Love at First Taste

My friend displays chanterelle mushrooms, which she just picked.

Wild mushrooms have long intrigued me -- but also scared me. On the one hand, I love mushrooms, and the variety of wild mushrooms, most of which are unavailable commercially, excites me beyond description. To say that mushrooms are all more or less the same, or that if you've tried one mushroom and disliked it you'll probably dislike all mushrooms, would be like saying that just because you don't care for turkey, you needn't bother trying goose or duck or that if you don't like rabbit, you should stay away from steak and pork. It would be like saying that anyone who doesn't like cod doesn't like fish. But if you, like me, do enjoy commercially available button mushrooms, shiitakes, and portobellos, then just think about all the mushrooms we've never even tasted, about all the free gourmet food growing abundantly in our woods! It would be like discovering that there were scores of different types of delicious meat you'd never even heard of.

On the other hand, correctly identifying edible mushrooms is a lot trickier than identifying edible wild plants. For one thing, there aren't a lot of really poisonous wild plants around here (although there are some), and anything that is going to seriously harm you is also going to taste seriously bad. That's not the case with mushrooms. Apparently, there are some tasty mushrooms that can actually kill you. And then there's the fact that there are some mushrooms that even mushroom experts have difficulty telling apart from their poisonous look-alikes.

The cap of a chanterelle mushroom is indented in the center
and curls under at the edges.

So although I'm interested -- really interested -- in the prospect of hunting for wild mushrooms, although my elder son and I went on a mushroom walk once, and although I've purchased a couple of mushroom books, I've stayed away from serious attempts to identify any mushrooms, and I certainly haven't tried eating any. That is, until this past weekend. A friend invited a group of women to her vacation house in Maine, where she had previously identified two types of edible wild mushrooms: chanterelles and chicken-of-the-woods. As we were driving along the dirt road to her house after a trip to the local store (Jimbob's Place; this is true Maine backwoods) and scanning the roadside for mushrooms (my friend has become a true menace on the road since becoming a forager; her eyes are rarely where they should be, and her speed seldom exceeds 15 mph), we spotted some golden-yellow specimens that my friend announced were chanterelles.

The folds on the underside of a chanterelle fork at the edges of the cap.
They also extend part way down the stem.

Back at the house, we took a basket and some digging tools and walked down the road to collect our find. In the meantime, I'd read up on chanterelles in one of my mushroom books (Edible and Medicinal Mushrooms of New England and Eastern Canada by David L. Spahr, which purports to describe mushrooms that are relatively safe for beginner foragers to identify; you can find this book in the "recommended products" section on my homepage). Further contributing to my comfort level about this mushroom, my friend had eaten chanterelles from around her Maine property previously. When we got to where the mushrooms were growing, I could see that they were indeed chanterelles. The ridges on the underside of the mushroom cap were forked at the tips (they split into two near the outer edge of the cap), whereas those of false chanterelles do not fork. The golden color was uniform, whereas look-alikes are often different shades of yellow. The mushroom cap was indented in the center and curled under around the edges, and the ridges extended partially down the stem. We picked the larger specimens and dropped them in our basket.

A friend digs for hopniss
(ground nut). One is in her
shovel.

We kept walking, for my friend had also found ground nuts (also called hopniss; see my August 5 post) on her road. We showed the other two ladies how to identify the vines and follow the root through the ground to gather a string of tubers. Our friends became quite proficient, and together we soon had a sizeable ground-nut collection next to the chanterelles. Most of the ground nuts were no bigger than a small olive, but some were the size of a cherry tomato. A cry of "whoa!" could be heard from anyone who dug up one of that size.

Here I'm digging up an Indian cucumber. I'm wearing my
foraging belt, which keeps my tools close at hand.

We found a few other edible plants along our walk, although we didn't collect most of them. They would have made a fine addition to our dinner salad, but I guess we weren't thinking of that. I just pointed them out to the others as we found them: wood sorrel, lady's thumb, wintergreen, jewelweed. Indian cucumbers dotted the woods here and there, and I stopped to dig one up. We broke the tiny root into pieces and let everyone have a taste.

A chaga mushroom growing on a birch tree.

