Regional Foraging

"Doug Deur invites us to discover the taste and history of the Northwest." -Spencer B. Beebe, author of Cache and founder of Ecotrust The Pacific Northwest offers a veritable feast for foragers, and with Douglas Deur as your trusted guide you will learn how to safely find and identify an abundance of delicious wild plants. The plant profiles in Pacific Northwest Foraging include clear, color photographs, identification tips, guidance on how to ethically harvest, and suggestions for eating and preserving. A handy seasonal planner details which plants are available during every season. Thorough, comprehensive, and safe, this is a must-have for foragers in Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. Part of the Timber Press Regional Foraging book series, this is for foragers in Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, and Southeast Alaska.  Douglas Deur has been gathering native plants his whole life. He serves as a cultural ecologist for Native peoples of the western United States and Canada, documenting enduring plant use practices as well as the rituals, values, and technologies that have shaped traditional resource harvests and traditional understandings of the land. He is an associate research professor in the department of anthropology at Portland State University. He has also served as a senior research scientist in the Pacific Northwest Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit in the University of Washington's School of Environmental and Forest Sciences and as an adjunct professor of environmental studies at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Much of his research is supported by the U.S. National Park Service and is used in the peaceful resolution of land-use disputes, as well as in land-use planning that serves to protect and restore culturally significant natural resources. Doug's writings have appeared in books, academic journals, and alternative newspapers. With Nancy Turner, he coedited Keeping It Living: Traditions of Plant Use and Cultivation on the Northwest Coast of North America, the first book-length treatment of Native American plant cultivation traditions in the Pacific Northwest. Preface Growing up between Portland's exurban fringe and Oregon's wind-beaten north coast, I experienced a childhood that played out alongside the deep green backdrop of Northwestern native plants. My earliest memories involve crawling through patches of wild strawberries that my mother had transplanted and tended into a robust backyard groundcover. When, as a toddler, I needed to nap but resisted, my mother walked me through the Douglas-fir and cedar forest behind our home, asking me to identify each plant by name until fatigue set in and I drifted off to sleep, with visions of Oregon grape and wild lilies dancing in my head. We cut trails into the blackberry thicket tangles in summertime to find the biggest and juiciest berries. We scaled mountains, where we gathered wild onions and ate handfuls of huckleberries as we watched ravens and red-tailed hawks ride the thermals below. Academic confirmation of these landscape lessons came from unique venues: special wild food programs sponsored by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and other regional organizations, taught by retired professors and earnest hippy biologists. Cumulatively, these experiences were the cornerstones of my early education and gave me insights that I still draw from as a professor and researcher today. I sincerely hope that future generations of children will be so fortunate as to experience this kind of hands-on learning upon the land and, through that process, gain a profound love and understanding of this verdant home of ours. If this book helps a parent usher even one child along a similar journey, I will consider the entire writing project a great success.      As I entered adulthood, though, I was disappointed to learn that the landscapes and plants that I valued so much were seen as an anonymous tangle to many Northw

"This is the ultimate guide, and Chris is the undisputed heavyweight champion of foraging in the South." -Sean Brock, author of Heritage and chef of McCradys, Minero, and Husk  The Southeast offers a veritable feast for foragers, and with Chris Bennett as your trusted guide you will learn how to safely find and identify an abundance of delicious wild plants. The plant profiles in Southeast Foraging include clear, color photographs, identification tips, guidance on how to ethically harvest, and suggestions for eating and preserving. A handy seasonal planner details which plants are available during every season. Thorough, comprehensive, and safe, this is a must-have for foragers in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. Part of the Timber Press Regional Foraging book series, this is for foragers in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and northwestern Florida.   