food is growing freely and abundantly all around
us and I’m here in Central Park in New York City to show you that today I’m just about to lead a
plant walk for anybody that comes out and today with them I’m going to share with you about 10
or so of my plant friends easy to find foods and medicines that you can find growing all around you
at the same time I’m going to teach you about some of the basics to how you can safely forage and
how you can do it sustainably so you’re actually working with the Earth rather than against it
so join me and everybody who joins me here in Central Park to see that food is growing freely
and abundantly all around us hello plant lovers well today we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna
make some plant friends and I have a dear friend who I’ve done a lot of foraging with his name is
Eric Joseph Lewis and we’ve LED some plant walks together and there’s something that he says that
I really like and that is um that when we make basically we’re going out there and we’re making
new plant friends and when we go out and make new human friends we we meet them we we listen we hear
their name but we don’t say what’s your name and how can I use you instead it’s you know creating
a relationship and so that’s what we’re our goal is to do today hello welcome yay we are definitely
looking for food and Medicine no doubt and we’re definitely going to find food and medicine today
but we’re also learning about how we can live more in alignment with the Earth how we
can live in reciprocity uh Anna brought up eating invasives and we’ll talk a little bit
about how we can eat in a way that actually gives back to the Earth rather than consumes
it like most of the food we’re buying from the global industrial food system so there’s a
couple things that I want to share as far as a little bit of some safety tips of foraging before
we head out because I know that’s kind of one of the most common things that people ask but I also
want to share why I’m really excited to be able to sort of leave this class today and the reason why
is that I love plants but if you go back just five years ago I for the most part was walking past
most plants without ever getting to know them without learning how they were Foods or medicines
or how I was interacting with them and welcome and going back to my childhood I was I loved
the earth I was so I just love to be outside it’s where I spent my time I loved loved frogs
and turtles and fish but again I walked past the plants and really never had much of a close
connection to them and so five years ago is when I decided to embark on a year-long project
of growing and foraging all my food and that’s when I actually started to realize that food
is growing all around us and so for one year every single thing that I ate I either grew in
my Gardens or foraged and when I started that I was online just searching like how much Sunshine
does kale need and how much water do carrots need and I was like starting at the very Basics so
I remember what it’s like to be a very beginner and to be asking all of these questions and to
be intimidated and concerned and maybe living in you know having some fear of some plants and
then over that year I foraged over 200 different foods from nature and over grew over 100 different
foods in my garden so I went from a beginner to uh well in some ways I mean I very much still
considered myself a beginner but a beginner who’s eaten a lot of foods from the land and fast
forward this year I’m doing or right now today’s day 25 of eating 100 food that I’ve foraged so
that year I was really dependent upon the garden and especially for my herbs and spices like the
palate was still a domesticated palette and so for this month I’m seeing if I can meet every single
need from the garden oh sorry well the garden of Earth so on that note I want to pass around this
is some fresh sea salt that I just made and so if you want a pinch of that just pass that around
as we’re talking and we’ll share that first and I made that from a beach called Nantasket Beach
up just outside of Boston it was the cleanest beach around eat at your own risk of course but I
think a lot all of you trust that if I’m eating it every single day that you’re you’re in safe hands
so today’s day 25 like I said of eating 100 food that I’ve foraged and I’ve I’ve foraged about
a hundred species of plants over the last month so I am super immersed in Plants right now and
super excited to share that love with all of you and so just before we head out and meet some
plants just a few notes on some some safety tips and some ethics of foraging when people ask you
know so many people are afraid that if they eat the wrong plant they’re going to to die and a lot
of you maybe have seen Alexis Nicole on Instagram or Tick Tock she goes by the black forager she
ends every video with don’t die and I’m sure there’s a reason why four million people follow
her on Tick Tock and that’s probably because a lot of them thought they would die until they
started to watch her videos what’d you all think of the salt okay hello welcome we do you want to
try the sea salt sure all right cool there you are well this is trying the sea salt that I made the
other day if you’d like to thank you so if you’re are you here for the plant work are you just
passerbys no okay that’s what I thought cool so um where was I Essex yeah so the not dying part
so how do you not die foraging I definitely see that I should not have started on time
because we have doubled in size since we began um so enemies I suppose we shall move off
the bridge because we seem to be blocking up the New York City traffic foot traffic that
is okay and we’re closer to the plants now this will be the first plant but we won’t
quite get into it yet so how do you not die when foraging well you have to Simply follow one
the number one rule of foraging which is only eat something if you’re a hundred percent sure of
what it is and my favorite forager Sam Thayer puts it this way if you were to go to the store
and you were to buy some bananas and put them down on the register and they said these grapes
will be four dollars and you said no those aren’t grapes those are bananas and they said no these
are definitely grapes and you would say again no these are bananas that is the level of certainty
you should have when you’re eating something that you’re foraging that’s how you don’t die or don’t
get sick so the good news is that there’s a lot of plants that are very easy to identify and that’s
what we’re going to be focusing on today which leads me to my next safety tip and that’s start
with easy plants start with the easy ones that don’t have a like toxic look-alikes or aren’t
really confusing and difficult to identify and start with these and a lot of people they look out
and they see if they’re paying any attention to you know the Earth around they may see what is
referred to sometimes as a green wall which is just this it’s just green everything’s just green
and what is it all and so there’s the element that’s intimidating of well how do I know what
to eat there’s so many plants out there and so my recommendation for that is to start with
one plant at a time and that’s both a tip for being able to enjoy and relax but it’s
also a safety tip because if you start with one plant at a time you can be sure of what
you’re eating rather than if you’re trying to eat everything which eating everything’s cool
but as a beginner you got to start small so my recommendation if you are just getting started
is if you just learn one new plant per month and you do that for a year and you you get to know
that plant you you go out every day you observe it um you read a little bit more about it you know
just spending five or ten minutes a day with that plant and you do that for one month you’ll
you’ll know that plant you’ll know how to work with it as food and Medicine you’ll recognize
it in many different settings and you do if you do that with 12 plants one plant per month then
after a year you’ll know 12 plants and that’s that’s quite a few like that’s more than probably
