View Full Version : Favorite Edibles for Northbounders
I was just wondering what everyone's favorite edible plants and insects are along the AT if you wanted to go a little "Man vs Wild" on the trail.
If possible, list plant/insect - region and month/season - how it's consumed (spice, tea, raw/cooked) and any other handy info.
Of course a southern boy myself, I look for ramps (leeks for you carpetbaggers;)) and morel mushrooms in the spring. Ramps are very common in spring at higher altitudes. For morels, temperatures need to climb into the sixties during the day and are no colder than the forties at night. A day or so after a good rain is when I have found it to be the best. You should look in stream and river beds and around fallen timber.
Grasshoppers can be fun too. Pinch the head and you can pull out the intestines. You can eat it raw but they can be known to carry worms so best fry those guys.
Happy Hunting!
*Disclaimer: Identify for certain what you are putting in your body
if you wanted to go a little "Man vs Wild" on the trail.
I think you mean Survivorman.
Going 'Man vs Wild' on the trail means you're extracting water from feces, leaping off of jagged rock faces with uncertainty and jumping into the nearest river for no reason whatsoever.
WritinginCT
01-31-2009, 19:08
Okay you had me at the plants - but lost me at the grasshopper intestines :eek:
fiddlehead
01-31-2009, 20:17
I think you'll find that ramps will be one of the few edible plants that NOBO eat.
If it was SOBO'ers, i'd say fiddleheads.
But, ramps are not as prevalant as they once were near the trail from what i understand and have seen (haven't hiked GA for 7 years now)
Part of this problem is perhaps from overeating them by hikers. It is probably best to leave them alone unless you go far off trail to find them. That way, people can observe and learn without rendering them obsolete close to the trail.
As for the insects, i never ate any on the trail but buy them (fried) now that i live in a country where you see them for sale almost everyday. I like fried maggots but my wife prefers beetles.
TrippinBTM
01-31-2009, 20:56
I think you mean Survivorman.
Going 'Man vs Wild' on the trail means you're extracting water from feces, leaping off of jagged rock faces with uncertainty and jumping into the nearest river for no reason whatsoever.
man that guy bugs me. I miss Les.
Anyways, this is an easy one. The best were the wineberries we had at the Monkery. Er, that was our name for the monestary just north of the Hudson River. They were so freakin good. But that was the only time we found them. I guess that was early June.
But as for abundance, the blueberries were the best, especially in PA. There were mullberries, black berries and boysen berries too. I try to remember PA for the berries, not the rocks. Blueberries lasted on into Maine, but the were small and kinda poor up there. Not sure if it was because of the season being over for them, or the bad weather New England got; but they were better in PA, NJ, and NY, June-July.
Also, at Standing Bear Farm, someone gave us morels, which were awesome.
But I don't know tons of wild edibles, and didn't go out of my way for any.
Cool AT Breeze
01-31-2009, 21:23
I cought and ate a crawdad in the spring just south of Iron Mt. shelter.
Nicksaari
01-31-2009, 21:24
...and carrying a film crew with you. bear grylis is a douche
Nicksaari
01-31-2009, 21:25
blueberries, man. and all the places along SNP to get milkshakes at 7 bucks a pop
not a food, but i love chewing sourwood leaves
I don't know, SurvivorMan seems a bit squeamish to me. Perhaps its the Canuck in him;). I have nil intentions on drinking my own pee on the trial like bear, but I wanna get medieval on that...anyways. Not a big proponent of hording anything along the trial, just wanting to get back to nature a bit between noodles. (http://knoxnews.com/photos/2008/apr/03/23997/)
Blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, chanterelle mushrooms, trout, perch, bass, crawdads, apples
Lots of mice around the shelters. Good eatin but takes several to make a mess. My favorite way to fix them is battered in pancake mix and deep fried in your pot with olive oil over an open fire. Must have the oil very hot so it will boil when you drop them in. There are two types of mice. One is the field mouse. It more grey in color and not nearly as large as the house mouse which inhabit the shelters. The house mouse is the one you want. Lots of ideas on WB as how to catch them. Nothing like a good old fashion trap baited with peanut butter which is in good supply on the trail.