We'd seen another interesting mushroom from the car, so we sought out the birch on which it was growing. As luck would have it, one of the others had just read about this type of mushroom, called a chaga, earlier that morning. She knows someone who has been diagnosed with cancer, and she was intrigued by the chaga's supposed cancer-fighting properties (incidentally, we later looked up some chaga-related research on PubMed, an online catalog maintained by the National Institutes of Health, and there does seem to be something to this claim). I have actually seen chaga, which always grows on birch, many times, but I never dreamed it was a mushroom. It looks exactly like a charred piece of wood. So much so, in fact, that even after having seen pictures in one of my mushroom books, I was skeptical of its identity as such when I was faced with the live specimen. It did flake off and reveal a non-woody interior, though. Interestingly, chaga fetches not-too-shabby prices on eBay (I just found a 2 lb fresh mushroom listed for $19.99).

This chicken-of-the-woods
mushroom is past its prime.
It would be a distinctive
yellowish orange when ripe.

My friend had previously found a sizeable chicken-of-the-woods mushroom she wanted to show me. Chicken-of-the-woods has a distinctive look and always grows on trees. It's a relatively easy mushroom for beginners to identify and is featured in several of my plant and mushroom guidebooks. The mushroom was across the cove from her house, so we each climbed in a kayak and pushed off for the opposite bank. Alas, when we arrived, the mushroom had become old and woody -- in just a week's time. I'll have to wait until next year to taste this variety (it should grow back in the same place; think of mushrooms as the "fruit" of the underground or in-the-tree fungus, which like a blueberry bush remains in the same place and puts out its fruit during the appropriate season each year).

Chokeberries, not to be confused with chokecherries.

Next to the chiicken-of-the-woods, I noticed some reddish-purple berries that my friend told me were chokeberries. I'd read about chokeberries but had not found any previously. We picked a few, and my friend tried making a little jam out of them, but they were dry and not nearly as tasty as those she'd tried before. Chokeberries, also known as aronia, are little known but are actually under extensive cultivation (in fact, I planted some bushes in my garden, but they haven't fruited yet). Many red-colored Old Orchard brand juices include aronia juice, for example. (I didn't have my camera with me on that trip, so I later took the kayak back out so I could get the photograph here; I also got a chance to play around with the new macro lenses I mentioned in my previous post! See the photo gallery for a close-up of the chokeberries.)

Our bowl of ground nuts, washed and ready to be sliced.

Although we didn't return with the chicken-of-the-woods or any tasty chokeberries, we did have a sizeable collection of ground nuts and a handful of chanterelles from our previous efforts. Despite the fact that we hadn't discussed food before leaving for Maine, the four of us seemed to have coordinated remarkably well. One of us had prepared a vegetable soup in a pressure cooker. Another had brought some pork butt, which we broiled and added to the soup. Another person had brought a beautiful salad. Someone whipped up a vinaigrette, a couple of us sliced the ground nuts, and someone sauteed the chanterelles in a little butter. Peeling the ground nuts turned out to be quite a chore, especially for the smaller ones, and we figured the skins probably had a lot of nutrients, anyway. We decided to run a little experiment and prepare one batch of peeled ground nuts and one batch of unpeeled. We sprinkled them generously with salt and sauteed them in a bit of olive oil until they were browned and crispy.

Peeled, sliced ground nuts in the center; unpeeled, sliced ground
nuts on the right; and yet-to-be-sliced ground nuts on the left.

Everyone thought both peeled and unpeeled ground nuts were tasty. Two of us preferred those with skins on, and two preferred them with skins off. I had tasted ground nuts before, but in case you missed my previous post, the taste is somewhat like a dry, nutty potato. As for the chanterelles, when I put the first one in my mouth, I think I made several various professions of pure tastebud ecstasy. All I can say beyond that is this: I have never tasted such a buttery, melt-in-your-mouth mushroom. And I'm hooked on mushroom hunting.

The rest of the meal was almost equally spectacular. We felt like we were dining in a five-star restaurant, and none of us had done a great deal of work to get the food to the dinner table. The foraging had been fun teamwork, and the meal itself had come together in no time.

I took one of the kayaks out onto the lake played around with  the new macro
 lenses my husband gave me for my birthday. I specifically wanted to take
  pictures of the chokeberries we'd found across the cove  the day before.

The next morning, after a breakfast of sourdough pancakes (a recipe I've used often on camping trips and that turned out to be almost as tasty when not cooked over a campfire) topped with my beach-plum, sumac jam, I went exploring to see what other edible plants I could find. As mentioned above, I took the kayak across the lake to photograph the chokeberries. On the way, I saw an egret take flight over the water and disappear beyond a recently felled tree (a beaver has taken up residence, at least until the homeowners get him moved elsewhere).