most of us know right now oh by the way is that just win how many of you would
consider yourself a beginner forager great so most of us and that’s really good because
that’s I love teaching beginners that’s like my forte because today what we’re gonna do there’s
one main accomplishment we’re gonna have today and it’s not that you’re gonna walk away from here
being able to identify a whole bunch of plants and eat all of them it’s that you’re gonna walk
away from here realizing that food is growing all around us and that’s one thing I wanted to share
is over the last 25 days of eating completely from the land if I had just one sentence it’s just food
is growing everywhere I never come to my spots in advance but I was a little nervous about Central
Park so I decided to check it out in advance so I came here about an hour and a half ago and I
started right here and I only had to walk about 300 steps to find everything that we’ll have
time to talk about today and not even we won’t even have time to talk about it at all so within
five minutes of here there’s probably 50 to 60 different foods and medicines so that’s what I
want to show today so on that note if you wanted to take it up to another level and you really want
to start to know your plans if you learn one plant a week for a year that’s 52 plants and you are
officially a plant genius or plant wizard at that point because almost well at least you are to the
average muggle or as some people would say like Normie because the average person hardly knows
any and if you know 52 you are the plant wizard of your community so you can do that in your
spare time not being overwhelmed just learning one plant at a time so that’s a couple of the
you know tips for for safety a couple one tip I want to mention is how do you know if things are
sprayed with pesticides that’s often a question Central Park is definitely sprayed with pesticides
I did a little bit of research they just did a big spray for mosquitoes in September I believe
so that was about well that was last month oh seemed like a lot longer ago
when I was reading that article um so pesticides are sprayed now one thing that
happens though is when people start to reconnect with the Earth they start to actually ask a lot of
questions but it would be wise of us to ask just as many questions about the foods at the grocery
store USDA organic well who was running that for the last four years the Trump Administration
how good could the USD organic label actually be when it is a revolving door between mansanto
and other corporations going in and out of it so yeah we have to ask questions about everything
but so often people just like they forget because things have nice labels and packages on them that
we need to ask just as many questions about that and so what you’ll find is as you start to pay
attention to your surroundings you’ll actually find out that you can tell if an area has been
just recently or heavily sprayed with pesticides and one way you can tell is if there’s a whole lot
of stuff that’s dead because that’s the purpose of pesticides so like for example if we were to
look along here and everything was green and then this patch was just all like dead scorched
and I want to say scorched like all the leaves are on but they’re brown and they’re dead and it’s
not late fall then that’s an area that’s probably just been recently sprayed with pesticides or for
example power lines are more likely to be sprayed with pesticides or more wild areas a lot less but
an area where everything looks like it’s got its exact place and as prim and proper more likely
to have more pesticides there so you can start to tune into those sorts of things and I I can’t
provide all the answers but I can say that you’ll start to notice things that you never thought
that you would notice and then lastly just a note on some of the sustainability and ethics
of foraging before we head out and meet some plant friends so we can absolutely forage in a way
where we do not pillage the Earth and where we are actually giving back to the Earth one of the most
common things you’ll see online is well at least one of the most common things people say to me is
well Rob if everybody went out and foraged nature would be destroyed the truth is is that if every
human being woke up and realized that our Global industrial food system was broken and actually
wanted to have a connection to their food and go out and find it it would mean that they were that
we were questioning our entire societal structures and our entire societal norms and we’d be wanting
to live in reciprocity with the land so that is linear thinking to think that if everybody wanted
to do something other things wouldn’t change along with that the truth is that foragers are the
people who really truly want to protect the Earth because it is our food and our medicine so the
more that you get connected to the Earth the more you start to learn about the different plants and
how you can work with them so for example if you were to take mint and you were to pinch the top of
that mint off you’re not hurting that mint you’re actually making the mints Sprout another little
Branch or whatever you would call that and now you actually are going to have more Mint or apples and
pears and plums these fruits are actually designed for animals including us Human animals they were
designed for us to eat they actually want us to eat them mushrooms the mushroom above the ground
is the fruiting body that’s what it’s called We’re harvesting the fruit of the mushroom underground
the right the uh the the mycelium that is what you generally want to avoid harming by harvesting just
the up the above ground portion so mushrooms all the expert mushroom foragers say we do zero damage
by harvesting mushrooms and if you want to take it up another notch what you do is you carry the
mushrooms in a mesh bag or in a little basket and the spores spread as you carry them throughout the
woods and if there’s beneficial plants like native plants that you want to help repopulate the area
with you spread their seeds and if you want to eat in a way where you’re helping the ecosystem you
can eat invasive plants here in Central Park there is garlic mustard for example so if you can eat
that before it goes to seed you prevent it from spreading so what you can become is an invasive
ore which is like herbivore or locovor but it’s a person who eats invasive plants so these are
just a few mentions of ways that we can actually be giving back to the Earth through the ecosystems
to our plant and animal relatives by harvesting them so harvesting food don’t let anybody tell you
otherwise is not inherently damaging it can be and that’s why it’s important for us to learn and to
connect with the plants and if we do that we can harvest in a way where we have nothing negative to
feel about about it whatsoever and again food is abundant and it is growing everywhere so there’s
not a shortage of it out there if there ever comes a time when all the New Yorkers want to eat in
Central Park we’ll deal with that then but as of now there’s only about 20 of us here right
now so that’s not our worry so let’s meet some plants eh okay is there any plan anyone’s really
excited about potentially finding today if so let me know and I’ll see if maybe we can find it
Sorrel Sorrel I know where we got some Sorrel all right Burdock oh I’d like to find some
burdock sassafras sassafras I haven’t seen any sassafrass here so um while we walk around
I brought a bag of anyone know what these are they’re not currents but I could see how they
look similar to that they’re not choke berries not gooseberries sounds like it’s a new one it’s
considered a very invasive plant so you would like this one Anna spice brush it’s not spice
bush I believe that’s native to this region this is um the com most common
name I see someone’s foraging some marijuana around here
right now that’s wonderful um so what was I saying I was there was something else
though okay well the second thing was probably not so important so this oh yes the name yeah you’re
right the marijuana must have gotten to me it’s a mind loss drug right I think no I’m kidding that’s