Those frogs in the springs are also good but hard to sneak upon and catch. Best done at night with a light. Eat only the legs. Make a gig from cane along the streams in some places. Skin and fry. These are not the large bull frogs which are sold comercially but just as tasty.
You can eat anything that walks, crawls, slithers or flys. But beware, Your fellow hikers will frown on you for harming the wildlife. And yes, even a mouse is wildlife.
Happy hiking and please eat out of the supermarkets!!! That's what I did.:sun
I'll bet few here have ever eaten hackberries. They are unlike anything most people have ever eaten, but they are interesting. Unfortunately, they are more seed than flesh so aren't of much food value. Try one or two when you get the opportunity. Like cherries, they are called by botanists drupes and are brown, sometimes almost black, when ripe.
I like serviceberries better than blueberries, but you'd be hard pressed to get any before birds eat them.
I like teaberries too also known as checkerberries.
sticks&stones
01-31-2009, 23:33
wild chives on the north side of moxie bald
Blissful
01-31-2009, 23:39
Yes, enjoyed lots of great berries in New England. Raspberries, blackberries. And of course, blueberries in Maine.
Dried fruits can be added to hot cereal or trail mixes. Someone put dried Michigan tart cherries in my steel-cut oats this morning. They were wonderful. Dried wild blueberries and cranberries are readily sourced.
I'd dry serviceberries and blueberries for later use if I could produce enough.
Some time ago, there was once a thread that was all about ramps. Contributors Googled until the sun when down and when it came up again the next day, they were still posting all kinds of interesting facts about range, preparation and propagation.
One interesting fact discovered was that you won't find ramps on the A.T. in Georgia unless you discover an unknown population.
dovecote
02-01-2009, 00:44
Along the trail in West Virginia, morels are prevalent in mid to late April. Pawpaws and Chestnuts can be found around mid September into early October.
wildwood wanderer
02-01-2009, 12:46
hickory nuts,beechnuts,chestnuts,black walnuts
The best thing to do is get a book about edible wild plants
for the eastern USA
puddingboy
02-01-2009, 18:41
If your looking for morels try to find dying elm trees also watercress is delicious.
Blackberries in Pa are everywhere in the summer, especially on the edges of fields and around powerlines, and we started seeing ripe blueberries in PA at the end of June and they continued all the way to the end. This year, New England had an especially rainy summer, so the blueberries in Maine were plump and huge. There were a lot around the ponds. I didn't see any Morrells in the south in the spring, but others collected many. There were quite a lot of chives around in the south, especially in fields.
YoungMoose
02-05-2009, 14:40
I think you mean Survivorman.
Going 'Man vs Wild' on the trail means you're extracting water from feces, leaping off of jagged rock faces with uncertainty and jumping into the nearest river for no reason whatsoever. also with man vs wild go to a hotel everynight you are on the trail. :p
Thank you. :rolleyes:
Tea is good too, I like sassafras.
Wise Old Owl
02-14-2009, 13:48
...and carrying a film crew with you. bear grylis is a douche
Damn, Theres my next Bumper Sticker!
Strategic
02-14-2009, 19:32
You might also consult that ancient tome of "wild foods" gathering: Stalking the Wild Asparagus by the poster-boy for wild foods himself, Euell Gibbons. It's a particularly good book for this, as are his Stalking the Good Life and Stalking the Healthful Herbs, because they're largely about PA.
I could write a book about what edible wild and introduced plants R along the AT corridor. There R plenty of horticultural or survivalist books available that can explain it much better than space allows here. If U decide to forage along the AT U have to show some constraint because some of the plant species R in decline or rare for this exact reason - over harvesting and loss of habitat directly and indirectly attributed to humans. When deciding to forage do it well away from the AT path and, again, show some thought about sustainability and restraint! U R not the only one out there that might want to forage or withold the beauty!
hopefulhiker
02-14-2009, 21:47
I ate ramps, blueberries, blackberries, raw corn on the cob, wild cranberries, some kind of red berries(not rasberries) in PA..
red berries (not rasberries) in PA.
