 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'm here to help you realize the food is growing freely and abundantly all around you. You just have to open your eyes and look at the land in a different way. To do that I'm going to share 11 easy plants to begin foraging. Main guidelines with the plants that I'm going to be sharing with you today. First they're 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'm focusing on plants in North America although I am in France right now. Secondly these are plants that are highly abundant so you'll find them in very large quantities often and spread throughout the region that you're in. And then last they're quite easy to identify and very safe plants to work with. Now today I'm not going into the details of identification. There are a lot of resources for that so if you want identification go to robgreenfield.org slash foraging and there's all the resources that you need for that there. Now the number one rule of foraging is only eat something if you're 100% certain of what it is. That's the key to safe foraging so make sure that you follow that rule. But don't be overly worried. These are plants that humans have lived with for as long as humans have really existed. This is life so don't be so afraid of it. Now speaking of fear I want to start with stinging nettles. Here in France they call this orty and this is a plant that a lot of people fear because of the stingers on it. Yes this stinks. My legs are actually stinging right now because I'm surrounded by it but I'll 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 sauteed but a lot of people also eat this raw so I wanted to start with stinging nettle because it's super abundant and also because it's one of those ones that really people consider a pest, consider a problem, consider it an enemy but it's actually a great friend of ours. Next I want to share with you plantago or broadleaf and narrowleaf plantain and you'll see right where I am I'm in this disturbed area right along the roadside. This is a very very minor traffic road that I'm walking by but I wanted to show this area because this is where you'll often find this in disturbed areas. So this is the broadleaf plantain. It's one of my favorite plants. This is what I find in North America and then this is the narrowleaf plantain that I find a lot over here in Europe. I haven't seen this one much in North America and you've heard the 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'm bee keeping I chew this up this makes a poultice and if I mix it with honey and I put it on it reduces the swelling drastically. I wanted to start with these because it's really one of my favorite plants and one that you will see very abundantly in fields and 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 they have a red vein in the center sometimes not. You can see sometimes it's more toothed and sometimes it's more lobed. You can see here the flower head that's 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're 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 of 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. So here is wild mint and this is definitely one of my favorites because it is a wonderful little trailside snack and natural little pick-me-up and breath mint as well. This one's 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's really all that's needed to be said is that mint is growing wildly and there's many varieties some that are growing in the water some in moist areas some in in less moist areas like this. So many varieties and 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's not it's oxalis or wood sorrel. Now the good news is clover is edible as well 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 the strong tart flavor and 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 for the salad so wood sorrel wonderful for kids wonderful for a snack wonderful wonderful for a salad and if you mistake it with 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 haven't found a large abundance of watercress however many of the streams I've been to in the past years you'll find huge swaths of this and to me it's like a wild arugula it's a strong flavor and one that that I really like again eat it raw added to salads you can saute as well and watercress love it. So here we are in the field now and I've come across a wild brassica and these are common throughout a large amount of the world now brassica includes mustard cabbage turnips broccoli kale there's a lot of different plants in the brassica species but you don't really have to be able to tell them apart and they're hard to tell apart but you know you are you have a brassica with these yellow flowers and these buds and you can actually see the buds very similar to broccoli when you have broccoli each of those little green buds and broccoli turns into a flower in your garden if you let broccoli go to seed it'll turn into these yellow flowers so the buds are edible the flowers the seed pods once they're formed and the leaves are edible as well this is a great plant to start foraging with very common and I've seen it all throughout places I've traveled to so what you see here is a sea of wild onion also called wild leek and depending on what continent you're on either rampsums or ramps and you'll often find whole forest floors covered in this so when you can find this it can be extremely abundant there's many different types of wild onions or wild garlic and to be honest I often can't tell the difference between them I don't really care they all are a wonderful addition to my meals this one here is called rampsums or ramps depending on whether you're 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 and if you're mowing your lawn and you smell onion all of a sudden you're mowing over a wild onion so here I am with a springtime raspberry or blackberry plant and yeah I have to be honest here I don't know if this is raspberry or blackberry I'm still somewhat of a beginner forager I'll be able to tell you once the berries are here for sure whether it's a raspberry or blackberry but this point I don't know behind me you'll see a whole hedge of it and the reason that I'm showing blackberry and raspberry is because one it's extremely abundant you find huge amounts of it and you can just gorge on these berries two it's 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's also very easy to identify blackberries and raspberries this is the plant here but once the berries are out in a few months it's still springtime here it's mid-may then you know it for sure one thing to mention though that a lot of people don't 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're going to find these they're in the city and the countryside spread throughout raspberries and blackberries aren't the only berries though of course there's a really common one to forage is blueberries strawberries are growing all around this area right now as well there are another really easy one to start foraging with but once you get into the berry world you'll realize there are hundreds of different edible berries that are out there I just chose these because these are some of the most abundant and easy to identify the last plant 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 and 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 50 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 somewhere from abandoned orchards and then many were in people's front yards spilling over onto the sidewalk with hundreds of apples going to waste because they weren't the exact type they like to buy at the grocery store so fruit trees are a great thing to forage so many of them go to waste in urban environments and you'll find a lot of them in the wild as well don't forget about crab apples they're sour they're 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's it for today there are so many other easy beginner plants that I want to teach you but for today I'm going to leave it at those 11 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 for a week after one year you'll know and have foraged 52 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 don't have to go really far away start in your own backyard start with the things like the dandelions and the nettles and the wood sorals and the clovers start with these easy things and build your confidence up if you want to go further and you want more details you want to learn the ethics to foraging which is so important go to robgreenfield.org slash foraging and if you learned a lot from this video and you want other people to learn this as well make sure to share this video comment and like it to help it get out into the youtube world and if you're not subscribed make sure you subscribe and invite your friends too as well so i love you all very much happy foraging and see you again real soon