from the office Dwight and uh I forgot the name of the other yeah Jim okay so this is commonly called
Autumn Olive has anyone ever heard of them before but um my favorite forager oh man your cap just
fell down the drain so if you do accidentally litter all you gotta do is pick up 10 other
pieces and that will make up for it so autumn autumn Olive is the most common name but they’re
not an olive so it’s just kind of a ridiculous name so Sam Thayer calls them Autumn berries and I
think I like that name more so let’s go ahead and pass these around pass the bag around and eat
as you would like take take you know take some these I harvested on the way down here
in Connecticut the day before yesterday there’s this could potentially be growing around
here and um these are the seeds inside are edible as well as the fruit and these seeds are very
high in omega-3 actually which is not something you find in most plants so keep enjoying
that and I’ll start introducing us to our tree the tree does have a like silvery Underside
to it like Olive and small leaves so yeah it looks similar to an olive tree that is right but
the thing is when you make these names that are based on what things look similar to it kind
of results in some confusion um and also Autumn olives can vary a lot some are sweeter some are
more tart what would you would you call this tart oh by the way don’t throw the
seeds this is a highly invasive one they probably won’t eat it you may
have just destroyed Central Park no it’s fine it’s fine it’s delicious
berries well the good news is is I guess one one other thing I’ll say is that no
no plant is inherently bad I don’t like to use the term invasive I usually say do this
but my hands are full of this Berry but invasive um they like no plant is inherently
bad today I’m going to introduce you to a lot of weeds but there’s also no such thing as a weed by
Nature that’s a human-made concept so on that note let me share this with you this
is one of my favorite plants um anyone know what this might be it’s not
how you’d see it in its most typical format is it missing the flower well it’s normally a very
large tree this is a small one that’s just started so you’re welcome so this is mulberry so Mulberry is one of my personal favorite
foods it’s one of my personal favorite foods to forage and we will introduce we
will meet some some large mulberry trees you know what I’ll save talking about Mulberry
until we go over to the large mulberry tree so that way we can all be as standing amongst its
grandioseness but I did want to show us this this is a small mulberry tree and the leaves of
Mulberry are edible that is also ideal dog peeing height so you can decide where you want
to harvest from one of my personal favorites this is the plant we’re about to look
at right here who knows this plants oh in Japanese can we hear it yeah I forgot the
name something that the white we said okay cool well if you think about it if you remember this is
lamb’s quarter anyone ever heard of lamb’s quarter another name for this is goose foot I’m gonna
go ahead and harvest this now actually let me show you something as I’m about to harvest
this watch what I’m gonna do here I’m I’m picking this towards the top and I’m pinching
it where it broke off real easily did you see how that broke off real easily so what you
want to do when you’re picking most greens or a majority of greens is is pick
them when they’re young and tender so greens are different at all times
when we go to the grocery store everything there is basically ready for us to
eat like we walk in and there’s this 60 or so different plants that are there and we don’t have
to know what time they’re ready or for the most part even how to prepare them that much but when
we’re foraging it’s not just about knowing the plant it’s also knowing when to harvest it and
how to prepare it some plants we’re going to meet poke is very toxic to not to to eat raw but
cooked you can eat it in Endless quantities so you want to harvest most greens when they’re young and
tender and so how I do that is generally when I’m picking them it’s I snap when the top just kind
of snaps right off and so with lamb’s quarter I’ll pick the tips and then I will eat this whole
this whole the stem and the leaves and all I’ll just chop this whole thing up and saute this and
so dandelions for example we’ll meet dandelions today dandelions can be very bitter so when
you want to harvest them if you don’t want that bitterness is when they’re younger which is
going to be in springtime or early summer in the mid-summer they’re really bitter and then in the
fall there’s also often a fall flush so this this is a young plant for example so you’ll get right
now is a good time to be harvesting greens as well so one way you can eat a lot of greens is to make
something that in Greek is called horta which is basically a mixture of cooked greens so dandelion
and plantago and lamb’s quarter and uh and Sorrel and and so on and you saute them all in olive oil
and then add salt and lemon and that’s a nice way to eat a lot of greens I like salads but when
foraging if you want to eat a lot of greens and get a lot of nutrients cooking is definitely your
friend yes cooking can destroy some nutrients but it also makes a lot of nutrients much more
accessible to our bodies as well and you can eat much more greens that way eat more easily
you can also eat lamb’s quarter Raw thank you it’s got a real nice flavor some
people consider it to be nutty I don’t know what word would describe it but
delicious definitely describes it it’s very nice but I do generally like to
not eat too much of it raw it does have oxalates in it which can kind of be
that’s the same as um like rhubarb or swiss chard and those are and and spinach yes so I like to
cook it generally some people also call this like a wild spinach it’s like a spinach replacement
you could cook this just as you would spinach so that’s lamb’s quarter and this entire
plant is actually pretty tender so I would Harvest this like what I do if I’m coming through
efficiently is I will harvest all of these little all these tips and I would leave the plant about
like that and so this is a common Urban weed and I can I love you know to eat this I can
eat this in large quantities definitely one that I highly recommend how do you distinguish
it so how do you distinguish this from other greens that are in the area so what I will not
be doing today is like I will not be going too much into depth of like identifying of the plants
two reasons why one I’m not actually that good at describing how to identify plants I can eat
like over 200 species I know how to do that because you start to get to know plants and
and then it’s just easy but I’m not good at describing to you I couldn’t even really
describe to you how to identify an apple really like it’s round it’s red but there’s a
lot of round red things and so on but anyway identifying factors that’s called goose foot
because the the the leaf looks like that goose foot it’s often got a white um like powderiness
on the leaf there it grows in a it grows upwards um with a single stock generally but
then that com that branches out when it’s been cut or picked back those are some
identifying factors of this for sure and oh this usually or in this time of year often
has seed heads on it the seeds are edible as well you’ll see like big Urban wastelands these are
Lamb’s quarters right here yep yep and this is this is a very different looking lambsquarter
that is not a lamb squirter you were right very tasty though it’s got a mintiness is so this is a
mint yes it’s a mint there’s many different mints um but it’s a mint of sorts I will identify
that later and make tea from it hopefully I will um message my friend Eric Joseph Lewis all right so that’s lamb’s quarter I would
now like to well let’s talk about let’s talk about Goldenrod for a moment oh and I well
no I’ll save that so this is goldenrod here you can see more Goldenrod down here so I have a lot of plants that I work with as
medicines of course all of our food is medicine when we’re harvesting Whole Foods from the earth
