Foraging Walk for Beginners in Santa Cruz, California
Foraging Walk for Beginners in Santa Cruz, California
Food and medicine is growing freely and abundantly all around us in California. In this foraging walk, I take you through a park in Santa Cruz, California, to introduce you to some of the common plants to forage. Many of these are plants that Californians know by sight, but have never realized are food and medicine. I also share key concepts to support you on your foraging journey and encouragement for critical thinking and reconnecting with Earth. This includes the safety and sustainability of foraging.
Filmed on June 3, 2026, at Lighthouse Field State Beach in Santa Cruz, California, on Day 236 of my year of foraging 100 percent of my food and medicine.
Transcript: The following is a transcription of Foraging for Beginners: Santa Cruz, California.
Introduction to Foraging Walk
These are plants that can truly change your life. The number one rule of foraging is you only eat a plant if you’re 100 percent sure of proper identification and you know that it is edible.
Welcome, Dear Friends, to this plant walk here in Santa Cruz. Thank you for having me here. It’s a joy to connect with you all. [applause] One of the key aspects of foraging is building community around foraging and making more friends who want to do this as well. So, what we’re going to do is we’re going to go around in a circle and just share our name, so that way we get to see each other, connect with each other, and then we can connect more afterwards in the community time. [Participants say their names]
Right now, I’m immersed in a year of foraging 100 percent of my food and medicine, down to the salt, the oil, the spices, the fat, the calories, the proteins, the fruits, you name it. This is my pantry right here that shows many of the different foods that I’m eating. So, my objective today is to introduce you to the plants that are growing freely and abundantly all around us, many of which we’ve walked past [that] we might even know, but have never realized that it’s food and medicine or how to work with that. This is a … very much a foraging walk for beginners. How many of you would consider yourself a beginner forager? [hands up] Alright. So, we’re in the right place. I’m going to share with you some of the, well, how to identify these plants — how to know that this is the plant that you want to harvest. One note on that though is that I’m not a plant identification teacher. I’m an introducer. I’m going to introduce you to many of my friends, the plants, so that you know that they’re here and you can come back. I’m also going to introduce you to these books, which are California foraging books that will help you with the more detailed identification. A lot of the plants, though, that I’m going to share with you today are plants that once you see them, you know them. You don’t need to be able to describe exactly how to identify them to know that this is wild radish, for example. I’m also going to talk about the sustainability of foraging. I would imagine just about every one of us here wants to harvest in a way where we’re doing no unnecessary harm to the plants, to the animals that share this space and to our fellow humans that we share this space with. This is, in a sense, about taking. Like, we are here to harvest food and take it with us. But, we are looking to harvest in a way where we are not only neutral, but where our lives and our interactions with these plants actually enriches this space. Also safely. Of course, we all want to walk away from here without a stomachache or without dying. Many of you probably follow Alexis Nicole Nelson on social media. She goes by ‘blackforager,’ She ends every video by saying, “Happy foraging. Don’t die.” And, I think that the fact that she has, like 4 1/2 million followers probably means that a lot of people think they’ll die if they’re going to forage. So, I will share with you the basics of foraging safely. And then, with that, if I’m fully transparent and honest, which is a practice of mine, I am, yes, here to teach you about the food and medicine, but really, for me, the plants are a gateway. They’re a gateway into really rethinking our relationship with the Earth, into really rethinking a lot of the outdated societal norms and structures that no longer serve the Earth, the plants and animals, ourselves or our greater humanity. I actually would say I am here to somewhat radicalize you. You know, [to] really, really rethink the world in which we live in is a big focus of mine. So that’s critical thought. Foraging is about critical thought. Alright. Who’s excited to learn some foods and medicines? Wonderful! Let’s walk right over here to start.
Who knows what plant we’re going to talk about? Or what do you think? Mustard and radish. That is correct. I’m so glad to start with mustard and radish because mustard is my number one food to forage in southern and central California, really throughout California, and wild radish is in my Top Ten. These are plants that can truly change your life. I often eat about a pound of wild mustard or wild radish per day. So, if you’re looking to substantially break free from the grocery store, or even the farmer’s market, and harvest the food and medicine that’s growing freely and abundantly, these are wonderful plants to start with.