If they looked similar to raspberries, they may have been wineberries (http://www.nps.gov/plants/ALIEN/fact/ruph1.htm) (Rubus phoenicolasius Maxim), an invasive, introduced AYCE species.
When deciding to forage do it well away from the AT path and, again, show some thought about sustainability and restraint! U R not the only one out there that might want to forage or withhold the beauty!
Is this another farwood argument of the kind we saw recently concerning gathering firewood near shelters? I'm not seeing the point of encouraging berrying away from the A.T. Aren't we to keep to the trodden path to concentrate our impacts there?:-? Please explain.
Is this another farwood argument of the kind we saw recently concerning gathering firewood near shelters? I'm not seeing the point of encouraging berrying away from the A.T. Aren't we to keep to the trodden path to concentrate our impacts there?:-? Please explain.
I didn't view anything about firewood gathering. But, since U mention it, have U ever come across a downtrodden campsite where trees have been hacked down, branches snapped off indiscriminately, fresh jagged tree stumps in abundance as the result of firewood gathering? Have U also come across a campsite that is not in that condition? Which sites do U prefer to camp at? Why is it that Leave No Trace principles are printed in so many hiking related materials? Why is it that many areas, including many high use National Park campgrounds, discourage or ban firewood gathering?
Where I was headed with my response is that we don't live in a bubble. What one does affects others. I think these are good thoughts to have and put into practice, but in areas experiencing an ever increasingly higher use, like the AT corridor, they might be critcal so that everyone can enjoy the outdoors in years to come. It is not just about one person acting alone. It is more about the collective impact that humans can have and that each one of us adds to that collective. We are each responsible in impacting what others experience.
These are just some general ideas, but to answer your question more directly, no I wasn't specifically referring to picking berries away from the AT path. IMO, and it's just that, an opinion, is that there R plenty enough berries of many kinds close to the trail that will fill the needs and wants of the current number of AT hikers that may wish to pick some. Though, I have seen areas near or on trails that have been trampled, probably exclusively, by hikers in their quest for edibles. I've gone down some sections of popular trails and have seen the thimbleberries or blueberries picked clean by humans. In SOME areas where large populations of ramps used to exist or were more frequently encountered they now are either absent or in limited supply because humans have overharvested them. Brook lettuce(Saxifraga species) which used to be found in many more waterways and largely be sustainably harvested by many Appalacians is not found to the extent it once was because a contributing factor is overharvesting by humans. While none of these species are currently endangered(some of them flourish in some areas), I would like to see steps taken, like a different mindset be installed with a vision towards sustainabilty and conservation, BEFORE humans contribute to a decline.
U bring up a good pt. about staying on the trodden path. This makes a lot of sense in very fragile easily impacted high use areas that can be irreversibly damaged or it would take a long time for an area to recover like in alpine environments in the Whites. With respect to foraging off trail, which I think should be done when collecting most species of edibles in order to spread out the human impact, it should be done in a way to limit the human impact by not creating paths. In other words, don't create a trodden path when, and if, U forage.
Your post is long on words, but short on a take-away message. I'm still not at all clear about what specific actions with respect to foraging you recommend and how they relate to LNT principles. In fact, you appear to contradict yourself.
I'm sure you understand there's a big difference between picking berries and digging ramps. They're two different kinds of plants which require two different approaches to conserve the resource. Picking berries involves harvesting the fruit and the seeds they contain. Afterwards, the plant remains to produce more. If hikers don't eat them, birds or other wildlife will likely eat them and disperse their seeds.
Digging ramps involves destroying plants and if done indiscrimantly destroys entire patches or populations. It's important how one goes about harvesting them in order to ensure a viable population remains, but if we are to get into a discussion about what's sustainable over time, we must go much further than we have and this information is likely best obtained from other sources.
Incidently, there's a WhiteBlaze thread about ramps which includes quite a few links, many of which may still be good.