a lot of the food that we eat our body actually needs to detox from it our body needs to heal from
it you know fast foods and sodas and all of this sort of stuff highly processed food and when we
live that way that’s where the Pharmaceuticals come in because we’re poisoning ourselves and
weakening ourselves but when we eat this way our food is our medicine and our medicine is our
food and we’re taking taking care of ourselves with every bite so I I have a lot of medicines
that I work with and most of the medicines that I work with are what I consider sort of generalist
medicines it’s not you have this ailment so you take this medicine it’s more like this is a tea
that helps with General immune support General Health and well-being and I can’t tell you all
the benefits of most of them I can just tell you that they’re great so Goldenrod is one of
them it’s a great all-around tea how I work with Goldenrod is I just break the top off and when
it’s tougher I like to have a pruners to cut it so you get a clean cut and this is the this is the
Goldenrod flower I gotta eat this lamb’s quarter so this is the flower golden and the leaves
and both the leaves and the flower can be made for tea so I would make tea from
this whole thing and I take the tips and how you dry Goldenrod is you could take this back
to your house or apartment or wherever you live or stay and you can just hang them and you don’t
dry things as much as some of us would think like in the direct sun because that actually
destroys nutrients you dry it in the shade and so this this dried inside is perfect or
like in your patio uh things like that and under summer conditions in a few days this will be
dry and you want to dry your herbs enough so that when you when you crush them they
basically crumble and and break because then the moisture is removed then you can stick
them into a jar or a bag and they won’t mold you can also stick them into electric dehydrators
with herbs you want to do it on low to keep as much of the the vitamins in there and so this
is probably if I was making Goldenrod tea I’d probably make Goldenrod tea with about this much
Golden Rod but you could do more or less depends on how abundant you’re living if you come across
a Goldenrod field I don’t know if any of you have seen Goldenrod Fields they’re beautiful just
golden you there’s no reason not to have very very potent medicine but when there’s only a little bit
you got to make it last so this is goldenrod and I love it you have to wait for it to like
become green like a yellow like is this also golden oh yes this is all Goldenrod here
and this is goldenrod that has not flowered yet so this you can come back and this will
continue you could make tea from it right now but I think this is your ideal and so how
I ethically Harvest Goldenrod off of this plant here’s one plant right here this has one two
three four five six seven eight nine heads I if I didn’t think other people were going to be
picking would probably pick three or four or five of these heads in fact this head that I said
was one actually has two more off of it so for example I’ll just show you what I would do at this
plant and then we can all take some of these home so I would just pick like that and that and that and about like that and then I’ve left plenty
of flour to go to seed and plenty for the other creatures as well this is poke weed this is this
is one of the most important foods in southern like traditional Southern you know eating like
millions of people in the South eat this past is called Poke Salad s-a-l-a-t and when you
sometimes hear salad salad used to mean cooked greens raw greens is actually what we call salad
now but prior it was cooked greens and so this is called Poke Salad or just poke weed or just poke
I generally just call it pokeweed and so this one is a high a quite toxic food if you don’t cook
it but if you do cook it you join the ranks of tens of millions of other people who have been
eating it for a very long time I would venture to say that millions of people in the southern
states still eat this today or at least hundreds of thousands and so you eat this you eat pokeweed
when it’s young and tender like I mentioned with other greens and how it works is it’s got to be
in its meristematic growth stage meristematic growth stage means that it’s the same as young and
tender it’s when it’s still growing and so what you’ll do is you’ll just pick the tips so watch
so watch this one it should just kind of snap yeah just just snap there’s no fiber that means
yet it’s not developed to have the fiber yet now that being said this is not actually what you
would eat because not only is it when it’s young and tender but it’s when the leaves are all still
pointed upwards that’s its meristematic growth stage and so for a beginner I would only start
eating poke in the spring to early summer when these are poke shoots that are coming up and they
can be as tall as your waist or they can be down here but it’s when these plants are the leaves are
still pointed upwards they haven’t settled down yet I have eaten them at this stage before and I’m
sure many people have but really the safe bet is eating them when all the leaves are still pointed
up this is got it’s it’s at a point where it’s not considered to be fully able to remove the
toxins that are in it by boiling it out although I’m pretty certain that you can however as a
beginner start with poke in the spring not in the late fall so this is pokeweed right here this
is a couple plants if you come back here in the spring they will be here again they’re here
in the same spot each year and you’ll start to notice them all over so this is poking its
young stage so now let’s come back right over to Here and Now I want to show you poke in
its more developed stage so all of this here is poke see these purple berries and now
if if it was a few weeks ago this whole thing would be a Racine of purple berries
these are not grapes these are toxic berries that being said they are used as a medicine I
believe one of the things they’re used for is I’m not going to say because I’m not sure so I
might as well not say it so but the purple berries are used as a medicine by quite a few herbalists
and you know what I’ve actually never had a poke Berry before so I’m going to do that right now
um yeah but not when it’s used as a medicine in small quantities oh yeah that doesn’t have
a nice flavor does not have a nice flavor interesting um but no the one of the one of the
common things that the treatments with this is you have one pokeberry on day one two on day two three
on day three up to eight or so and then you come back and that’s a a common um you know medicine
but again so when you’re going this is one of those medicines where you got to know what you’re
doing unlike Goldenrod which is just one of those generalist medicines so this is pokeweed and it’s
adult stage and you will see this around a lot it is a very common one so definitely excited to
introduce you to pokeweed any questions on poke I do not believe it’s invasive no I don’t
know if it’s native to where we are now but it is definitely I believe it’s native
to parts of what we call North America yeah okay let’s talk about oh what do we got here dandelion oh this is dandelion so dandelion you
can see here this is a this is a nice dandelion um this is looking to me on the tender like well this isn’t super young and
tender so let’s see how bitter this is fairly bitter but not Ultra bitter so if you
want food to not be bitter all you have to do is eat it every day and it will not be bitter after
you do that about 10 times your palate will get used to the bitterness bitterness is medicine so
romaine lettuce what they’ve done is they’ve wild lettuce grows and I’m sure it grows in Central
Park and it’s generally like pretty bitter what they’ve done with most of our domesticated Foods
is they’ve bred a lot of the flavors out of them like bitterness for example as they’ve done that
they’ve actually bred out the plant’s ability to protect itself bitterness is the plant’s way
of saying eat me but don’t eat too much of me at least for the edible bitter plants there’s
