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Central Park provides a great window into the world of wild foods of mid-spring. It's the peak of the season for wild salad greens, and we'll be finding great quantities of renewable ingredients: Spicy mustard greens, such as garlicky garlic mustard, hot hedge mustard, and even hotter poor man's pepper, will abound on lawns or under trees anywhere,...

A great abundance of edible and medicinal wild plants and mushrooms makes this park a great place for edible and medicinal plants and mushrooms in late summer. Burdock, an expensive detoxifying herb sold in health food stores, abounds in cultivated areas throughout the park. You can also use this invasive species as a superb root vegetable, or even...

When the trees have dropped their leaves and there is a chill in the air, there are still many things to see in the woods and wide open spaces. Join wild foods author and forager author Marie Viljoen for a brisk walk in the garden to discover and identify edible, fragrant, and useful plants, such as juniper, spicebush, and bayberry in their winter...

With woodland trails, a lake, and recreation areas, this is a great place for wild foods in late fall. Some fruits are good to eat in late fall.  Autumn Olive Berries At this time of the year, we’ll be enjoying the sweet-tart autumn olive berries, which grow in unlimited quantity near the entrance to the parking lot. These red, spherical,...

The sunny borders between woodlands and the parking lot provide prime habitat for various wild herbs and greens. We'll look for sheep sorrel and wood sorrel, with their wonderful lemony flavors, plus goutweed, which tastes like parsley, carrots, and celery. Poor man's pepper, a common, delicious wild mustard, also appears in great abundance in sunny...

Central Park provides a great window into the world of wild foods in  early spring. Making a meal with these plants is simple at this time of the year. For an appetizer, try simmering field garlic bulbs in diluted vinegar with Italian seasonings, to make an outstanding pickle. It's the peak of the season for wild salad greens, and we'll be finding...

With a lakeside, cultivated areas, picnic grounds, and woods, Belmont Lake State Park is a great place for wild foods in late winter, and everything the group will be finding is renewable. The plants repeatedly get trimmed down by lawn mowers, but they’re adapted to defend themselves by regeneration. Many of the foreign plants here are also invasive. ...

The seashore is always a special place for edible wild plants, and autumn is no exception. In addition to the beach habitat and adjacent fields and thickets, it's got cultivated areas, wetlands, and woodland trails. The most spectacular find in the sand within sight of the ocean is sea rocket, is a pungent, succulent mustard found nowhere else, and...

Urban Ecosystems| Living Among the Plants, Animals, and Fungi of NYC Did you know that Broadway bends at Tenth Street in order to preserve a prized cherry tree that once grew there? That some New Yorkers feast at wild edible banquets with foods foraged among the City’s parks and waterways? Or, that over 200 different species of bees call Manhattan...

Forest Park is one of the best places for foragers in mid-spring. Get lost in this vast park, and you'll have plenty to eat (that is, if you can distinguish the gourmet plants from the deadly ones.) It boasts a large, mature, secondary growth forest, trail edges, thickets, and cultivated areas—all overflowing with wild plants, and Violet Brill,...

Inwood Hill Park is one of the best places for foragers in late winter. The city's hilliest park, with a large, mature forest, meadows, thickets, and cultivated areas, it's loaded with wild plants. Now is the time for roots. Burdock, an expensive detoxifying herb sold in health food stores, as well as an invasive foreign species, abounds in human-disturbed...

This is one of the best places in the world for fall foraging, with a wide selection of wild herbs, greens, roots, nuts, and mushrooms, even in late fall. Habitats include miles of mature forest, as well as the trail edges and the disturbed, overgrown, and cultivated habitats, all providing homes for many diverse, renewable species. Before we even...

Inwood Hill Park is one of the best places for foraging in late fall. The city's hilliest park, with a large, mature forest, meadows, thickets, and cultivated areas, it's loaded with wild plants, even in late fall. This is the time to search for roots. Here are some we'll be finding: Burdock, an invasive, Eurasian, expensive, detoxifying herb sold...