Emerald, U were in on this thread before me and from what I see of your posts U were mainly naming types of berries that U like to forage for, but U also briefly make mention of cherries(drupes) and ramps. My first post didn't occur until #28 and it was made in regard to foraging in general and not about foraging for any specific species and it was not specifically aimed at anything U previous said. Yes, there is a big difference in digging for ramps and picking berries. BTW, not everyone in Appalacia harvests ramps by digging them up. Some peoples in the area have learned to harvest them by cutting the tops off so the plants are not always killed or they remove every other or every third plant. Similar sustainabilty practices have been adopted by some people of Appalacia when harvesting Brook lettuce, ginseng, and ginger. The whole plant doesn't need to be uprotted or killed in order to harvest parts of it.
Maybe, my second post, #32, can be seen as being long winded, but that was because I put in my 2 cents about firewood gathering and sustainability. Sure, if we R going to discuss sustainability we can, and need, to go further. It's a complex issue on many different levels.
I'll state my opinion again. The take away message that I was attempting to relate is: 1)that we individually impact what others can experience. Thinking and acting like this when foraging might be helpful. IMO, it's not a bad idea to act this way in many endeavors in life. I tend to have a world view. 2)Foraging away from the AT tread spreads out the human impact. It tends to lessen the concentration of humans impacting a specific area(on and immediately adjacent to the AT tread) to forage. Of course, eventually there may simply be so many humans putting pressure on a resource that a resource can't keep up with the demands placed upon it.
I think U and I want the same thing - To be able to hike a trail, pick some berries, ramps, etc., possibly light a fire, and respect the resource by not indiscriminately destroying it. That is what I'm advocating!
Cut the ramps at the base, leave the roots. As long as folks don't pull them out of the ground they should return.
Much better post and I have little doubt you and I can agree on some things!:) However, I don't buy into walking past dry firewood near shelters any more than ripe blueberries by the A.T. to leave some for someone else who may or may not use them before they deteriorate beyond the optimal point of their usefulness.
Blueberries should be picked and eaten at the height of ripeness just as properly seasoned firewood should be burned, but that doesn't mean we should consume more than necessary simply because it's there.
When the nearest resources are consumed, then an incentive exists to travel farther, but it's contrary to human nature for people to do otherwise and we should not expect them to do otherwise. If the point of both shelters and trails is to concentrate impacts, we are undermining the purpose of both when we advise against their use.
Your rational leads to a much larger area being impacted and consumers rather than resource managers making decisions about which places can sustain those impacts best. Under such circumstances, it is entirely possible non-target resources will be impacted unbeknownst to consumers who thought themselves to be doing the right thing because they lacked the requisite knowledge to make those decisions.
Cut the ramps at the base, leave the roots. As long as folks don't pull them out of the ground they should return.
Says who? We saw many such posts in the ramps thread which were more guessing and wishful thinking than plant science. What we need at this time is a link such as those I listed in the ramps thread which discusses the issues involved and the need for developing sustainable methods of producing ramps.
It's difficult to attempt a discussion about sustainable foraging of wild edibles as opposed to simply listing plants which are quite different from one another in many ways.
I'll wrap this up here, because I think I'm getting a bit off topic, but I do think what I'm about to say is relevant to what's being discussed here - foraging on the AT.
I will not comment anymore than what I already have about gathering firewood because I didn't view any such thread.
Although, I offered some ideas which I believe have benefits I never thought they were perfect, right for all situations, or shouldn't be amended. There R many thoughts and approaches on sustainable harvesting practices and reducing human impact. In my previous post I offered some practices that I've seen people take along the AT with regard to harvesting specific plants that I think make sense. I, just like most people on WB, only offer their opinions. That is what I've done.