Chris Bennett is a forager, writer, cheesemonger, and trained chef. He has worked with top chefs around the Southeast providing unique ingredients to the area's best restaurants. He has been featured in Birmingham Magazine, Cooking Light, Garden & Gun, Discover St. Clair, and The Hot and Hot Fish Club Cookbook. He is a frequent speaker, and was selected as one of Southern Living magazine's "50 Innovators Changing the South." Preface: Foraging in the Southeast Foraging for wild edibles is undergoing a renaissance in the United States. Whether it is the logical extension of the farm-to-table movement or the result of decades of American reforestation, foraging is an experience no longer claimed just by hunters and campers. We are living in a fortunate moment when you might find local edible wild plants on your dinner table at an urban restaurant. You might be able to take a community foraging class taught by a local expert who lives in your neighborhood. You may even find yourself in your own backyard plucking some wild ginger for your morning tea or gathering dandelion greens for the evening's salad.  This rebirth of interest in edible wild plants is good for the landscape and for preserving our cultural heritage. Foraged foods require no packaging, spraying, or fertilizing to be at their freshest and most tasty. They need no trucking or shipping to reach your table, for this is as close to the land as you can eat. From the mountains of West Virginia and the Carolinas to the swamps of Louisiana and the coastal floodplains of Mississippi and Alabama, the Southeast is extremely rich and diverse in wild edibles. Wild plants are copious in wild lands; no logging, clearing, or plowing is required to create optimal growing conditions for these edibles. At the same time, this free food is available in all types of landscapes-urban, suburban, rural. The range of different plant habitats in the Southeast is staggering: mountains, foothills, plateaus, floodplains, swamps, marshes, grasslands, forests, ridges, valleys, lawns, meadows, overgrown fields, thickets, disturbed soil, seashores, riverbanks, lakes, and bogs. This makes foraging accessible to everyone, in every part of the region and within every budget. For many folks who are eager to reconnect with heritage cooking and lifestyles, foraging also offers a direct link to the past. Those hickory nuts and that garlic mustard you might find today are the same ingredients early Native Americans and European settlers were gathering for their own meals in days long ago.  Foraged foods are good for our bellies, too. Distinctively wild flavors are adding a new dimension to American regional cuisines. No one knows this as well as chefs in the Southeast, who recently have been cooking with and seeking out traditional and foraged foods with enthusiasm. Growing up in Alab

The Northeast offers a veritable feast for foragers, and with Leda Meredith as your trusted guide you will learn how to safely find and identify an abundance of delicious wild plants. The plant profiles in Northeast Foraging include clear, color photographs, identification tips, guidance on how to ethically harvest, and suggestions for eating and preserving. A handy seasonal planner details which plants are available during every season. Thorough, comprehensive, and safe, this is a must-have for foragers in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Rhode Island. Part of the Timber Press Regional Foraging book series, this is for foragers in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont,  Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island, Ontario, and Quebec. Leda Meredith is a lifelong forager and a certified ethnobotanist. She is an instructor at the New York Botanical Garden and at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, specializing in edible and medicinal plants. The author of four other books, Meredith writes for Mother Earth News and leads tours internationally for organizations including Slow Food, Green Edge, Cornell University, and Purchase University. Preface: Confessions of a Lifelong Forager "Yes, that's the right plant. We're going to cook the leaves tonight with a little garlic and olive oil, then we'll add a little lemon juice and-" My great-grandmother pressed the four fingers and thumb of one hand together and brought the fingertips to her lips for a smacking kiss. Her eyes sparkled with the anticipated pleasure of eating the dandelion greens I'd just helped her pick. We were in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, and I was three years old.      Great-grandma was from Greece, where to this day foraging for wild edible plants is part of the culture, as it is in many other countries. I doubt she ever learned the word foraging. To her, going out to pick the free, choice vegetables growing wild nearby was a normal thing to do. And naturally, she wanted to teach her great-granddaughter which plants were not only safe to eat, but tasty. And because she was excited about them, I was, too.      Excited is an apt way to describe how I feel to this day about foraging for wild edible plants. I get excited when I happen upon an unexpected, wonderful food find such as the abundant patch of mayapples I found this past summer. I get excited as each new ingredient comes into season-and into my kitchen and onto my taste buds.       When I travel I sometimes get to taste a wild food for the first time, something that only grows there, and that, too, is exciting-I love learning what here tastes like. I am as passionate about edible wild plants today as my great-grandma was.      Home to me for the past several decades has been New York; this book is about plants found in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, as well as Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island, and the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, Canada.      I love to see my students interact with our northeastern landscape in that special, seasonal way that experienced foragers enjoy. Is it June? Why then, they're beelining for the mulberry trees. But a month later they'll be zipping past the no-longer-fruiting mulberries-and heading for the wineberries, whose season has just begun.      It is also delightful when a visitor to the Northeast is excited by their first chance to identify and eat the unique wild edible plants that are indigenous to this region.      I wish I could be with you in the field when you open up this book to help identify a plant you think just might be a choic

