We thought it would never arrive but spring is making up for lost time (did we skip April?).
In foraging terms, May is super-charged. Plants are falling over one another to pop out of the ground. Some of the best-tasting wild edible plants can be spotted all over the city within the next four weeks. On mid-spring walks in Manhattan and Brooklyn I teach the identification and explore the culinary possibilities of invasive weeds and indigenous herbs, vegetables and fruit, whose flavors are little known beyond the foraging fringe.
Dead Horse Bay is the landfill that was used as a garbage dump for late nineteenth and early twentieth century New York City. Despite the (wildly invasive) phragmites monoculture that dominates the plant world here, and the bottle-littered beach that put it on the hipster map, there are plenty of edible treasures to discover. Pokeweed and common milkweed, wild lettuce and dandelions, bayberry and sea rocket, field garlic and oodles of black cherries abound. Pack a picnic and come and spend the afternoon poking around this New York City wilderness.
Inwood Hill Park, at Manhattan’s northern tip is home to its oldest forest. Near the ballfields and park edges we will find pokeweed and burdock, while in the lower reaches of the woods is a profusion of spicebush trees. Higher up are swathes of invasive day lilies, garlic mustard, Japanese knotweed and field garlic. Learn to recognize ubiquitous mugwort: it may be a pest but it’s the best pest for a nest in the pot. Sorry. Spring fever.
On the opposite corner from the well-known and very formal Conservancy Garden, the North Woods are Central Park’s less-known wild and hilly northwest. In late May this wooded wilderness will be fully leafed out and filled with birdsong and late spring bloom. Come for a two hour stroll and learn to spot and identify wild edibles such as invasive Japanese knotweed, mugwort, field garlic, indigenous but weedy pokeweed (learn how to cook it), dangerous dogbane and Northeastern natives like May apples and serviceberries.