As far as humans consuming all the resources in one area and then moving on, yes, it has happened quite frequently in human history. Whether it's human nature or human habit or some combination I think that's up for debate. However, I do know of one animal that acts this way repeatedly - the locust. Swarms of locusts will devour everything in their paths, without considering the consequences of their actions on other members of their species, other species, both flora and fauna, and the environment as a whole and then move on to the next area to indiscriminately and wastefully consume everything there. My core belief, since I made my first post on this thread, is that humans don't have to behave like locusts. We can act individually and collectively to be better stewards of the planet and maybe, in the process, will treat each other better. My posts on this thread have been made with the intention to share that belief with others.
I'm making my last post to this thread too. Use of the A.T. and the resource base upon which it depends in a manner which degrades it to the point it no longer provides the experience sought by A.T. enthusiasts is clearly something to be avoided. Where and when this occurs, it often takes place slowly over time and may not be obvious especially to casual observers until it reaches a point it requires a major effort to fix if the damage can be reversed at all.
Wild collecting of fruit, edible, medicinal or ornamental native plants, their parts or propagules can and does impact the ability of those native plant populations to maintain themselves over time often in ways which are not apparent to casual visitors who are not familiar with the species or populations involved and regulations which may exist to protect them.
Picking a few wild strawberries, blueberries, raspberries or blackberries along the A.T. for one's own immediate use is not likely to cause irreparable harm. Foraging which goes beyond gathering fruit in the manner just described requires a deeper understanding of the target plant(s) and warrants looking into what regulations may apply which do vary from one place to another.
Maybe we should resume listing plants and save the type of discussion Dogwood and I have had for another time and another thread. It might be a good one, but it would take more than a small amount of time and effort to do well and should involve conservation biologists and other professional resource managers to help guide it.
Nearly Normal
02-16-2009, 10:18
I ate ramps, blueberries, blackberries, raw corn on the cob, wild cranberries, some kind of red berries(not rasberries) in PA..
Where did you get the corn?
Where did you get the corn?
I know I said I was done, but you come across like one of those people who thinks beef comes from the supermarket. Where the devil do you think it came from?:rolleyes:
Waterfall
02-16-2009, 13:26
Stinging nettles. When you boil/steam them, the "sting" goes away. They taste kind of like spinach. We always collect and eat them on spring hikes in the southern Appalachians.
How do you identify stinging nettles? Do you ordinarily discover them only after walking through them in your hiking shorts?
sloopjonboswell
02-17-2009, 03:11
clover is edible but very bitter. treat clover like you might eggplant and soak it in salt water. makes a great salad if you happen to have some ranch dressing.
Nearly Normal
02-19-2009, 12:41
I know I said I was done, but you come across like one of those people who thinks beef comes from the supermarket.
Nope.
I keep a big enough garden to supply alot through the year.
I believe to subject was collecting stuff to eat along the trail.
Corn doesn't grow wild along the trail and collecting it would imply visiting someones cornfield.
jtgraham
03-28-2010, 20:49
Chicken mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, Hen of the woods mushroom, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries.
Some time ago, we created a thread that was all about ramps. Contributors Googled until the sun when down and when it came up again the next day, we were still posting all kinds of interesting facts about range, preparation and propagation.
One interesting fact discovered was that you won't find ramps on the A.T. in Georgia unless you discover an unknown population.
http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php?t=31133 (http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php?t=31133)
It's a long one, but a good one. I haven't re-read it to verify the links are still good.
Stinging nettles.
Several of us gathered some information on stinging nettles too.
http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php?t=42089 (http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php?t=42089)
shelterbuilder
03-29-2010, 22:31
Violets (both the leaves and the flowers) make a good salad.
Wintergreen makes a good tea, the aspirin-like compound in the wintergreen oil helps to soothe sore, tired muscles.
I recently had the opportunity to make some staghorn sumac tea (from the reddish berry clusters on the ends of the plants) - somewhat tart, but quite good.
I recently read Native Americans affected by rheumatism relied upon teaberry leaf infusions for relief. Like aspirin, it can produce or worsen tinnitus.
With re-supply stops so convenient, and leftovers available from week end warriers, why would you bother with bugs and such. Just try to remember it's not as romantic as those survival realty shows on TV. But......if you're so inclined, go for it.