"No one has advanced wild foraging in the desert Southwest as much as John Slattery." -Gary Paul Nabahn, director of the Center for Regional Food Studies, University of Arizona The Southwest offers a veritable feast for foragers, and with John Slattery as your trusted guide you will learn how to safely find and identify an abundance of delicious wild plants. The plant profiles in Southwest Foraging include clear, color photographs, identification tips, guidance on how to ethically harvest, and suggestions for eating and preserving. A handy seasonal planner details which plants are available during every season. Thorough, comprehensive, and safe, this is a must-have for foragers in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, southern Utah, and southern Nevada.   Southwest Foraging profiles 117 plants, with detailed information for safe identification, advice on sustainable harvesting, and tips on preparation and use. Part of the Timber Press Regional Foraging book series, this is for foragers in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, southern Utah, and southern Nevada.   John Slattery is a bioregional herbalist, educator, and forager who is passionate about helping people develop deep and meaningful relationships with wild plants. Visit him at johnjslattery.com. Preface: Land of Abundant Beauty My path to wild plant foods is perhaps different than most. The idea of there being desirable, useful, or easy-to-find wild plant foods was not part of my upbringing. However, I strongly gravitated toward the use of local plants as medicine while traveling for a year throughout Central and South America. Meeting with indigenous healers and herbalists throughout this journey, I began to appreciate the concept of developing relationships with plants-not just herbs as a capsule, tincture, or other product to be purchased off the shelf. This was one experience among many that opened my eyes and heart to what was available. Although my interest in wild plant foods and wild plant medicines occurred simultaneously, foraging initially took a backseat to botanical medicine. At first, I saw the pursuit of wild foods as a survival technique, a way to live as people once lived long ago. With limited opportunities to explore this style of living, I wasn't implementing many wild foods into my diet other than major foods such as mesquite meal, cholla buds, saguaro fruit, prickly pear fruit, and palo verde beans-certainly more exotic ingredients than the average person employs, but I wanted these foods to become an even bigger part of my life. I began adding them to my diet in novel and unconventional ways, parting with the traditions I had learned, and fueling my passion for wild foods with my creative impulse to cook-an impulse I've had since childhood. New creations were popping into my mind as they once did with cultivated foods. I was grinding barrel cactus seeds for flour to make bread or cooking its fruit into a chutney; combining flowering stems of wild plants to make sauerkraut; frying mesquite-breaded New Mexico locust blossoms with cinnamon in butter, topped with saguaro syrup. My perspective had shifted! I was not alone in this new viewpoint. It seems there has been an increased interest in this direction for a certain segment of our population, and the enthusiasm continues to grow. Of course, it's far from accurate to characterize this trend as new. Mesquite pods, prickly pear pads and fruit, chia seeds, amaranth greens, and other superfoods have all been part of the local cuisine in the southwestern United States for thousands of years. The region, with its tremendously varied terrain, flora, and fauna, and its rich cultural tradition of interaction with the land, has the longest continual history of agriculture within our nation-4,000 years in Tucson, Arizona. And wild plant foods, prized for their dense nutrition and rich dietary attributes (not to mention their unique and delicious flavors) have

