Two turtles warming in the sun by wide eyed lib
Today's diary is, I admit, a bit of a cheat. It's too early in my area of the Northeast to actually forage anything other than the winter staples I covered in
this diary. While it's true that the grass is starting to recover from near-perpetual snowstorms this winter and little green shoots are poking through the soil here and there, this early in the season the plants are simply too small to make harvesting worth the effort.
But that doesn't mean that foragers should just stay indoors. Identifying edible plants is more than half the battle (arguably the most important half), and the great outdoors offers opportunities to sharpen your identification skills at any time of year. IDing plants now can be challenging because micro-plants don't always exhibit the same characteristics as their fully-grown relatives. On the other hand, only a handful of plants are hardy enough to send up green shoots this early, so the field of possibilities is narrowed.
Join me below the orange doodle for some tips on how to identify plants this early in the season.
Pictured: dandelion, mugwort, English plantain, field garlic & garlic mustard
(As always, if you're new to foraging and want to give it a try, please read the first diary in the series as well as the linked diary for the full discussion of each plant. For a complete list of all plants covered in the series, click here.)
Because all these plants are quite small, I've included a quarter in each photo for scale.
Dandelion
Tiny dandelion basal rosette by wide eyed lib
Unless they are flowering or getting ready to do so, dandelion (
Taraxacum officinale) and chicory (
Cichorium intybus) can be quite difficult to tell apart. Dandelion plans tend to have deeper, more pointed lobes on their leaves, but the leaves of both species (and their close relatives) can vary widely depending on growing conditions. Dandelion tends to have fewer leaves in each basal rosette and a lighter midvein, but the good news is that both plants have all the same edible uses. For more about how to identify and harvest dandelion and chicory, please see
this diary.
Mugwort
Minute mugwort sprigs by wide eyed lib
At this point, the highly invasive mugwort (
Artemisia vulgaris) is only millimeters across. Even so, it has a grey-green fuzziness that makes it distinctive, and the tiny leaves are already displaying their characteristic lobes. Mugwort tends to grow in dense stands, and in unmowed areas tall, musty-smelling flower stalks stand like brittle sentinels over the new growth. In Korea and other parts of Asia, young mugwort is a prized addition to stirfries. You can read more about identifying and harvesting mugwort
here.
English Plantain
English plantain basal rosette by wide eyed lib
Unlike its cousin common plantain (
Plantago major), the leaves of English plantain (
Plantago lanceolata) never die back all the way in the winter. Instead, they seem to go into a form of plant hibernation-- turning dark, ceasing to grow and just waiting until the weather improves. Unlike the other plants pictured, this one is easy to identify because, apart from its size, it looks virtually the same as it did during the summer. Look for tight basal rosettes of overlapping, lance-shaped, simple, dark green leaves with parallel veins that look a bit beaten up from overwintering. Common plantain, in contrast, probably won't make an appearance around here for another two weeks or so. To learn more about common plantain, see
this diary, and
this one contains some additional photos of English plantain.
Field Garlic
Field Garlic by wide eyed lib
Field garlic (
Allium oleraceum) is another plant that can be found growing under the snow. Because it doesn't have to send up new shoots in Spring, it gets a head start on most other ground covers. Like all alliums, it has a characteristic onion scent and grows from underground bulbs. Field garlic bulbs are stronger than conventional onions, and the curly tops can be used like scallions or chives, although fewer will be needed. Although field garlic is mostly found along the East Coast, other members of the family are widespread elsewhere, and any plant that both
looks like onions or garlic and
smells like onions or garlic is a member of this genus and thus edible. Two West Coast examples are the nodding onion (
A. cernuum) and the tapertip onion (
A. acuminatum). Learn more about field garlic
here.
Garlic Mustard
Garlic mustard by wide eyed lib
Of the plants featured today, this one is probably the hardest to identify if you are only looking. However, if you start using your other senses—especially your sense of smell—this one becomes the easiest. Garlic mustard (
Alliaria petiolata) is an incredibly invasive member of the mustard family featuring heart-shaped leaves with scalloped edges. At this early stage, it could be mistaken for other plants including young lemon balm (
Melissa officinalis), young common violets (
Viola sororia) or even young purple deadnettle (
Lamium purpureum). But if you pluck a few leaves and crush them, garlic mustard's garlicky smell is unmistakable. (And if you smell Lemon Pledge, you've got young lemon balm.) As the leaves of all these species grow larger (or, in the case of purple deadnettle, fail to grow larger), they get much easier to distinguish. Learn more about garlic mustard
here.
And Much, Much More
Other plants I spotted yesterday include the aforementioned lemon balm (covered here) and purple deadnettle (edible and in the mint family but doesn't taste very good), the incredibly invasive lesser celadine (Ranunculus ficaria; never covered, but young leaves are edible), red and white clover (Trifolium pratense and T. repens, both covered here), shepherds purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris; covered a bit by RonV in this diary), bull thistle (Cirsium vulgare; covered here), and sheep sorrel (Rumex acetosella; covered here). Many of these plants will be featured in the coming weeks.
If you'd like to learn more about foraging but missed the earlier diaries in the series, you can click here for the previous 47 installments, and here for RonV's 4 part mini-series on medicinal plants and how to use them. As always, please feel free to post photos in the comments and I'll do my best to help identify what you've found. (And if you find any errors, let me know.)
Helpful Foraging Resources
"Wildman" Steve Brill's site covers many edibles and includes nice drawings.
"Green" Deane Jordan's site is quite comprehensive and has color photos and stories about many plants.
Green Deane's foraging how-to clips on youtube each cover a single plant in reassuring detail.
Linda Runyon's site features only a few plants but has great deals on her dvd, wild cards and books (check out the package deals in particular).
Steve Brill's book, Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and Not So Wild) Places is my primary foraging guide. (Read reviews here, but if you're feeling generous, please buy from Steve's website.)
Linda Runyon's book The Essential Wild Food Survival Guide contains especially detailed information about nutritional content and how to store and preserve wild foods.
Samuel Thayer’s book The Forager's Harvest is perhaps the finest resource out there for the 32 plants covered. The color photos and detailed harvest and preparation information are top-notch. His second book, Nature's Garden, is just as good. For an autographed copy of either book, order from Sam's website.
Steve Brill also offers guided foraging tours in NYC-area parks. Details and contact info are on his website.
Don Wiss’s website is a treasure trove featuring hundreds of photos of common northeastern edibles.
For well-sourced info on the medicinal uses of plants, Plants for a Future is a site I turn to time and time again.
Finally, the USDA plants database is a great place to look up info on all sorts of plants.