 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 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 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 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 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 lead 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 think I just love to be outside. It's where I spent my time. I like love 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 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 a hundred different foods in my garden So I went from a beginner to Well in some ways, I mean I very much still consider 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 a hundred percent food that I've foraged so that year I was really dependent upon the garden and Especially for my herbs and spices like the palette was still a domesticated palette and so for this month I'm seeing if I can meet every single need from the garden or 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 to 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 trusted 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 a hundred percent food that I've foraged and I've I've foraged about 100 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 Us so many people are afraid that if they eat the wrong plant they're going to to die and A lot of you may have seen Alexis Nicole on Instagram or tiktok. 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 tiktok and that's probably cuz a lot of them thought they would die until they started to watch Her videos. What do y'all think of the salt? Okay, hello welcome We do you want to try the sea salt? All right cool. There you are Well, this is trying the sea salt that I made the other day if you'd like to So if you're here for the plant work, are you just passerbys? Okay, that's what I thought cool So um, where was I? 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 So and 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 Oh, 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 at your 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 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 wind 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 going to do There's one main accomplishment We're going to have today and it's not that you're going to walk away from here being able to identify a whole bunch of plants and eat all of them It's that you're going to 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 plants 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 uh 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 monsanto 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 just be sprayed with pesticides or More wild areas a lot less But an area where everything looks like it's got his exact place and is 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 brought 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 localvore 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 to 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 will 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 say Okay, is there any plant anyone's really excited about potentially finding today? If so, let me know and I'll see if maybe we can find it Sorrel, I know where we got some sorrel All right Burdock, oh, I'd like to find some burdock Sassafras, I haven't seen any sassafras here So um while we walk around I brought a bag of anyone know what these are All right They're not currants, but I could see how they look similar to that They're not choked berries Not gooseberries sounds like it's a new one. It's considered a very invasive plant. So you would like this one Anna It's not spice bush. I believe that's native to this region This is um the 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 not 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 got to 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 samtheir 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 to 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 three actually Which is not something you find in most plants so Keep enjoying that And I'll start um introducing us to our 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 Right 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 Well, the good news 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 Well It's normally a very large tree. This is a small one that's just started So 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 Um, so that way we can all be standing amongst its grandiose-ness 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 plant? Oh in Japanese. Can we hear it? 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 goosefoot. I'm going to go ahead and harvest this Now actually, let me show you something as I'm about to harvest this Watch what I'm going to 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 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 the 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 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 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 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 from the other greens that like that are in the area? 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 in the 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 no plants and 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 goof goose foot It's often got a white Like powdery-ness on the leaf there it grows in a it grows upwards With a single stalk generally, but then that come 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 squirters right here. Yep Yep, and this is This is a very different looking lamb squirter 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 But it's a mint of sorts I will identify that later And make tea from it. Hopefully I will Message my friend Eric Joseph Lewis Okay, 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 got to 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 could 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 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 then 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 goldenrod But you could do more or less It 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 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 flower to go to seed And plenty for the other creatures as well. This is pokeweed 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 In the past it's 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 poke weed 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 poke weed when it's young and tender like I mentioned with other greens And how it works is it's got to be in its Meristomatic growth stage Meristomatic 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 Meristomatic growth stage and so 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 poke poke weed 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 poke in 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 regime 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 pokeberry before so I'm going to do that right now 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 common 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 poke weed 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 poke weed 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 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 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 flower and you can eat the roots How you work with the roots is 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 plan 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 per Personally like the broadleaf plantain more than the narrowleaf. A lot of times the narrowleaf 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 Um and you can grow varieties in your garden that have very large leaves So these are both a 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 the united states or turtle turtle island But this species here would be the one that came from europe a lot on the boats with the colonizers So how this met now that being said 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 can make our clothes from so Definitely 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 um 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 has 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've probably put like five or six into my mouth Give a