"This book is an excellent deep dive into California's wild edibles, revealing a real affection for and intimate familiarity with our state's flora." -Iso Rabins, founder of ForageSF California offers a veritable feast for foragers, and with Judith Larner Lowry as your trusted guide you will learn how to safely find and identify an abundance of delicious wild plants. The plant profiles in California Foraging include clear, color photographs, identification tips, guidance on how to ethically harvest, and suggestions for eating and preserving. A handy seasonal planner details which plants are available during every season. Thorough, comprehensive, and safe, this is a must-have for foragers in the Golden State. Part of the Timber Press Regional Foraging book series, this is for foragers in the diverse climates of California.  Judith Larner Lowry has been the proprietor of Larner Seeds, specializing in California native plants and seeds, for the last 35 years. Lowry designs and plants native plant gardens, gives talks, and contributes to Orion magazine, BayNature magazine, and numerous other journals. She lives with her husband in Bolinas, California. Preface One foggy summer day near the coast, I discovered an unexpected treasure trove of California hazelnut bushes. They were loaded with sweet, mild nuts that were ripe and ready to eat. I found a comfortable place to sit, a rock to crack the shells, and settled in for a session of hazelnut appreciation. To other hikers on the trail, I was hidden from view by the hazel's leafy branches.       Soon, I heard two parents cajoling their children onward up the trail. The children sounded tired and complained about being hungry and bored. I thought momentarily of having them join me in my cozy fort under the hazel and sharing the bounty.       While I considered it, they disappeared up the path. Maybe I should have called out to them: There is delicious food here. Come join me.  I didn't then, but I am calling out to you now. There is delicious food all around us.  Two unexpected strands have come together during the writing of this book. One, an even greater deepening of my appreciation for California's native flora, I expected and welcomed. The other strand has taken me by surprise.      For most of my adult life, I have been an advocate for California's native plants. At my mail-order native plant seed and nursery business, we specialize in growing seed crops of native wildflowers, grasses, shrubs, and trees, some of them threatened with local extinction.       Through the years, my realization that many of these native plants are also food has felt like startling new information about old friends I thought I knew well. I first started to value California's native plants for their drought tolerance and appropriateness to California's climate and soils. Then they became a crucial part of my developing and deepening sense of home in the Golden State, and I wanted to live surrounded by them. Their importance as habitat for native bees, butterflies, birds, and other creatures added yet another layer to my appreciation of the grounding details of sharing life with the plants that evolved here.       Early on, I learned that many of the seeds we gathered from the wild were grain crops for California Indians. The wildflower meadows that drew me with their beauty represented to many native peoples a harvest of healthful seed foods, produced with no added fertilizer, pesticides, water, or plowing. That's how the journey of this book began, with the seeds. When I hear people talk about the importance and value of diversified sustainable farming operations, I look at the wildlands and think about what a diversified sustainable farming operation they already are. Or once were, and could be again.      At our seed-growing garden, I proclaimed a zero-tolerance policy for weeds, t

"A stunning look at the natural abundance of the mountain states-with clear guidance on identification, gathering techniques, and uses." -Jennifer McGruther, author of The Nourished Kitchen The Mountain States offer a veritable feast for foragers, and with Briana Wiles as your trusted guide you will learn how to safely find and identify an abundance of delicious wild plants. The plant profiles in Mountain States Foraging include clear, color photographs, identification tips, guidance on how to ethically harvest, and suggestions for eating and preserving. A handy seasonal planner details which plants are available during every season. Thorough, comprehensive, and safe, this is a must-have for foragers in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, and northern Nevada.   Mountain States Foraging is part of the Timber Press Regional Foraging book series. Perfect for new and experiences foragers in Colorado, eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Wyoming, southernmost Alberta, and southernmost Saskatchewan. Briana Wiles is a herbalist and wild plants expert. She teaches classes on foraging and medicinal plants. Wiles also runs Rooted Apothecary, which offers bulk herbs, herbal remedies, and her own line of body-care products made with foraged botanicals. Visit her online at rooted-apothecary.com. Preface How can I forget my Italian grandfather's love for food? He had a garden plot with a variety of grapes, figs, plums, eggplants, tomatoes, and peppers, all staples of his old country. I fondly remember feral pears and apples scattered on Grandpa's dashboard. I can taste Grandma's giardiniera and see the giant jars of pickles from the harvests lined up in the basement. I come from a family who loved to celebrate food, and those roots give me passion for everything I do. Whether it's the garden I plant and feed my family from or the shrubs that I forage, I am connected to my family's traditions wholeheartedly. Foraging for food has a feast of fans already. A movement is happening to rewild, regain, and revolutionize our tarnished food system. We want to eat local produce and to know where our food comes from. This can mean getting to know local farmers, food producers, and ranchers. We can also empower ourselves by being gatherers and heading into