Discover the abundance of edible and medicinal wild plants and mushrooms that make this park an exceptional destination for late summer foraging and botanical exploration.
Burdock, a prized detoxifying herb commonly sold in health food stores, grows abundantly throughout cultivated areas in the park. This versatile invasive species functions excellently as a root vegetable and can be marinated and baked into a delicious vegan jerky alternative.
Sassafras root offers another culinary treasure, providing the base for traditional tea and root beer, plus serving as an underutilized but excellent seasonal flavoring. Common spicebush, which also produces allspice-like berries, and ground ivy, a gentle herbal diuretic, offer additional beverage options and medicinal applications.
The park provides abundant leafy greens, including hedge mustard, yellow watercress, wood sorrel, goutweed, lamb's quarters, and chickweed. These renewable resources readily regenerate after harvesting or mowing, offering sustainable plant material throughout the season. Additional greens include poor man's pepper, Asiatic dayflower, and lady's thumb.
Nut varieties are abundant and diversifying. Hickory nuts, delicious but never commercialized, line the sidewalks approximately a quarter mile south of the Picnic House. Hazelnut bushes along the Mall's edges north of the skating rink offer harvestable nuts, though squirrels provide significant competition. Beech trees populate the park, with variable crop yields each year. White oak acorns, delicious when leached of their bitter tannins, are widely available throughout the grounds.
Kentucky coffee tree seeds yield an excellent caffeine-free coffee substitute and serve as a sophisticated seasoning for chocolate dishes. Gourmet fruits include native hawthorn berries, traditional herbal heart tonics, and apple relatives, alongside potential bumper crops of crab apples and Northern black haw berries. These sweet black haws resemble dried raisins while offering a distinctive flavor combining banana and prune butter notes.
The paper mulberry, a striking reddish sphere with protruding spikes, provides additional sweet fruit, as do American hackberries with their hard-pitted interior surrounded by a coating reminiscent of M and M candy shells.
Spectacular mushroom varieties flourish when adequate rain precedes the season. Hen-of-the-woods, sold commercially as maitake, alongside gigantic chicken mushrooms that surpass chicken in flavor, golden-brown honey mushrooms, ringless honey mushrooms, and wine-cap stropharia mushrooms may appear abundantly.
Meeting Place:
We will meet at the stone benches by the stone wall at Prospect Park's Grand Army Plaza entrance, across the street from the library, between the columns with the eagles. Not under the traffic circle and not in front of the library.
Important Information:
- Bring lunch, a pen, plastic bags, paper bags, containers, closed shoes (poison ivy is present), appropriate weather clothing, and drinking water. Digging implements are suggested. Children and well-behaved dogs are welcome.
- Dress appropriately for the weather and be aware that subway service can be unreliable with frequent track work cancellations.
- Avoid sandals due to mosquitoes, thorns, and poison ivy.
- Bring plastic bags for vegetables and herbs, paper bags for mushrooms (which deteriorate in plastic), containers for berries (available late spring through fall), water, lunch, and extra layers for cold weather. Digging implements and pocket knives are optional.
- Dogs and children are welcome and encouraged to participate.
- Smoking is prohibited at all times.