a lot of bitter plants that are also toxic but the idea of this is that by being bitter we can’t
just mow it down but we can still eat it it’s the plants and the animals and the insects and the
humans being able to live in a sort of balance that’s created through that bitterness when we
breed the bitterness out of say lettuce what we do is that plant is so susceptible to being just
destroyed by by insects now what happens is they spray it with pesticides when all they should
have done or could have done is just leave the bitterness in it in the first place and then we
have resilient plants in our farms and gardens so bitterness is something that you’ll start to
Crave you’ll go from ooh that’s bitter I don’t like it to that’s palatable to I crave that as you
have more and more so this is a dandelion that I consider to be in a in a good stage it’s the fall
dandelion season so it’s a nice time to be eating dandelions so you can eat the dandelion Leaf
you can eat the stem of the flower you can eat the flour and you can eat the roots how you work
with the roots as you bake them you roast them and cut it up into chunks roast it
and then you can blend it and it looks like kind of like coffee and it makes a
coffee substitute it’s not caffeinated but it’s got a nice Aroma and it’s got a nice
flavor so it’s a really nice plant to work with so this is um plantain or plantago is another
name for it and it’s all of this right here now another name so plant plantago is the genus and
it’s also the common name this is plantago Major and there’s also plantago minor so it’s two
different species and they both have the same edibility and the same medicinal elements I would
say I generally personally like the broadleaf plantain more than the narrow Leaf a lot of times
the narrow Leaf tends to be more hairy and this is more smooth for me that’s just my experience
the plantago leaves can get to be quite big and you can grow varieties in your garden that
have very large leaves so these are both the food and Medicine they’re considered to be one
of the more medicinal plants on Earth actually and one of the other names for them is white
man’s footprint because they have basically gone everywhere that the white men went that were
the settlers the colonizers sorry the colonizers from Europe to the United States actually
though plantago is also native there is a native species to uh the United States or turtle
Turtle Island but this species here would be the one that came from Europe on the boats with the
colonizers so how this met now that being said um I think one thing that I want to say is the
there’s a lot of plants that we have negative associations with and some people have negative
associations with any plant that came out from you know outside of here because in some ways this
plant is also displacing native plants just like how it was brought with the people that displaced
you know the people that have been living here for tens of thousands of years but there is nothing
that is inherently wrong or evil with this plant it’s just the way humans have chosen to do things
with plants cotton for example I have a pretty General pretty negative connotation towards cotton
but there’s also people who grow cotton and work with cotton in a completely sustainable way and
it’s an incredibly soft and wonderful plant that we could make our clothes from so definitely uh
you know every plant is here as as an ally when we learn how to work with them as allies so how
you can work with plantago or plantain is you can just add this to your to your horta you can
add it to salads you can saute it throw it into soups but another way this is worked with is as
a medicine and so if I get stung by a bee I make what’s called a poultice from this so you chew it
up I’d probably put like five or six into my mouth give a nice chew saliva on there mixed
in and then you take that and you put it on where you’ve just been stung and you
see that nice green chlorophilly juice it’s really some good green stuff and so the idea
is that in herbalism they say for back there in herbalism they say it pulls out the toxins I don’t
know if it’s pulling out the toxins but what I do know is that when I get stung by bees I have
what’s called an extreme local reaction I am not allergic but if I get stung here I’ve had both
my eyes closed the next day I’m not gonna like Risk not being able to breathe it’s not that
kind of thing but it’s a nuisance like I’ll puff up for a couple days sometimes but when
I put this on within two minutes of getting stung if I do it an hour later it doesn’t
help but if I do it within a couple minutes sometimes I don’t swell up at all or if I do it’s
minor compared to so and you can also if you it’s it’s all over the place but you can also dry it
and turn it into a powder and have it on stock in your little apothecary and then what you can do
is you can add honey to it and make a paste and just put it on right there and then when you’re
done you get to lick it up and that’s nice too so interestingly enough this with honey
is my medicine for when the bees sting me so their own honey is a medicine for something
that they do and of course the sting is also medicine there’s bee sting therapy getting stung
is not bad I was in Peru in 2016 and some of the local people I met would catch the bees and they
would sting each other partly like messing with each other but also because it was medicinal and
they were doing it as a continual practice of using them the medicine of the honeybees there’s
a doctor here that does it for lime oh very nice and then another medicine I want
to mention we’re not going to meet we’re not going to meet stinging nettle I don’t
think has anyone seen staying nettle in Central Park ever yes yeah so it’s in Central
Park I would imagine it absolutely is but we’re probably not going to meet it however
this the stings of stinging nettle are also medicinal it stimulates blood flow so I actually
like to give myself a little stinging nettle you know bath and it’s used for treating arthritis
and it helps with again stimulating blood flow and um I don’t know there’s another thing besides
arthritis that I can’t think of right now that it’s used for but I don’t know of it being used
for any allergies but definitely like if your joints are swollen and tight it helps it can be
useful for that so stinging nettle is one of my favorite plants both to eat make a medicine from
and also just sting myself with so all that to say that most of the things that we consider to
be the bane of our existence are actually generally the most medicinal and nutritious
Foods around dandelion plantago stinging nettle um you know most of the weeds lamb’s quarter are
our beneficial Burdock that’s the one where all of the the Burrs get stuck to you and actually
it has a wonderful Taproot that’s both food and medicine so I don’t think we’ll come across we
may come across Burdock it’s quite abundant so let us meet let us meet is there a Burdock right
there oh yeah there’s some Burdock right here you generally do not have to go far to find
Burdock this is the Burdock Leaf right here here it is this is a basil rosette so all
of the leaves are coming out of a central spot so I am actually let’s see Burdock
is something you need a shovel for but this is a very soft ground nope I
didn’t get it so this is burdock and I um so what you use from Burdock is the root and
so a note on this is that as I said Burdock is the one that gets pretty high and it has
these Burrs on it that gets stuck to your clothes or your dogs or things like that
or if you have a bunny maybe a tear bunny um and it’s and the root is the edible part now
the challenging part about the root is burdock has a very deep Tap Root and the part of the
Taproot that’s the most desirable for eating is the bottom half so you have to dig down to get
it and the way that Sam Thayer who’s one of the foragers who I oh and I want to mention his three
books incredible wild edibles foragers Harvest and Nature’s Garden are my favorite three foraging
books and if you just read those three books you would be a plant wizard basically in