nice chew got 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 chlorophyll 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 going to 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 of 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 the the medicine Of the honey bees Oh very nice 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 because anyone's seen stinging nettle In central park ever? Yeah, so it's in central park. I would imagine it Absolutely is But we're probably not going to meet it However, the 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 uh 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 if 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 plans 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 lambsquarter Are are beneficial birdock. That's the one where all of the the birds get stuck to you And actually it has a wonderful tap root. That's both food and medicine So I don't think we'll come across we may come across birdock. It's quite abundant So let us meet Let us meet Is there a birdock right there? Oh, yeah, there's some birdock right here You you just You generally do not have to go far to find birdock. This is the birdock 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 birdock is something you need a shovel for but This is a very soft ground nope I didn't get it So this is birdock and I Um So what you use from birdock is the root And so a note on this is that as I said birdock is the one that gets pretty high and it has these Birds on it that gets stuck to your clothes or your dogs or things like that Or if you have a bunny, maybe you're to your bunny um and And the root is the edible part now the challenging part about the root is birdock has a very deep tap root and The part of the tap root 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 40 pages That tells you everything that you need to know to identify it work with it forage it What time of year Work, you know prepared into a food More more more food than medicine, but they're they're incredible books There's a chapter on birdock and I definitely highly recommend those books It's sam thayer and his website is foragers harvest calm and all of the books are on there so He recommends getting into a thick patch of birdock And then you dig a hole right in that patch And then what you do is you dig the hole down deep because birdock can be 12 to 24 inch Tap roots which are just a single a tap roots just a single long root a carrot is a tap root And then you actually pull the birdock 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 birdock birdock is very abundant So you can definitely harvest birdock 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 birdock shoots are edible. Do you know? Yeah, I can't remember but you could look that up and learn about it, but yes birdock 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 birdock so and just to say that birdock 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 birdock, except I would be harvesting the ones with the huge leaves Because huge leaves mean bigger roots Questions on birdock This is another one that you can make that tea from just like the dandelion root same with that so you can make the The the roasted root tea or you can eat these as vegetables This is wood sorrel So yes, this is the one that you wanted to find hila 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'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 foraged plant of their life and often adults first foraged plant It's got this nice lemonyness So this is a good trailside 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 lemonyness 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 um a banana or plantain Look to them. I can imagine a little gorilla holding onto that And the flowers are edible as well and actually this whole plant is edible So 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 palate 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 clovers 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's 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 P 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 throwing 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 it in the world, this would be purslane But it's not but let's pretend it is Because purslane is one of my favorite plants and I haven't seen it yet in new york city, but it's everywhere. I'm sure Who knows this plant Yes, this is mugwort and so mugwort has to me a very medicinal Idea to it and mugwort 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 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 silveryness 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 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 hawthorn so it looks a lot like rose hips and for a while I was eating hawthorn thinking they were just really nice rose hips and Hawthorn can be incredible. The most incredible Hawthorn I had is at Chicago 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 Millennium 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 Hawthorn berry trees there the Hawthorn trees are incredibly juicy and wonderful You can see the inside of this is a little bit orange 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 rose hip But this is Hawthorn rose hip the seeds are hairy and can be Irritant to the throat but not with Hawthorn So Hawthorn 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 violet It's a nice patch of violets here and The reason that this is called violet Is because they have violet colored flowers That the violet covered flowers are generally in the spring time 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 going to be Um So, you know, again common senses 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 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 smart weed. Another name for it is lady finger And so The reason it's called lady fingers 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 Lady finger or smart weed 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, smart weed. There's also a weed that's called quick weed. This isn't quick weed. It's smart weed or lady finger And this is a one that's very common weed in the 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 smart weed 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 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 Um, and many of them are far easier to identify than we might think when the best time 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 someone'd be like that tasted gross like I picked up this weird pear 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 we're 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 The 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 plants can be allies to us How we can work with the plants and actually give back And so through my 10 years of 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 foragers 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 wild harvest festival And she's on instagram and tiktok and facebook highly recommend following her to Reestablish your relationship with plants Her name is linda black elk black elk being two words And then also of course lexus nicoll she is An internet craze for a reason and it's because she's got really awesome knowledge to share So she goes by the black forager Tiktok and instagram are her two main platforms 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 of 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 a 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 fallingfruit.org and they also have the falling fruit app and that is a wonderful resource for um urban foraging and Yeah, it's more so urban foraging, but you can add 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 papas 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 Native American folk to indigenous folk landback.org is a website that I would really recommend And that's part of the landback 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 Um, 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 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 cut 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 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 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 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 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