The trail under the powerlines was lined with bunchberries.

Next, I took a hike through the woods and ended up under some power lines. Along the way I found lots of jewelweed and was able to use my new camera lenses to take better pictures of the seedpods than I posted previously (see the photo gallery). Some of the seeds were even turning blue (I'd heard that underneath the seed coating was a bright robin's-egg blue, but any seeds I'd found thus far had been white). When the trail opened up into the sunny expanse under the power lines, I found fields of bunchberries, unfortunately without any berries left (then again, bunchberries are not that flavorful and so not suited for jellies or pies; I don't know what I'd actually do with that many bunchberries after I'd had a few trailside nibbles). Blueberry bushes also abounded, but the berries had long since disappeared.

Vines of the hog peanut

There were interesting plants closer to the house, too. Right in the yard, my friend showed me some hog-peanut vines. I'm sure this is one of those plants that, now that I've seen the real thing, I'll start finding in other places. The vines are as thin as sewing thread, and the leaves are grouped in threes. Although in some climates and locations (sunny ones) the plant makes aerial beans, in Maine we're unlikely to find anything but the underground beans. We dug up a couple of whitish beans about the size of lentils, but I don't think they were ripe. They didn't completely resemble the pictures in my book, and they didn't seem large enough to warrant any effort. My book says harvesting time is late fall, so I think we were a bit early.

Pickerelweed.

Of course, wintergreen was abundant in the woods and at the edges of the yard. And once, my friend thought she'd found wapato (whose tubers and young shoots are edible), but it turned out to be the inedible arrow arrum (see photo gallery). I found yet another wapato look-alike across the lake, but in that case it was pickerelweed (see photo at left). Pickerelweed is also edible (in the spring, when the leaves are young), but the hunt for wapato is still on (I did find wapato closer to home; see my August 5 post for pictures). There is certainly abundant wild food within wakling or paddling distance of the house, though. Perhaps next year we will be able to create an entirely foraged dinner!

My two youngest sons picking autumnberries.

Back at home, I checked on the autumnberry bushes at a particular parking lot where I'd noticed that bushes were ripening at different rates. Most of the autumnberries have ripened early this year, and what's more, the birds have beat me to most of the fruit. I was thus thrilled to discover several bushes still bent with the weight of their red, silver-speckled berries. I tasted one berry from each laden bush I found. Unfortunately, the quality of autumnberries (and many other wild fruits) can vary considerably from bush to bush, and most were too bitter to enjoy. I did find two bushes with tasty fruit, though. The further good news is that autumnberry bushes fruit prolifically, and it is easy to pick great quantities in a small amount of time by stripping the berries off the branches with one hand while you hold your bucket beneath the branch with the other hand. I took my two youngest boys to pick berries while my older son was in school one morning. My two-year-old's method consisted of picking a berry, putting it in his cup, and then transferring the just-picked berry from his cup to his mouth. My four-year-old, on the other hand, picked nearly as many berries as I did, and between the two of us, we brought home enough berries to make several sheets of fruit leather.

My middle son cranking the food mill.

This gave me the opportunity to try out the food mill my mother-in-law had given me (this was another birthday present). I cooked the berries briefly over the stove until their juices came out and the seeds began to separate. Then I dumped the whole potful into the food mill and cranked away. It was fast going at first, but then things seemed to get clogged. That's when I decided to read the remainder of the instructions and discovered that after the part about turning the crank clockwise, the directions advised reversing direction frequently to prevent clogging. We met with more success after that. I cranked a little, and my son cranked a little, and in no time we had a bowl full of seedless autumnberry puree. This was so much more efficent than my previous method of mashing stewed fruit through a strainer by hand! I wish I'd gotten a food mill years ago.

I spread the puree thinly on plastic sheets and placed them in my food dehydrator. Many hours later, out came autumnberry fruit leather that tasted just as good as the samples I'd gotten from expert forager Russ Cohen on a couple of recent guided walks. And it was definitely tastier than my first attempt, when I'd used sub-prime berries (I know, I know; I should have known better). I'm hoping to return to my collecting grounds tomorrow and get more berries for jam. Last year I made some delicious autumnberry jelly by using my steam juicer to get the juice; this year I think I'll try the food mill so I can get a puree and try a more substantial jam.

