For most of us, our food comes from the
supermarket and beyond that we don't know
much about it or the far-off lands that
it comes from. Today I am here to help you
realize that food is growing freely and
abdundantly all around you, you just have
to open your eyes and look at the land in
a different way. To do that I am going to
share 11 easy plants to begin foraging.
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There are 3 main guidelines with the
plants that I am going to be sharing
with you today. First, they are widely
available, so these are plants that are
spread out through much of the world
or have very similar plants to them
around much of the world.
I am focusing on plants in North America,
although I am in France right now.
Secondly, these are plants that are highly
abundant, so you will find them in very
large quantities often and spread
throughout the region that you are in.
And then last, they are quite easy to
identify and very safe plants to work with.
Now today I am not going into the details
of identification, there are a lot of
resources for that. So if you want
identification go to
www.robgreenfield.org/foraging
and there are all the resources that you
need for that there.
The number 1 rule of foraging is "only
eat something if you are 100% certain of
what it is. That is the key to safe
foraging. So make sure that you follow
that rule, but do not be overly worried,
these are plants that humans have lived
with for as long as humans have really
existed. This is life. So do not be so
afraid of it. Now speaking of fear,
I want to start with stinging nettles.
Here in France they call this "ortie."
This is a plant that a lot of people fear
because of the stingers on it. Yes, this
stings. My legs are actually stinging
right now because I am surrounded by it.
But I will even show you that this plant
that so many people fear, you can roll it
up, and you can eat it raw, even, just by
having the right practice there.
But best for me, made into a tea or boiled
and then sautéed, but a lot of people
also eat this raw. So I wanted to start
with stinging nettle because it is super
abundant and also because it is one of
those ones that really, people consider it
a pest, consider it a problem, consider it
an enemy, but it is actually a great
friend of ours.
Next, I want to share with you Plantago
or broadleaf and narrow leaf plantain.
And you will see right where I am, I am in
this disturbed area right along the
road-side. This is a very, very minorly
trafficked road that I am walking by, but
I wanted to show this area because this is
where you will often find this.
In disturbed areas.
So this is the broadleaf plantain, it is
one of my favorite plants. This is what I
find in North America and then this is the
narrow-leaf plantain that I find a lot
over here in Europe. I haven't seen this
one much in North America.
You have heard this saying,
"Let thy food be thy medicine,"
this is a great example, this is both food
and medicine. When I get stung by bees
when I am beekeeping, I chew this up, this
makes a poultice and if i mix it with
honey, then I put it on, it reduces the
swelling drastically. I wanted to start
with these because it is really one of my
favorite plants, and one that you will see
very abundantly in fields, in abandoned
lots, and in rural areas in the woods as well.
Next up is dandelion, another personal
favorite of mine, something that is all
over the place, and I'm showing a couple
different leaves here. You can see
sometimes here they have a red vein in the
center, sometimes not, you can see
sometimes it is more toothed and sometimes
it is more lobed. You can see here the
flower head that has already released its
seeds. It has a beautiful yellow flower.
The flower is edible and the leaves are
edible as well.
Early on in the spring they are not very
bitter, but later in the summer they
become very bitter. You can eat them raw
or you can put them in the salads, you
can cook them as well. And the root,
is actually edible as well. It makes a
coffee substitute when roasted.
That one is not as much a beginner thing
because it has some processes, compared to
just eating the greens, adding them to
your salad. So dandelions are definitely a
good friend of the forager.
Here is wild mint, and this is definitely
one of my favorites because it is a
wonderful little trailside snack and
a natural little pick-me-up, and breath
mint as well. This one is pretty strong.
I really like to add this to salads,
I make a nice sun tea from this just putting this in water
and leaving it in the sun for the day
really makes a nice sun tea.
Or of course you can make tea on the stove with it.
That is really all that needs to be said,
that mint is growing wildly and there are
many varieties, some that are growing in
the water, some in moist areas, some in
less moist areas like this, many varieties
and it is a wonderful little snack.
Now I am in a bed of wood sorrel. This is
wood sorrel all around me, or Oxalis.
Now you see the three lobes on this, maybe
they would be called? A lot of people
think that this is clover, but it is not.
It is Oxalis or wood sorrel.
Now the good news is, clover is edible as
well, and the flowers are edible of the
clover as well as the leaves, but this has
a totally different taste, this has a
very lemony tart flavor, and this is a
great one to get kids foraging with
because it often is sort of associated
with candy because of the strong tart
flavor. You can see it being really low to
the ground here, but I also see wood
sorrel growing really tall. When I was in
southern California I saw it growing over
a foot and just in clumps that you could
snip and have huge clumps for the salad.
Wood Sorrel is wonderful for kids,
wonderful for a snack, wonderful for a
salad, and if you mistake it for clover,
clover is edible too.
