. His wife put them all in a bucket and I assumed they were going to release them somewhere well away from the vine - but she was taking them to her neighbour who was going to prepare a family meal with them. Now that is extreme foraging to me! Or is foraging only about plants?
Here is another really common plant that grows in almost everyone's yard, or at least someplace close to where you live , most likely. That plant is common clover. Clover actually has health benefits, and I think that red clover is supposed to be the best one for you. This video just shows you how to identify clover, which most of us already know how to do. I well remember spending time searching for one of those elusive 4-leaf clovers when I was growing up, and truth be told, I still look for them when I am out in the yard. We have lots of clover in the yard, and I really like walking on clover, too. Anyway, what he recommends eating is the blossom, but the leaf of also edible, and I have experimented with adding it to a green smoothie. Not my favorite, but free and easy to find.