your community so helpful each book goes into each chapter each plant has its own chapter
that is anywhere between like seven and forty pages that tells you everything that you need to
know to identify it work with it forage it what time of year uh work you know prepare it into
a food more more food than medicine but they’re incredible books there’s a chapter on Burdock
and I definitely highly recommend those books it’s Sam Thayer and his website is foragers
harvest.com and all of the books are on there so he recommends getting into a thick patch
of Burdock and then you dig a hole right in that patch and then what you do is you dig the
hole down deep because Burdock can be 12 to 24 inch tap Roots which are just a single a taper is
just a single long root a carrot is a Tap Root and then you actually pull the Burdock Roots into the
hole that you’ve made sideways that way they don’t break off that’s how you can Harvest your Bounty
of your Burdock Burdock’s very abundant so you can definitely Harvest Burdock sustainably it’s you’ll
start to see it it’s definitely all around I mean it was right at our feet as we were trying to talk
about it that’s a sign that it’s quite abundant I don’t know if in the springtime if the
Burdock shoots are edible do you know I’m less familiar with like the
other parts of the plant yeah is found in a lot of like East Asian Cuisine yes yeah I can’t remember but you could look that up
and learn about it but yes Burdock is actually a one of the few cultivated vegetables that you’ll
also find growing wildly wild carrot is another one Queen Anne’s Lace is wild carrot you’ll find
that growing around and you know of course there’s there’s actually quite a few cultivated plants
that also grow wild but as far as roots that you’ll find at the store that you grow wild not
a lot questions on Burdock so and just to say that Burdock leaves are often like this big so
this is just a mini one and one other note you don’t Harvest any of the roots when they’re in
their second year stage when they have their seeds and flowers at that point the roots are hard
and they’re Woody you harvest them when they’re in their basil rosette stage like this this is a
good stage to harvest Burdock except I would be harvesting the ones with the huge leaves because
huge leaves mean bigger roots questions on Burdock this is another one that you can make that tea
from just like the dandelion root same with that so you can make the uh the the roasted root tea or
you can eat these as vegetables this is wood soil yes yes this is the one that you wanted to find
Hilla so there are different Sorrels out there this is not your I would say not the absolute most
ideal plant for ID it’s a little bit Stout and um crammed together but this is wood sorrel
also called Oxalis and the reason it’s called Oxalis is because it has oxalic acid in it as
other plants do now oxalic acid although it is an acid is is not it’s not harmful it’s not
bad there’s a lot of plants with acid and acids can be you know very beneficial and nutritious so
this particular acid oxalic acid tastes like lemon so um okay this one’s a little Sandy a little bit
gritty not your most ideal spot for foraging as you can see like you know but I I’m fine with it
but if you all want to take a nibble this is one of the most common foraged plants and it’s often
children’s first forage plant of their life and often adults first forage plant it’s got this
nice lemonyness so this is a good trail side nibble you can you just be walking down the trail
and and nibble on it if it’s great for adding the salads to add that like lemony-ness and you
can add you can if you’re blending a dressing you can throw a bunch of these leaves in to
give the dressing A lemonyness so if you are trying to be a locavore and don’t want to get
your lemons from far away you can use this to get that lemony Vibe into your salads the
seed pods have a bit of a banana or plantain look to them I can imagine a
little gorilla holding on to that and the flowers are edible as well and
actually this whole plant is edible and also sand of course is edible just
try not to Crunch down on it too hard so if you want to pass this around and
try a leaf if you’ve never had one it’s a nice it’s a it’s a nice flavor to
introduce to your palette or come over here and Harvest a leaf off of it does anybody have
any so so this is not a lot of people would think that this is clover and in fact some people
even call it sour Clover I believe but it’s not a clover it does have the three leaves but the
leaves are heart-shaped Clover’s leaves are not heart-shaped that’s how you can tell it apart so
if you want if you’re like is this a clover or is this wood sorrel you can taste it and clover
is not going to be lemony and wood sorrel is and clover is also edible the red clover
flowers are used as a medicinal tea often and you don’t want to eat lots of clovers it’s
in the pea family which can have toxic alkaloids that can build up in your system and so Clover is
one that you eat in small quantities wood sorrel on the other hand you can eat endless amount of
wood sorrel so that’s a really wonderful plant great for salads thrown into smoothies not
a cooked green I never I never cooked that one I feel like that one would really like
just sort of disintegrate so let’s go meet Violet I’m surprised it took us this long
to get to Violet because it’s so abundant and I also want us to meet the big mulberry tree
oh there’s a Burdock here’s a Burdock growing right here look how resilient it is this has got
a Tap Root growing right into the side of this Bridge Burdock is very resilient and then
right here next to the Burdock is more Sorrel and if everything was going exactly the way I
wanted into the world this would be purslane but it’s not but let’s pretend it is because
purslane’s one of my favorite plants and I haven’t seen it yet in New York City but it’s
everywhere I’m sure oh I’ve never seen from Central Park but outside of Manhattan I’ve
seen some in Brooklyn who knows this plant we can’t remember what it is yes this is
mugworts and so mugwort has to me a very medicinal idea to it and Maguire makes me think
of Hogwarts and Harry Potter to be honest it’s got a bit of a wizardness to me so mugwort
is one that’s used as a tea I’m drinking mugwort tea at night right now along with a
handful of other ones like pineapple weed and um catnip and now there’s two other sleepy time ones that
I’ve harvested I’m that I’m drinking that I can’t think of at the moment but this one is
actually said to be a plant you can work with to help you to have to lucid dreaming to
be able to control your dreams and so it’s often just you make a bundle of it and put it
under your pillow or hang it over your bed and that’s one thing that’s used for I’ve been
timid about making tea from it because my dreams are already crazy enough like they’re
just they’re just I have a whole nother life in my dreams but so far this has not increased
my dreams in an undesirable way and actually I have had some real nice sleep so far on the
nights that I’ve worked with that that sleepy time tea that I’ve made so this is mugwort I
do not know a lot about it those are some of the things that I know about it the underside
of mugwort is this silveriness and mugwort so it’s got like this silver bottom to it and it also
has a very unique smell if you want to grab a leaf well there’s a couple other plants
that I know that smell similar to this but it’s got a it’s got a nice smell to
it the plant that this is most commonly confused with is ragweed Ragweed looks similar
to to this but this has the Silvery Underside it’s got a real nice smell to it so
I’m glad that we got to meet mugwort clothes with oh we didn’t we how do you
harvest mugwort I would Harvest mugwort the same way just by harvesting the tops um
but also I would be pulling leaves off as well like that if I was making tea but a lot of
people they like to make mugwort bundles so you would like take the larger pieces to
be able to tie them all together into a bundle okay I want to shoot through some more