So here is more wood sorrel growing up
this old stump and then behind it is
another one of my favorites, and that is
watercress, and the name watercress
here we are along with this fresh flowing
water. You find it by fresh water.
I just have one here, and here on the
property that I am in this area, I have
not found a large abundance of watercress
however many of the streams I have
been to in the past years, you will find
huge swaths of this. To me it is like a
wild arugula. It has a strong flavor
and one that I really like. Again, eat it
raw, add it to salads, you can sautée
it as well. Watercress. Love it!
So here we are in the field now,
and I have come across a wild Brassica.
These are common throughout a large
amount of the world. Brassica includes
mustard, cabbage, turnips, broccoli, kale.
There are a lot of different plants in the
Brassica genus. But you do not really
have to be able to tell them apart, and
they are hard to tell apart. But you know
you have a brassica with these yellow
flowers and these buds. You can actually
see the buds, very similar to broccoli.
When you have broccoli, each of those
little green buds turns into a flower.
In your garden, if you let broccoli go to
seed, it will turn into these yellow
flowers. The buds are edible, the flowers,
the seed pods once they are formed, and
the leaves are edible as well. This is a
great plant to start foraging with, very
common. I have seen it all throughout
places I have traveled to.
So what you see here is a sea of wild
onion, also called wild leek, and
depending on what continent you are on,
either ramsons or ramps. You will often
find whole forest floors covered in this.
When you can find this, it can be
extremely abundant. There are many
different types of wild onions or wild
garlic, and to be honest I often can not
tell the difference between them. I do not
really care, they all are a wonderful
addition to my meals. This one here is
called ramsons or ramps, depending
on whether you are in North America or
Europe. Both the seeds are edible, the
leaves, and the shoots, and you can
harvest the bulbs as well. Wherever you
are, keep your senses open for the smell
of onion. If you are mowing your lawn and
you smell onion all of a sudden, you are
mowing over a wild onion.
Here I am with a springtime raspberry or
blackberry plant. I have to be honest
here, I do not know if this is raspberry
or blackberry, I am still somewhat of a
beginner forager. I will be able to tell
you once the berries are here for sure
whether it is a raspberry or a blackberry
but at this point I do not know. Behind
me you can see a whole hedge of it,
and the reason that I am showing
blackberry and raspberry is because one,
it is extremely abundant, you find huge
amounts of it and you can just gorge on
these berries, two, it is very widespread,
I see this so often all across the United
States, Europe, and other parts of the
world, it is spread throughout. And it is
also very easy to identify blackberries
and raspberries. This is the plant here,
but once the berries are out in a few
months (it is still springtime here, it is
mid-May) then you know it for sure. One
thing to mention, though, that a lot of
people do not know, is that the leaves
make a really nice tea, so even in the
springtime, these plants can make a really
nice benefit from a trip out to the woods
or to the prairie or wherever you are
going to find these. They are in the city
and the countryside, spread throughout.
Raspberries and blackberries are not the
only berries, though, of course, a really
common one to forage is blueberries.
Strawberries are growing all around this
area right now as well, they are another
really easy one to start foraging with.
Once you get into the berry world, you
will realize there are hundreds of
different edible berries out there. I just
chose these because these are some of the
most abundant and easy to identify.
The last plant that I want to share with
you today is one that probably every one
of you has bought at the grocery store,
and that is apples. This right behind me
is an apple tree, growing right here wild
on the side of the road. Now, recently I
took a trip to my homeland in northern
Wisconsin, and I found over fifty apple
trees that were growing abundant with
apples that nobody else was eating. Many
of these were on the roadside like this,
many of them were in the woods, some were
from abandoned orchards, and many were in
people's front yards spilling over onto
the sidewalk with hundreds of apples going
to waste because they were not the exact
type that they liked to buy at the grocery
store. Fruit trees are a great thing to
forage, so many of them go to waste in
urban environments, and you will find
a lot of them in the wild as well.
Do not forget about crabapples!
They are sour, they are tart,
but they actually make a really nice snack
when you get the right tree, and you can
make ciders out of them.
So that is it for today, there are so many
other easy beginner plants that I want to
teach you, but for today I am going to
leave it at those eleven. And I want to
leave you with a really helpful tip:
just focus on learning one new plant
per week. Learn it, forage it, eat it, and
if you do that for an entire year, and you
learn one new plant per week, after one
year you will know and have foraged
fifty-two different plants, so you can go
from a total novice forager to being
fairly experienced in one year if you put
the work into it and you put the time and
you just take it one step at a time. And
you do not have to go really far away,
start in your own backyard. Start with the
things like the dandelions and the nettles
and the wood sorrels and the clovers.
Start with these easy things and build
your confidence up. If you want to go
further and you want more details, and you
want to learn the ethics to foraging,
which is so important, go to robgreenfield.org/foraging
and if you learned a lot from this video,
and you want other people to learn this as
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I love you all very much, happy foraging,
and see you again real soon.
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