Photo Gallery

Ripe autumnberries, covered with silver speckles.

My two-year-old picking autumnberries.

Autumnberry seeds left over in the food mill after most of the pulp has fallen into the bowl below.

The tree the beaver felled is lying straight across the outlet where the cove joins the rest of the lake. If allowed to continue doing his work, this beaver is going to create a pond at this end of the lake and possibly flood some of the residents out of their homes.

Bunchberry plant, without berries. These were all over under the power lines.

Close-up of the cancer-fighting chaga mushroom, which looks exactly like a charred piece of wood.

Chokeberries (also known as aronia). Fresh chokeberries are astringent, but they are good when juiced. However, like many wild fruits, the flavor varies considerably from bush to bush, so it's essential to taste test. The fruit on this bush was dry and not enjoyable.

Cooked, peeled ground nuts (hopniss). Yum!

Hopniss (ground nut) tubers on the ground after collection.

I'm digging up ground nuts.

We found several of these interesting mushrooms near my friend's house. We figured out that they are some type of coral mushroom, many of which are edible and some of which are supposedly tasty. Some are not worth bothering about. One of my mushroom guides said that "none are dangerously poisonous." Because my friend's comfort level is a little higher than mine, she went ahead and tasted a small piece (raw) and thought it was good. From what I had read, I didn't think the promised taste was worth the risk of eating something I couldn't confidently identify (I was sure it was a coral mushroom, but there are many types of coral mushrooms). My friend stopped at one small bite and plans to get further information before consuming large quantiites or performing culinary experimentation.

Coral mushrooms are a chore to clean.

Hog-peanut vines covering a portion of my friend's yard near the woods.

Hog-peanut leaves in hand. Note the thread-like vine (the horiznontal stem; the others are blades of grass).

Jewelweed flower. I took this picture with one of my macro lenses. Jewelweed leaves are edible when they are young (well before the plant has produced flowers). The seeds, which burst out of an oblong seedpod when ripe, taste like walnuts.

Jewelweed comes in yellow and orange varieties, which I often find growing side by side. Jewelweed is known by a variety of other names, including touch-me-not and snapdragon.

Jewelweed seedpods. To harvest the seeds, you need to close your hand around the seedpod before touching it. That way, the pod will burst in your hand and deposit its seeds there instead of shooting them through the air.

As they ripen, jewelweed seeds turn a bright blue. These aren't that bright yet. I've peeled off the seed coat to reveal the blue color. This is merely interesting; it isn't necessary or worth your time to take off the seed coat before consuming the seeds.

Arrow arrum, which is not edible. Compare the venation of this leaf with that of wapato (which I found in some wetlands near my home; see next photo). There is a prominent midvein on arrow arrum, and smaller veins radiate off of this midvein (I'm not sure the smaller veins are visible in this photo, which I took from the kayak).

Wapato leaf. Notice how the veins all originate from a central point at the base of the leaf. The flowers are those of the wapato plant. Later, a small green ball will form in the place of the flowers.

Pickerelweed, unlike wapato or arrow arrum, has rounded lobes and concave leaves. The venation is also slightly different (the veins are not as prominent).

Pokeberries (the purplish-black ones are ripe). I promised to post a picture of ripe berries previously, so here they are. One of the women on my Maine trip said she had these growing at the end of her driveway, and she wanted to know whether she could eat them. The answer is no. They are DEADLY POISONOUS! They will make everything on the inside of your body try to get to the outside as quickly as possible through every available means. However, because the berries are so distinctive, now is a good time to locate the plants if you want to harvest the shoots, which are delicious, in the spring. (Please exercise extreme caution and consult a good guide book and/or experienced forager before attempting to eat the shoots, however; also see my April 27 post for more information.)

Wintergreen. I made a tea from the leaves in Maine but only got a few sips before I carelessly left my mug on the kitchen counter during the end-of-trip cleanup, and my tea got tossed down the drain by mistake. Oh well!

Hit and Miss

Wrinkled rose. All roses and rose hips (the fruit of the rose plant) are edible, although some are larger than others. The wrinkled rose is a good one to find because it's relatively large.

Ground ivy growing in my compost pile.

