I found this question on NaNoWriMo and had to answer it:
Thanks!
———--Dev
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Time of the year changes what’s growing, as does the place where your forest is. I live in an old growth pine forest in Maine, and quite reguarly eat many of the wild plantys that grow there, so I can tell you about those.
In the Maine north woods:
May – June = Strawberries (only in open grassy glades found within the forest as they need full sun to grow)
May – July = Raspberries
June – August = Blackberries and Elderberries
August – September = Blueberries and Bilberries
September – October = Apples, Grapes, Choke Cherries, and Plums
All of the above mentioned fruits are quite bountiful and grow wild in the Maine woods, and can be found with great ease, exept for Plums which are not very often found in the wild. It should be notited though that wild apples are very small and very sour (like sour pickles), and choke cherries, if you eat too many of them, leave your mouth puckered and dry with a bitter after taste that you can’t wash out.
Wild Orange Daylilies are found near most small streams and swampy sections of woods in Maine… The flower petals are eaten and taste just like loose-leaf lettuce; they bloom from June – September.
In swampy, peaty, and boggy areas you’ll find large bounties of Marsh-Marigolds. The leaves resemble water lilies, but the blossoms look like yellow buttercups. Uncooked they are toxic, however, if you boil the leaves, drain the water, boil the leaves again, drain the water again, and than rinse the cooked leaves, you can eat them. Boiling removes the toxins. They taste like bitter-flavored spinach. The blossoms are used to identify them from water-lilies, but they only blossom in March and April just after the snow starts to melt. The leaves can be found from March – November.
From March – May, you can find fiddleheads, but be warned… if you can’t tell a fiddlehead fern from other fern types, you shouldn’t go picking them, as some types of ferns are toxic. Fiddleheads are very rare, and sell for $5 – $8 per pound in local stores, who gerenaly aren’t able to get a hold of more and ten pound a year to sell. They grew in swampy or boggy areas.
In some places you can find wild onion or chives… these are the same are what you would buy in the store.
Oak trees are plentiful, meaning acorns are redily available, but be warned, they taste terrible, and even the most hungery man finds himself unwilling to eat them.
Chestnut trees, and thus chestnuts, are not common in Maine, but when you find one, they are a store load of nutmeats, with branches heavily weighed down with thousands of chestnuts.
If you are in the Pine Forests on the cold salt spraied rocky coast of Maine, you well find wild roses in an overwhelming abundance. In July – September they are in bloom… single petaled in fushcia or white and very small, with hundreds of blossoms on each bush. You can eat the petals. From September – February you can eat the rose-hips (seed heads which look like bright red berries), these are very high in vitamin C and well do wonders for any hikers with a cold or flue. You can also boil the rose hips and drink the water as tea.
Pepermint, Spearamint, Wintergreen , and LemonBalm, all grow in the wild, often gathered in small clumps around the roots of pine trees. The leaves of all of these plants are used for making various mint teas.
Peppermint and Spearamint are both very thorthy plants though, both growing burrs on them, so care should be taken that you only pick the leaves and avoid touching the thorned seed heads. They are considered weeds by farmers and often burned. They grew to 6 feet tall in full sun light, but only 2 feet in the shade of the forest.
Wintergreen (called CheckerBerries by locals) grows tiny red berries that are available year-round, but only have one berry per plant. These berries are used to make Menthol for candy and cough drops, and are very odd tasting beries… they taste just like green-mint “tic-tac” candy or mint lifesavers or Hall’s Menthol coughdrops.
A note about swampy and boggy areas in Maine woods: unless you live near the swamp and know the swamp very well, you should never attempt to walk across a swamp, no matter how shallow it apears. Most swamps in Maine woods have quicksand patches in them, and they look no differant than plain areas of swamp. It is very foolish to enter into a swamp in the woods: briney water looks shallow, but can be actually several feet deep. The black color of the water acts like a mirror and makes the water appear only a few inches deep. Also, peat moss floats below the surface, but above the sandbed, also causes the water to look more shallow than it really is.
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Copper Cockeral
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