Tag Archives: foraging

Foraging


It’s the season for foraging! Fields of wild mustard (above), clumps of wild radishes (second below) and if you find a well shaded patch — miners lettuce! (the reddish leaves below are too late…)

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I took a second foraging class lead by Kevin a couple weekends ago with my parents. They had a lot of fun and we foraged (on private land!) wild radishes, mustard, cleavers, miners lettuce, mallow, chamomile, thistles and cardoons. April is definitely a better time to go foraging than June (when I took the last class). Wild plums aren’t in season, but all the interesting leafy things are!

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Miners Lettuce

Miners Lettuce

I always thought they looked like mini land lily pads… Maybe for faeries?

But, anyway, now that I’m grown up, I’ve figured out that the faerie lily pads of my childhood are edible. And rather tasty. And easy to find. Which makes them perfect for the newbie forager, such as myself.

Foraging for noms

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We got Half Dome permits for July… So I’m on a mission to be less out of breath while hiking. The result is semi-regular Sunday morning hikes currently made more interesting by foraging for things I can eat, particularly miner’s lettuce which I happen to really like.

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But most interesting is looking for wild mushrooms — but not for eating, that seems like a terrible idea. We found the mushroom above in the shadow of a redwood. It’s by far the most interesting looking mushroom I’ve ever seen in its natural habitat… And maybe one of the most poisonous? Who knows.

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