I recently discovered that this little ivy that grows all over my lawn, in my flower beds, and around my compost actually makes a delicious and healthful tea. I'm sure you have it at your house, too. It's called ground ivy, or gill-over-the-ground. It has these kidney-shaped, wavy-margined leaves and a distinct smell. One of my books likened it to basil, although that's not quite right. To me, it smells like someone just cut the grass -- although now I realize that the smell I associate with cut grass is actually cut ground ivy. In the spring, it makes small purple flowers. After reading that the plant is high in vitamin C, and feeling a bit under the weather, as it turns out, I went out to my compost pile and picked a handful of leaves. I boiled water in the tea kettle and poured it over the chopped ground ivy, then let it steep for a few minutes. The taste was just as advertised -- bitter. But a spoonful of sugar and a splash of milk turned it into a delightful drink. I'm not much of a tea drinker, but I do love mint tea -- and it turns out that ground ivy is in the mint family, although it doesn't have a minty aroma.

Catnip in flower. There weren't
many leaves left, and those that
remained were puny and past
their prime.

Speaking of mint, a while back I went to replenish my supply from our local train station, where it grows in abundance. I had been repeatedly refilling a pitcher of iced mint tea in my refrigerator. However, when I got to the train station I was met with two unpleasant surprises. First, the mint had all gone to flower, and the leaves were no longer suitable for tea (they were narrow and straggly looking). Second, most of the mint patch, along with some sumac, mallow, thistles, and other tasty plants, had been bulldozed! There went my foraging plans. Fortunately, there is plenty of other space for plants around the train station's parking lot, and construction actually produces a plethora of "weeds" we can eat, so I'm not worried about the long-term prospects of my collecting grounds. I'm sure much of the mint will be back next year (and much of it is still there in other spots).

This is the bare spot where
there used to be a variety
of mint and other edible plants
at the train station.

As you might recall from my May 9 post, my eldest son was actually the one to discover the mint at the train station. He used his nose, whereas I was using my eyes and didn't recognize it. I have a few different kinds of mint growing in my garden, but this mint was different -- a lighter, grayer shade of green, and soft enough to be a baby blanket. The tea I made from the leaves suited me even better than the tea I made from my garden mint, so I kept going back to the train station instead of just walking out my back door when I needed another pitcher. I still didn't know what kind of mint it was. Then, during a recent guided foraging walk with Russ Cohen, I learned what it was: catnip.

Perhaps this doesn't surprise you, but it surprised me. I didn't even know catnip was a mint, and I definitely didn't know anyone other than cats liked it. Catnip, as you probably know even if you don't have a cat (I don't), makes felines -- even big ones such as lions -- go a bit crazy. It's a stimulant. For humans, catnip apparently has the opposite effect, so it's a nice tea to have just before bed.

Russ's walk took us around an organic farm, but the plants we looked at weren't the cultivated ones. He talked about many plants I've learned to identify on my own -- day lilies, cattails, elderberry, pokeweed, and burdock, for example. But I also got to see several plants for which I'd been avidly searching but had failed to find. I mentioned previously that he showed us hopniss vine, and just seeing that plant in its natural habitat helped me to identify it on my own mere days later. Here I'll mention some of the other exciting plants Russ showed us on the walk.

Unripe common barberries from the foraging walk.

Common barberries (as distinct from Japanese barberries, which are actually more common now) are not tasty right off the bush, but they make nice additions to jams and jellies, where they impart welcome tartness, similar to (and reportedly better than) that of cranberries. Barberries once were used in households throughout New England, but now that cranberries are so widely available (and easier to cultivate), most people have forgotten about barberries.

The berries are ripe and juiciest in mid-autumn, but I understand that you can still collect them later, when they are shriveled. You'll just have to add a little water and soak the berries first for about a half hour. I haven't tried any of this, of course, given that the first time I saw barberries outside of a book was on this foraging walk and that the berries weren't ripe then. All of this information is from the walk and Russ Cohen's book, Wild Plants I Have Known ... and Eaten (available from the Essex County Greenbelt Association).

Common barberries from our property. When they are ripe,
all will be bright red.