well I want to meet more plants a little bit quickly here because there’s I there’s some
more that I really want you to get to know so right here does anybody know what this is so there’s there’s a fruit there so this is well let me bite it first to make sure yes this is Hawthorne so it looks a lot like
rose hips and for a while I was eating Hawthorne thinking they were just really nice rose hips and
Hawthorne can be incredible the most incredible Hawthorne I had is uh um what’s what’s the big
Park in Chicago like where the Lincoln Park Zoo is is that called Millennium Park the whole
thing or is Blanding Park just a part of it I guess all you New Yorkers don’t know well
anyway the Big Park in Chicago South Side basically where we’re standing right
now but if we were standing in Chicago I guess you could call it Lincoln Park maybe and
the Hawthorne Berry trees there the Hawthorne Trees are incredibly juicy and wonderful you can
see the inside of this is a little bit Orange um this one’s a little more yellow but they’ll
have like a orange inside that’s real nice there’s some hard seeds in there that you spit
out so it looks a lot like rosehip but um this is Hawthorne rosehip the seeds are hairy and can be
uh irritant to the throat but not with Hawthorne so Hawthorne is here I’ve seen more of it growing
around they’re closely related to Apples I believe and delicious ones are delicious that one in
particular you know nothing nothing incredible but a good one to know okay right here we
have a wonderful plant you can see it here yes this is violets it’s a nice patch of violets
here and the reason that this is called violet is because they have violet colored flowers
The Violet covered flowers are generally in the springtime but I have seen some flowers
lately as well so Violet is a very mild green so it’s a very easy one to eat lots of it
it’s great in a salad or it’s good cooked and this is a yeah a real nice one to eat raw it’s got actually a mucilaginousness to it unlike most of the other ones that can get bitter this
doesn’t get bitter and anyone had okra before it’s got that mucilaginous in it same with
Violet and that’s one of the ways that it’s used as a medicine that mucilaginous can be
really nice if you’re you’ve got a sore throat so that’s violet it’s growing all over
this whole area there’s tons of it so that’s a really great one to harvest as far
as dog pee goes you have a simple solution don’t Harvest from right here go in five feet
where the dogs aren’t generally gonna be um so you know again common sense is plug into
those common senses and that’s just one note is that one of the other tips of foraging is
triple verify or triple confirm everything so that’s how you learn more about a plant
and that’s how you make sure to be able to safely you know work with them as foods and
medicines that being said like I introduced you to Violet you didn’t triple confirm that
you can trust some there’s elements of that but generally yeah the idea is you want to Triple
confirm things so that means like a forager and a a book and a reputable website for example
or a botanist so I want to introduce you to uh let’s Scoot a little bit this way does anybody
know this plant with the pink flowers right here so has anyone seen this one before so it’s very common this is called smart weed in Appalachians they’ve called it Appalachian
smartweed another name for it is ladyfinger and so the reason it’s called ladyfingers there’s
often what looks like the smudge of a fingerprint on here a black smudge and so sometimes it’s
much more pronounced than others it has this pink flower and the flavor of ladyfinger
or smartweed can vary quite a bit this one very mild not much flavor sometimes it can be
stronger so this is a mild one that’s good for adding the salads as well don’t know if this
one really being much for as a cooked green it’s quite good yeah so that’s smart weed
or no no yeah smartweed there’s also a weed that’s called quick weed this isn’t
quick weed it’s smart weed or ladyfinger and this is a one that’s very common weed
in a garden as well so definitely one that I would recommend getting to know these pink
flowers make it pretty easy to identify once you know the smartweed flower it’s pretty unique
there are plenty of plants with pink flowers and that’s one other thing about foraging is never
identify a plant based on just one thing about it to properly identify a plant you identify
many things about it so for example some people say that jack-o-lantern mushrooms are a
look-alike to chicken of the woods or some people or chanterelles they are orange that’s about it
they have gills on the bottom instead of pores they grow kind of big around trees yes there’s
some similarities but if you’re paying any real attention they are not a look-alike they
do have some similar elements to them and the more that you pay attention the more that
you’ll see that the idea of look-alikes is more not really paying close attention most things
are most things everything is identifiable and many of them are far easier to identify than we
might think when the best time to Identity to eat mulberries is going to be in June and actually
the first one of my first introductions to Urban foraging was in New York City in 2013 a man was
just picking things off of a tree and I was like what are you doing he was just eating them and
he was eating Wild Cherries and mulberries and just so nonchalantly and that was about 10 years
ago and so mulberries grow around New York City and here in Central Park they basically look like
a Blackberry but they grow on a tree and they can be really abundant so those are a really one great
one to harvest another great thing to harvest here so and also the Mulberry Leaf is edible as I
shared another great tree leaf is Linden or Basswood and that’s a great one to harvest around
June is it around here around the reservoirs nice so the question just was asked like what does
it mean for something to be edible and there’s a saying in foraging there’s edible and Incredible
Edible and forgettable and edible and regrettable so and there’s also the saying that everything
is edible at least once so yes everything is edible at least once so edible when I say edible
it means that you can eat it and it’s not going to have negative effects to you that it’s something
that you would want to eat when I say edible it means like yeah this is something that I would
want to eat that’s generally what I’m talking about but again some things are just incredible
some are yeah yeah that’s okay I maybe I’d have again some would be like that tasted gross like
I picked up this weird pair about 40 steps over there it was half eaten by a squirrel and I
was like what is this like is this a pear or an apple it had to have come from somewhere in
this park because the squirrel wouldn’t have brought it from elsewhere and it was definitely
wild and I took a bite out of this thing and it tasted kind of like a pear but it was definitely
edible and regrettable I did not want that in my mouth and that pokeberry a little regrettable
to be honest like well I didn’t genuinely regret it but it wasn’t desirable it wasn’t tasty so I
want to share a few resources that I wrote down well first of all I just one thing that I wanted
to make sure to remember is that the land that we’re on right now that we call Central Park and
what we call New York City this is land that was occupied by for thousands of years by the people
that what were called the Lenape people as far as I know and so I just want to share that every
bit of knowledge that I am sharing today exists because of people that had relationships with the
earth and the plants long before long before I did and that all of this knowledge now exists well
in this sense exists a lot of it because it was stolen you know relationships that were stolen
knowledge that was stolen and some of it was also freely shared and desired to be passed
down and so one of the big ideas of learning the plants is also learning where they come from
and the relationships they’ve had with others for thousands of years and by learning how we can live