the woods, not just for the free food but also for respite. Foraging is about returning to the land with humbled hands. Let's learn to take the time to sustainably prune the plants of the forest, spread seeds of the fields, and ensure the success of native plants by tending nature's garden. There is something to be said for spending time in nature, with keen eyes, a slow pace, and a soft impact. It betters us as humans to connect our feet and fingers with the matters of the earth in a way that brings us nutrients. Just a pinch of wild in each dish is a success to celebrate, a way to start incorporating the freedom of foraging. It is a true blessing to live in a rural town in central Colorado. Here, I am surrounded by different climates within an arm's reach: moist mountains, arid sagebrush, and riparian havens. The sands of Utah and the metropolitan Front Range are only four hours away, providing me with yet another variety of plants not found near my home. I can't help but always be prepared to make a few gathering stops on the way. I chose the plants for this book based on my personal taste preferences and my experience with each plant as food. My wish is to provide the reader with the skills to seek out and harvest a plant with a sustainable mindset and then to preserve your harvest and prepare these feral foods for feast. My hope is not that this book will sit on a shelf or table but rather that it will somehow land, open, in the hands of a bored child or an adult waiting anxiously for time to pass. When they leave that spot, I want them to greet the lamb's

"This full color guide makes foraging accessible for beginners and is a reliable source for advanced foragers." -Edible Chicago The Midwest offers a veritable feast for foragers, and with Lisa Rose as your trusted guide you will learn how to safely find and identify an abundance of delicious wild plants. The plant profiles in Midwest Foraging include clear, color photographs, identification tips, guidance on how to ethically harvest, and suggestions for eating and preserving. A handy seasonal planner details which plants are available during every season. Thorough, comprehensive, and safe, this is a must-have for foragers in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, and North Dakota.      Part of the Timber Press Regional Foraging book series, this is for foragers in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Ontario, Canada. Lisa M. Rose is an herbalist and forager with a background in anthropology and a professional focus on community health. Her interest in ethnobotany and herbal medicine has taken her to study plants, people, health, and their connection to place internationally. Rose leads foraging plant walks and teaches classes on edible and medicinal wild plants. She forages for her own family, herbal apothecary, and community herbalism practice. Preface: Cultivating a Sense of Place  As a child, I lived only minutes from Lake Michigan. The open fields, woods, sandy dunes, and Big Lake were my playground.  I remember growing up in my mother's garden: Tall stalks of corn, overgrown zucchini bushes, large heads of cabbages-all part of the bounty grown for our dinner table. My mother canned and made preserves from our seasonal garden, but we also had wild foods as part of our harvests. The wild grapes lining the backyard fence were turned into jellies and canned juice. Morel mushrooms in the spring were added to eggs and pasta. Apples were picked off the wild apple trees near our elementary school. Wild foods were a part of my childhood.      I also remember the evening I made my first summer fruit pie. It was a hot and sweaty June summer evening in my college apartment in Grand Haven, Michigan. I made a delicious (but somewhat runny) mulberry pie, with berries I gathered alone on a sandy trail beachside. While the pie may not have been perfect, that memory of picking the berries on the trail and baking the mulberry pie in my hot kitchen remains vivid in my mind.      My culinary abilities grew, and I found myself looking to the trees, hedges, and weeds for my teas and meals at my table. Dandelions, violets, nettles, burdock, and even garlic mustard became commonplace in my recipes, and today wild foods are part of my everyday kitchen life.      As a forager, I have learned to sense and anticipate the subtle changes in the seasons, almost like a sixth sense. On sunny February days that are cold but bright, I can actually hear the sap in the maple trees begin to run. April rainstorms and warmer weather means it's time to go mushroom hunting. On muggy days in June with frequent pop-up thundershowers, I always check on the roses and elderflowers-one round of summer thunderstorms could decimate the delicate blooms that I so love to dry for tea. And nuts falling in the green gulch next to my kitchen window? I try to harvest those walnuts before the squirrels do. I feel empowered with this ability to "read" the wild world around me. I will always have the ability to find food and these skills connect me to the natural world in a deep way.      So many of us are seeking a connection to the land and to each other. Foraging, local foods, and community gardening connect us in a deeper way to the world around us. That feeling of a need for escape into the wild is very real: we desire space and clarity. I believe this is one reason foraging is gaining in