Much to my excitement, I just recently found common barberries on my own. My husband and I are about to embark on the construction of a new home. In fact, the land clearing began yesterday. Before letting the workers start chopping down trees, we walked through the area to be cleared and marked trees we'd like to keep. Beneath the trees I found lots of common barberry! Unfortunately, I've just read that barberries (both the edible, European [common] kind and the inedible, Japanese variety) are invasive in Massachuestts, which means that it's illegal to propagate the plants. A Guide to Invasive Plants in Massachusetts indicates that the common barberry has been widely eradicated because it serves as an alternate host for wheat rust, which is a threat to grain crops. So, although the plant is no longer common, it still poses a potential threat. I'll have to make do with the plants I found growing naturally on our property, but I feel fortunate to have found any at all. They weren't making many berries, presumably because of the shady location (barberry does well in full shade to full sun).

Rose hips from a wild rose plant whose specific name
I have unfortunately forgotten.

But back to the foraging walk. Russ wanted to talk to us about the wrinkled rose, which grows wild all over New England sea shores and sometimes inland as well (just recently I saw it in a flower bed at a local ice cream stand). However, there weren't any wrinkled roses along our walk, so instead he told us about a different wild rose, whose flowers and hips are much smaller but still edible (all roses and rose hips -- the fruit of the rose plant -- are edible). Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the rose we actually saw, but I have seen it growing wild all over the place and did not realize it was a rose. It might have been the multiflora rose, another invasive species. The rose hips we found were still green and unripe. But when they are ripe (and red), they have a fleshy fruit inside and a LOT of seeds, which must be spit out if one wants to enjoy the fruit. Rose hips are high in vitamin C and can be made into jellies, jams, and healthful teas.

Wrinkled rose and hiding rose hip.

The author of one of my wild-plant books says that although he knows some foragers like to nibble on rose hips along the trail, he doesn't care for them. I snuck one from a wrinkled rose bush at the above-mentioned ice cream stand, and I thought the fruit was quite tasty. It's no joke about the large quantities of seeds, though! I'm wondering what would happen if I put rose hips in my steam juicer. I'll have to find a supply that isn't in someone's flower bed, however.

Ground cherry, with leaves overturned to show
the flower. The lanterns are hanging
at the bottom right. This plant is in my garden!

To me, one of the most exciting plants we found on the walk were ground cherries. Ground cherries are not that common, and I hadn't come across any yet. They are related to tomatoes and are supposed to taste like a very sweet tomato. I love tomatoes, and as a bonus, ground cherries grow inside these cute little papery lanterns. What's not to love? Unfortunately, the fruits we found were not ripe yet (they are yellow when ripe and typically fall off the plant), so I still haven't been able to taste one. However, I was excited to find that two of these plants had snuck into my garden without my even having noticed! I hope the squirrels and chipmunks will share some of the fruits with me when they get ripe (see the Photo Gallery for additional pictures).

Plantain flower spikes in my garden.

We also learned about a plant that is growing all over my lawn and starting to invade my garden. I've read about it but never made the connection with the plant I've actually seen. It's called a plantain (but it's different from the banana-like fruits of the same name). It's an inconspicuous plant with flat-lying leaves. It sends up several flower spikes, although you might not think about them as containing flowers. The color is mostly green. The young

Plantain leaf.

leaves make good salad greens, and when the seeds on the spikes have dried (or when you have picked them and thoroughly dried them), you can grind them into a flour. It occurs to me that these should be relatively easy to collect in quantity. One of my books includes a recipe for pancakes made with the flour of the plantain seeds. Also, one of the women on the foraging walk said she'd heard that eating the tender tips of growing plantain flower spikes wards off mosquitoes and ticks. I'm not sure (and she wasn't sure) whether that is true, but it might be worth a shot!

Jewelweed likes to grow in moist, damp woods. I have seen
extensive patches of it.

Unripe jewelweed seed against my hand. The seed is green
and is hanging next to the flower.