in reciprocity with the with other cultures that have been working with them we can also learn
how we can be stewards of the plants as well and that’s the goal by by coming out here today
this isn’t about taking this is about learning how we can actually be allies to the plants and
how the out plans can be allies to us how we can work with the plants and actually give back
and so through my 10 years of act well actually I want to share a few resources before I share a
closing thing so if you would like to really get into foraging I mentioned Sam Thayer’s books
forager’s Harvest incredible wild edibles and Nature’s Garden those books are just the most
amazing resources and everything we talked about today more or less is in those books and
it goes through the ethics the the safety there’s calendars of like the best time to find
each plants so really incredible resources and then one of my favorite foragers her name
is Linda Black Elk and she’s an indigenous ethnobotanist and I’ve gotten to know her over
the last four years we’ve gotten to spend time together the last two years at the Midwest while
the Harvest Festival and she’s on Instagram and Tick Tock and Facebook highly recommend following
her to re-establish your relationship with plants her name is Linda Black Elk Black Elk being two
words and then also of course Alexis Nicole she is an internet craze for a reason and it’s because
she’s got really awesome knowledge to share um so she goes by the black forager Tick
Tock and Instagram are her two main platforms um I have a website that I created it’s called
find a forager.com and this is a database to find foragers in your area it’s both the United States
and international and so this is a I recommend if wherever you are and you wanted to see if there’s
a forager that either does classes that you can pay or classes that are free it’s a great resource
for that we have a few hundred foragers on there I would definitely recommend checking that out and
then I have a beginner’s guide to foraging on my website it’s just at robgreenfield.org foraging
and all of these resources are on there so that’s a great place to start if you just remember that
one link robgreenfield.org foraging that’s like the beginner guide that’s got all these links
and resources if you want to drink Wild Water there is a website called findaspring.com and
there’s also there’s a map on there to find Springs where you can Harvest your own Spring
Water there actually is spring in north side of Manhattan that someone told me about I don’t know
if I should have shared that it’s not a secret but and then falling fruit.org and they also have the
Falling Fruit app and that is a wonderful resource for urban foraging and yeah it’s more so Urban
foraging but you can add flat trees to there and other people add trees and pretty often I’ll
go to a city and I’ll just go on there and find fruit that way you know find Persimmons or
paw paws or mulberries or apples or or you know oranges in in Florida so that’s a really that’s
a really great resource is Falling Fruit and then another great resource is landback.org if you
want to learn more about acknowledging the land that we are on and the movement of returning land
to people who are living in reciprocity with the land to uh Native American folk to indigenous
folks land back org is a website that I would really recommend and that’s part of the land
back movement which is about putting land back into the rightful stewardship of people who have
been taking care of it for thousands of years so in closing I want to share two things and I think
over the last 10 years of activism I think there’s two things that I come back to that I see as my
most important lessons of the solutions to the times that we’re in and number one is community
when I first a lot of people when they get into foraging and they get into growing food it’s this
idea of self-sufficiency you know Independence and for me yes like when I learned about our when I
woke up in 2011 and I learned about our broken systems and I learned about how oppressive our
systems that are and these Dominator cultures I wanted to break free from all that and that’s
what I’ve been that’s like my my personal goal is to break free from these oppressive systems and to
become a part of Equitable just and regenerative systems and so early on I got into this idea of
self-sufficiency so that you don’t need that but then I learned that of course self-sufficiency is
an illusion it’s all about Community sufficiency so it’s not you know individual growing our own
food it’s food sovereignty by coming together as communities and being able to work together and I
learned of course like this whole American dream that we’re taught is this idea of individualism
where where we’re supposed to all be able to meet all of our own needs on our own by earning
the dollar and then with that dollar we can buy everything we need or pay for every service and
by doing that we supposedly don’t need anyone but the truth is behind every dollar we spend
there are people and it’s often people who are being exploited or oppressed so that’s where it
comes back to community how can we meet our needs together what resources do we have that we can
share what skills do we have that we can share what knowledge do we have that we can share and
as we come together as Community we realize we don’t need the corporations and we don’t need all
the consumer goods they’re selling us because we get that meaning through our community and then
the second part of course well to add to that our community goes beyond our our human Community our
community becomes our plant and animal relatives as well they are all intricately a part of our
community we do not exist without them our body is a community of bacteria there’s more bacterial
cells inside of our bodies than us like can you believe that we may be more bacteria than we
are human we are a community even inside of ourselves we couldn’t digest our food without that
community of bacteria as well and then secondly up to me it really comes down to with the
plants in our Gardens foraging it comes down to biodiversity and in our Humanity diversity
so a garden that is going to thrive is not a monocrop it’s not just corn or it’s just soy
it’s hundreds of species interacting together in thousands of different ways the only way that
this Earth keeps spinning is that there’s millions of species that are interacting in billions of
different ways and we are linked to all of that so biodiversity is the solution to any ecosystem
that’s going to last and the same with Humanity coming together and understanding our different
perspectives compassionately communicating and understanding that we have different ways
of going about the same thing all of us are trying to meet our own basic needs of meaning
of purpose of of Love of feeling a sense of belonging all of us are out there trying to do
that that and so how can we come at this in a diverse way where we understand each other’s
perspectives and solve our problems so to me the great problems of our time the solutions
always come back to community and to diversity and so all that being said it’s beautiful that
we can do that by coming together learning the plants that are growing freely and abundantly all
around us harvesting our foods and harvesting our medicines and yes the problems in the world are
great but the solutions as my dear friend Tristan Stewart says when he’s talking about food waste
can be delicious and nutritious and the same goes for foraging the solutions can be enjoyable and we
don’t have to feel the Doom and Gloom of society at all times we can just go out and spend time
with our plant friends and connect in that way so I love you all very much I’m so glad that we
got to spend all this time together you and of course hugs are just as important of a medicine
as plants so 12 hugs a day keeps the doctor away is what I say so all right cool nice to see ya
thank you yes thank you for being here and get to know each other for sure because we need more
plant friends okay goodbye internet go foraging
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