What are you harvesting/foraging/found?

[Martin Mikulcik]

I'll start

I collected desiccated black cherries off the forest floor January 1

They taste like dates.

Also, multiflora rose hips which are quite tasty, even though they're so tiny

Before that American persimmon in December, black walnuts can still be found, and Osage orange balls

I dug up a big Greenbriar hoping it would have starchy tubers under it like the Texas variety, no luck

And i transplanted wild ribes missouriense (gooseberries) into the sun hoping they'll make fruit. They're in such deep shade I've never seen a fruit

 

[tomkat]

What in the world are you doing with those Horse Apples? Surely they're not edible?

 

[Martin Mikulcik]

What in the world are you doing with those Horse Apples? Surely they're not edible?

The seeds are edible and I'm experimenting with them, but mostly just collecting the seeds to sell to peope who want to plant them

 

[Meadowlark]

I've tried several times to start the osage orange from seed...but they never germinate. Going to try again this spring.

Those trees were at one time common here...but I see very few the last few years. I have only one on this place and would like to have more.

 

[Martin Mikulcik]

Today i picked more rosehips. Flavor is blue raspberry. Please dont cultivate multiflora, its a noxious weed. Rosa rugosa makes way bigger hips anyway

I also found chickweed which is much better in January than the summer, vitamin deficiency and all.

And indian currant, symphoricarpos orbiculatus, which tastes like a bitter non sour green blueberry, not a bad thing to nibble on in the woods but nothing to carry home.

 

[roadrunner]

Chickweed is one of my favorite things to forage. Down here in Florida, it's not year around, it's gone by mid-Spring, but I can imagine that it's not as good in the Summer in those places it grows year-around.

 

[Martin Mikulcik]

The mountain mint is up. I've never tried it before, but it's actually very good, a lot like peppermint or chocolate mint but it's in a different genus

And these juniper berries taste a lot like hops, much closer than others. They would make a good beer but i think I'll leave them and see if they make mature seed

Oh and osage orange seeds are pretty darn good, like sunflowers but a little tougher and a lot nuttier. Way better than giant ragweed