My father had a strong interest in and a lot of knowledge about wild plants and many other things in the natural world although he had no formal education in this area. He had just learned it on his own by spending time in the woods and listening to wise woodsmen and naturalists. He would take us on walks and point out what we could eat and what we should avoid. He was not at all afraid of the snakes that scared us and would give us tastes from time to time of leaves and berries, all the time cautioning us about sampling on our own. That skill seems to be lost in our helter-skelter world, but I treasure those times with him. Remarkably, there are many plants growing on their own with no help from us that could be harvested and added to our raw-foods diets to spice them up and improve our health in the process. If you do adventure hiking, I'm sure the following will be helpful. All of these are edible.
American Hackberry
It's a medium to tall tree that grows in the northeast. The bark is light gray and the twigs point in all directions because of a fungus that doesn't kill it but cohabits with it. They grow in parks, fields, and along fencerows. The berries are orangish/brownish when they ripen in the autumn and have a hard, inedible seed. The berries are sweet and there's so little flesh that no one harvests them; however, they do provide a treat on the trail.
Wild Apples and Crabapples
These medium-sized trees have coarse oval leaves. The flowers are pink-to-white, are fragrant, and come on in early spring. The fruit is easily-recognizable, of course. Apple or crabapple trees look bushy and have scaly gray bark. The fruit ripens in late summer or fall. Because these wild trees are not sprayed, the fruit will be less perfect than what we find in stores. You need to be on lookout for larvae within the apple, but the fruit is just fine. Just eat around the inhabitant. It's much less of a threat than the chemicals commercial apples are sprayed with. Crabapples are too hard to eat until they’re ripe. Even then, they’re a little sour. My wife loves them, when we first went to England I remember she use to go out and come back home with 5 Lt bucket full of them! Really!
Blackberries
When I was a child in New Zealand, my mother would send us out to harvest the wild blackberries. We would come home with our baskets full and our ankles chewed up by chiggers. But the fruit was delicious. They ripen in the second half of the summer on tall, thorny, arching canes. They are the same as the ones sold in the supermarkets except they’re better. As the fruit ripens, it goes from green to red to black. You want the black ones. The bushes sometimes grow very tall, as I can attest to from my youth. They are also very thorny, which I can also confirm.
Black Birch
These grow in forests in the eastern half of the United States. The green layer under the bark contains anti-inflammatory oil that tastes and smells like wintergreen. If you chew on these, they will alleviate bad breath. If you are on the trail and are having a painful muscle attack, chew on some black birch twigs. It should alleviate your symptoms, (a friend of my told me when we were hiking the 3 day Santa Cruise trail in the Peruan Andes). Evenly spaced veins form the letter V on the pointed leaves that grow on slender twigs. Some parents give these to their babies when they are teething to alleviate the pain.
Black Cherry
This native fruit tree grows throughout eastern North America. They bloom in early spring, and the white blossoms don't smell very good. Round black fruit, each with one seed, alternate along a long stalk from midsummer to late summer. Most trees bear fruit that does not taste very good; however, the good news is that about one out of fifteen bears large, delicious fruit. These will most likely be found in full sunlight in old fields or even in thickets. The seeds are large, and the flavor of the fruit might be described as cherry/grapefruit.
Black Raspberry
These are brambles and are the earliest to appear. They have arching canes as do all brambles and are thorny. They have waxy, blue-green blossoms early then white to pink flowers in mid-spring. You can tell these from blackberries because they are hollow, as are all raspberries. These are a find because they are so delicious. They grow from the East Coast to the Rockies but not in the Deep South.
Black Walnut
These grew wild near my home in New Zealand when I was a child; and every fall, we would gather them and harvest the oily, delicious nuts. The trees grow tall, from 50 to 120 feet. The bark is deeply-furrowed and is dark brown. Green walnuts are about 2 1/2" across and fall to the ground in the autumn. The green is the husk, which must be removed. We would stomp them, much as grapes are stomped in Italy. There is a sort of juice in the husk that will stain a sidewalk, so it's better to do this where the stain will not be a problem. They’re hard to crack once they’re out of the hull and allowed to dry and mature for a week or two! We used a brick and a hammer or a sledgehammer. The flavor's much richer than English walnuts, the ones we’re most accustomed to.
Concluding Thoughts
These are only a few of the many plants that provide a bounty for those who seek them out. Learning about edible plants can save you a great load when you are hiking, you can probably carry less food and snack your way along to your destination! Many books are available that show pictures of the plants so they can be easily identified. A good place to start is with this web page: www.wildmanstevebrill.com.
By TTS Cofounder Botanical Chef Omid Jaffari
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