Another plant I see everywhere and didn't know was edible is jewelweed. Well, let me clarify. I'd read that jewelweed was edible. I just didn't know that this plant I see everywhere was jewelweed. In fact, a friend of a friend had told me it was called something else entirely (I can't recall what) and that it wasn't edible. This person has a mild interest in wild plants, so I put a little more trust in the information than perhaps I should have. In any case, it turns out that these plants are edible. The young greens make a reportedly delicious boiled vegetable in the spring, and when the seed pods, which are skinny and hang vertically from the plant, are ripe, they burst open upon any slight touch. The two sides of the seed pod curl open as this happens, and the seeds fly everywhere. In fact, for this reason the plant is called touch-me-not or snapweed in some places (the name jewelweed comes from the way the pretty, water-resistant flowers, which come in yellow and orange varieties, sparkle when water beads up on them). My husband was familar with snapweed as a kid (kids love to surprise their friends with seed explosions), but little did he know that the seeds are edible. I have now eaten a good number of them, and I think they taste exactly like miniature walnuts. Collecting them is a bit of a trick, though: You must carefully enclose a ripe seed pod in your hand before setting off the explosion. That way, the seeds will explode in your hand. Russ told us that if we peel off the seed coating, inside we would find a seed of a striking robin's-egg blue. (but it isn't necessary to remove the seed coating to eat the seeds). I haven't seen this on any of the seeds I've collected, so I wonder whether they might not have been entirely ripe yet.

Unripe mulberry. (See the
photo gallery for a picture
of the whole tree).

We also got to see a mulberry tree. Mulberries look a lot like raspberries, except they grow on trees instead of bushes. The tree didn't have that many berries left on it, and the ones that were there were hard. Someone ate one and declared it good, but when I asked whether mulberries were supposed to be soft when ripe, Russ said they were. I suspect this was a case of wishful thinking (or maybe wishful tasting) on the part of the sampler. I didn't try one.

The few ripe autumnberries the birds
didn't get.

Overall, the walk was an interesting and educational -- not to mention tasty. We got to sample some black-walnut baklava, autumnberry fruit leather, and wild hickories at the end of the outing. This was the second time I'd had autumnberry fruit leather, courtesy of Russ, and both times I was impressed with how delicious it was, especially after learning that it was 100% autumnberries, and no added sugar. I love autumnberries, and certain plants produce fruit that is tasty right off the bush. But they are tart, and the jelly I made last fall certainly benefited from added sugar. My family likes to take fruit leather along on backpacking trips, so I've been looking forward to trying my own autumnberry fruit leather this year.

Yellow beach plum. This fruit is the size of a cultivated cherry.

Much to my dismay, the birds seem to have eaten almost the entire crop of autumnberries this year (and the fruit has ripened early). What's left are the least tasty berries (birds are expert foragers). I picked some and added them to some beach plums a friend and I found outside our town offices (they were landscaped; we got permission to pick them) because I thought the plums were sweeter, but the resulting fruit leather wasn't nearly as tasty as I'd hoped. It wasn't terrible enough to make me throw it out -- after all, a lot of work went into picking and preparing the fruit. But it was definitely bitter and only palatable when we were really hungry (we took it along on our camping trip Labor Day weekend and managed to eat half of it; see the end of the Photo Gallery for camping pictures). I've definitely learned the importance of choosing the right autumnberry bushes to pick from.

My son stands next to one of the
plum bushes with our bucket of fruit.

It was getting dark as my friend and I were picking the plums, so by the end we were feeling around in the bushes until our fingers happened upon a fruit. We thought we'd picked the bushes clean, but when I returned (on other business) a couple of days later, I saw that the bushes were still loaded with fruit. I vowed to collect more plums soon and do something a lot tastier with them.

With that goal in mind, my eldest son and I headed back to the plum bushes this evening. There are two bushes: one with purple plums, the other with yellow plums. More of the yellow plums were bug-ridden and shriveled than the purple ones were, so we mostly picked the purple variety. We filled our bucket in less than half an hour and headed to the grocery store to get marzipan and oranges for the muffins, which are baking as I type.

Smilax berries in various stages of ripeness.
They turn black later in the season.
The berries are not edible.

In other exciting discoveries, My elder son and I found a smilax (carrion flower) vine along a trail we've walked many times before (of course). Just one, mind you, but I'm sure more are to come now that I've made this first identification. The edible portion of the smilax vine is the flower stalk, so it is now well past harvesting season. But it's a good time to recognize the plant locations because the berry clusters are distinctive, and this is how I found my vine.

The plant received its unfortunate name because of the smell of one species of smilax, but not all of the flowers smell like rotting meat, and fortunately the plant's taste is much better than the smell of its flowers. In The Forager's Harvest, Samuel Thayer says he likes to tell people that the carrion flower is actually called the carry-on flower because those who have sampled it carry on and on about how good it tastes. I can't wait to try some next spring! (Note: Not all species of smilax are carrion flowers; the genus also contains greenbriers, which are quite different plants.)

Boneset. Notice how the leaves appear to be
pierced by the stalk.

