Anyone here into foraging? I love the hobby but can't find anyone irl who doesn't either think it's weird, or is just completely uninterested.

Pick related, it's a bouquet of small white clover I'm going to dry and turn into tea when I get home.

>>2824329 (OP)
Yes. However I've been in complete lazy NEET mode lately and only grab whatever grows in my backyard to put in salads
Most people I know think it's cool to know this though, and I live in mediterranean area where foraging tradition stayed somewhat alive , so it's not considered weird either for random normies

I just eat lawn food

then I google what it is and if it was edible

>>2824329 (OP)
Very much into foraging. I try to identify one new plant every day and once a week making a new recipe from foraged stuff. Recently made dandelion fritters (delicious), French dandelion jam (also delicious), elderflower cordial (also delicious). Coming up is making a mustard from garlic mustard seeds, but I need to gather a lot more.

Picrel is my latest unidentified herb. Some kind of thyme, maybe vervena.

I'm trying to transition to a 0 purchased vegetables diet. Foraging weeds from the garden and area around to supplement my nutrition.

Pic is smyrnium perfolatium rhyzomes I prepared in a soup. Smells bad like stinkbugs when harvesting and preparing, but tastes good in after cooking. Texture like a more fibrous parsnip, taste between parsnip, fennel, and something else I can't make out.

>>2824398
this is the plant (Alexanders). The flowers are edible, the stalks and leaves as well, and supposedly the seeds can be used as a pepper substitute.leaves are mixed with yoghurt for salad in Turkey

>>2824329 (OP)
one time i found a wild white carrot and ate it, it was actually poison hemlock and the next 18hrs of my life was hell

>>2824329 (OP)
Can you describe the taste of the tea? I'm thinking about trying to make some alcohol out of clover blossoms or leaves. Do you think it would be worth it or should I try something else?

There's a lot of goosefoot and asparagus on my property that I eat. Some berry bushes and fruit trees too, but the birds mostly eat those.

>>2824329 (OP)
Are you male?

>>2824398
What do you use to get the roots? it's always a massive struggle to get them out unless it's growing in sandy soil
these ones look small though
also I tried the seeds as pepper, it's good but not very strong, I used a coffee grinder to powder them

>>2824329 (OP)
I wish I liked mushrooms. Went morel hunting with my parents as a kid and I remembered having fun doing it.

>>2824431
i love to eat them but can't find them for shit
want to team up?

>>2824418
Oh I have to try them as powder.

I just pinch the stem directly at the ground, squeeze and pull. I harvested those more than a month ago though so they were tiny, for bigger ones I'd use a trowel

In the foothills of the Cascades there are a lot of these Camas flowers. I've been meaning to try to dig some pf the bulbs up when fall comes around

today's haul: wild lettuce aka opium lettuce. the latex of the plant contains lactucarium and lactucopirin, which provide a mild analgesic and sedative effect. good natural sleeping aid or pain relief.

Going to process it with some strong alcohol and make a sleepytime solution

When I first moved countries I had to forage in the woods for food as I had no money, so I don’t forage much now

>>2824329 (OP)
YES! This spring I harvested a load of wold garlic that grows in abundance next to the river I live 10 min walk away from. I've already got some elderflower from my local park, and I've been collecting wild cherries. They're not all ripe yet, so over the coming days and weeks I'll be collecting more. I'm going to make a cherry jam with them. I'm excited for sloes in winter. I forage while taking my dog for a walk; it's so relaxing.
I was thinking of starting a foraging journal. Sketch and watercolour drawings of plants, where I got them, what time of year etc.

>>2824329 (OP)
is this edible?

i have tons of mushrooms but dont know which ones are safe

If you live North of Boston, tell me and we can find snacks innawood

>>2824329 (OP)
I have a lot of fresh off the boat, older chinese immigrant neighbors and I catch them out in the woods foraging for random shit all the time. They always act like I just walked in on them jacking off when they're picking flowers off some plant or whatever and they notice me approaching, its kinda funny. Chill out Wing Tong you're in America buddy!! We don't have mobile execution vans and digital ID here..... yet!!

>>2825002
Probably a bit late, but that is most likely a chanterelle, which is edible. The real tell would be the appearance of the underside/gills. Chanterelles have "false gills", which are more like veins along the underside of the cap/top of the stem, compared to true gills which protrude much farther, like gills on a fish or pages in a book.

I found a good number of chanterelles last weekend myself >>2824593 and you can see the false gills there fairly well.

Things that are important for mushroom identification:
>Does it have a defined cap and stem?
>If so, what does the stem look like, and what does the top and underside of the cap look like?
>If not, what is the overall structure of the mushroom?
>What does the spore-bearing surface of the mushroom look like? This is the underside of the cap for a "standard" mushroom. Could be gills, pores, teeth, or any number of non-standard features.
>What was the mushroom growing out of (the substrate)? Dirt? Decaying wood? Live wood? Other? Is it possible there could have been dead or live wood (tree roots, buried branch/log) just underground?
>Does the mushroom change color when bruised/cut? What color does it change to? How long does it take?

There are also more nuanced identifying features, like:
>Size and shape of the spores under a microscope
>Color-change reaction to several different chemical substances
>Color of the spore print (place the mushroom cap face down on a piece of paper and cover it with a bowl overnight, it will leave spores in a pattern on the paper below)

>>2824329 (OP)
I forage for medicinal stuff /out/side my FLA pad.
>pic related is ref. oak bark I have stored from tree cutting
Could I still make good tea/antiseptic from it even if it has some light mold on it and just scrape most of it off?

>>2825002
Looks like (edible/gourmet) Cantharellus cibarius but you need to check the gills under the cap to be sure. Also looks like it has some worms. Split it to check for worms. More will pop up soon in the same spot

>>2824329 (OP)
yes, i recently discovered some highbush blueberries at my grandparents' beach house. i've also used rowanberries from a mtn in NH, wintergreen, pine shoot tea, various mushrooms found on trail like lion's mane (there are no poisonous hericiums), etc. dunno what happened to the other foraging thread but i have some sassafras trees to harvest and was gonna start packing some small foldable root bag cloth planters and a hori knife when /out/

>>2824397
based, i've found that walking around with inaturalist seek open makes me more curious about all things i encounter. i actually rely on it to identify invasives in my yard to remove. while keeping things like milkweeds and erigerons that are gr8 native pollinators

>>2825383
i live an hour south of boston with a direct train to south station. was considering doing the woronco trail at pawtuckaway later this month maybe