I've been reading Euell Gibbons's Stalking the Healthful Herbs, which is where I learned about ground ivy. I was on a bike ride a couple of weeks ago and was excited to recognize a distinctive plant I'd read about in the book. I couldn't remember what it was called or what one did with it, but there was no mistaking the plant. the stalk looked like it had just shot up and pierced the leaves through the middle because of the way the leaves clasped the stalk. I took a picture and then leafed through the book when I got home. The find was much less exciting than I'd hoped for; it turns out the plant is boneset, a plant so bitter that people who drink a tonic made from its leaves apparently swear at its taste. It's said to be effective in treating a wide variety of ills, including fever, colds, and rheumatism, to name but a few, but nothing I have read makes me think it's time to ditch my FDA-approved medications (of which I take very few, in any case). Nonetheless, since I became seriously interested in edible wild plants, I find that I've also become interested in putting a name to non-edible ones, so I felt some sense of satisfaction in having identified boneset.

Silky Dogwood. Not edible!

Another non-edible plant I've just learned to identify is the silky dogwood. I kept seeing this plant, and its metallic-blue berries, everywhere, and I finally identified it in my Wild Berries & Fruits field guide by Teresa Marrone. My picture doesn't capture the beauty of the berries, but stay tuned for better pictures (of other plants if not this one) in upcoming posts: my husband has just given me a macro lens, which will allow me to take better close-up pictures to share with you!

On that note, I'll lead you right into the photo gallery for a few more pictures.

Photo Gallery

Purple beach plums. These are about the size of large grapes.

A different view of purple beach plums.

My 6-year-old collecting plums.

Our collection of plums. This was way more than I needed for a double batch of muffins. Next I'll try some jam. Slightly under-ripe fruit is supposed to be better for jam, and our fruit is quite ripe. I might add some sumac concentrate for tartness. I'm excited to try the new food mill my mother-in-law gave me for my birthday! It will make removing the skins and pits a lot easier.

Close-up of a boneset leaf seemingly pierced by the plant's stalk.

Here's the cattail pond my boys and I found back in February (see February 22 post). You might recall that I went to collect cattails later in the year but found the pond inaccessible. On a recent hike around the surrounding conservation land, we found the way cleared, and we also found another way to get to the pond. Next year I might have more luck collecting.

Jewelweed seeds. They taste like walnuts.

Smilax berries. Don't eat the berries; it's the flower shoot that is edible.

Smilax (carrion flower) vines have heart-shaped leaves.

Smilax vine.

Another picture of common barberries (from our property). The plant has long, narrow thorns on the branches.

Mulberry tree. This picture didn't turn out that well, but maybe if I'd had my snazzy new filters for my camera lens (one of them promises to make skies bluer, but that would have been quite a feat on this day, when we had a hurricane warning).

Unripe ground cherry. I'm pulling apart the "lantern" husk so you can see.

Green "lantern" husk hiding an unripe ground cherry in my garden.

At the top of Mt. Greylock, our daytime hiking destination on our recent camping trip, people kept stopping to take pictures of our "cute hiker dog," so I figured I should, too. They kept trying to guess what was in her backpack, but they were always wrong (she was carrying a couple of hammocks and her canvas water bowl). My 6-year-old felt very grown up to be the one to hold her leash all weekend.

My husband and my 6-year-old both have Osprey hiking packs, and my husband wanted me to take a picture of them together. Our 2-year-old is in the lead, and there's that cute hiking dog again. This was on our hike out of camp after a 3-night stay in the Berkshires (Mt. Greylock).

My 4-year-old thought his hat, whistle, walking stick, and boots made him look like a "real hiker," and he wanted me to take his picture. I assured him that he actually was a real hiker; he didn't just look like one! It really made his day (and proved my point) when we passed a couple of guys going the other way and one of them said, "You're a real hiker!"

We never lack for toys or entertainment in the woods. The boys are scraping out roads in the dirt at our campsite.

My middle son enjoys the view from the "Overlook Trail."

Looking at the camera now.

My 2-year-old had hiked on his own until this overlook, but this was the end of the line. He refused to take another step down the trail, and my husband relented and put all 31 pounds of him in the backpack. My middle son is in front.

My 6-year-old refused to be in the picture. I know we were dirty and smelly from having spent several days sleeping in the woods, but I don't think we were that embarrassing.