Wild Mustard and on “Invasives”
Hirschfeldia incana
I’m going to start with this little bunch. I have just arrived in Santa Cruz, and I am not certain of which mustard this is. Are there any foragers here who have experience with this that would say which mustard this is? Well, the good news is, you don’t need to know because they’re all edible. Mustard is one of the safest families that you can work with. There are no plants in the mustard family that can kill you. Actually, there’s no plant that can kill you. Because you are the one who puts it in your mouth. You kill yourself if you do that. There are some minorly toxic plants in the mustard family, but there’s none where if you make a mistake, it’s going to result in anything major. Mustard is one of the most commonly foraged plants around the world. What I love about mustard especially is that this is a plant that’s considered invasive. So, it’s a great plant to start with because when we harvest this plant, we’re actually doing an ecosystem service. A lot of people out there will say, “You shouldn’t forage. There’s already not enough for the animals, so just buy your food from the grocery store.” But, with this plant, every time we’re harvesting this, we can actually be doing an ecosystem service.
One note about this term called ‘invasive.’ I don’t call plants ‘invasive.’ Because when we do that, we really label the plant, we really ‘other’ the plant. We call this, like, a ‘bad plant.’ But most plants that are considered invasive … they are that way because human beings took them from their ecosystem and introduced them to this ecosystem. And then here, they’re growing out of balance with the native plants. So, rather than spraying them with pesticides and hate, we can love them and we can eat them and we can be a part of the solution through harvesting them.
How DO you harvest this? There are numerous ways to eat mustard. Right now, we are beyond, like, the really desirable mustard stage. The best time to harvest wild mustard is going to be in the spring when they’re more tender. But, you can, indeed, eat it at any time. Right now, the most ideal way to eat this is just to pick these flowers. Take these flowers and you can put them directly into your mouth and eat them just like that. That’s a nice trailside nibble. That’s a nice snack. You can harvest more of them, add them to salads, and eat them fresh like that. You could saute vegetables and rice and then sprinkle these raw ones on there. Or, you can cook them just like you would broccoli. You can steam it. You can boil it. You can add it into your soups and stews. Really, you can eat this any way in which you would like to eat it. There’s no wrong way to eat it. I would say my favorite way is to saute it in olive oil or any cooking fat. That’s what really enriches it. And to add some vinegar or some lemon and some salt. The other note of this is that you can eat any portion of the plant. What I do is anywhere where the stems break off that are tender, I harvest that whole portion. In the springtime, and even now some, you can get nice stems that you can harvest the whole nice, bendy stem, and you can cook that like you would, like, broccoli rabe or broccolini, or something like that. And that’s a way where you can, you know, get to the point where you’re harvesting a pound of it per day. It’s much easier that way. I’m going to pull this one up actually. You can eat the leaves as well. What I’m generally doing is I’m harvesting them when they’re nice and vibrant green. They’re more young and tender rather than when they’re old. They’re edible when they’re old. They’re just far more desirable when they’re in that young and tender stage. Then the other thing is the pods.
Wild Radish
Raphanus raphanistrum
So, now we’re moving on to wild radish. And, I work with wild radish and wild mustard in a very similar way. They’re very closely related. They’re in the mustard family, Brassicacaea. So, I’m going to combine them together. But the wild radish is the one where you get these nice large pods. These are the seed pods. So, with these, you can just crunch on them, fresh, just like that. You can pickle them. You can do a wild fermentation … lacto fermentation. Or you can put them in vinegar. You can saute them, cook them, add them fresh as a nice crunchy freshness on top of whatever foods you’re having. So, you can eat these in any way that you would like as well. But, the key is you want to get them when they’re crisp. So, they should snap in a nice, crisp way, like a green bean. Once they have gotten hard, while they are edible, they’re just not so desirable. And the only way that you’ll get to know that is just by experiencing … picking these, picking those, and … and sensing it out. But, the most tender ones are going to be at the tip. Those are the youngest ones. The older ones that are bigger are going to be at the bottom. This one? Yeah. Still in a great shape. So, you still have time to be harvesting these. When I was in southern California, which I just left yesterday, the radishes were so clearly radish and the mustard was so clearly mustard. This one here is very radishy, but it’s so similar to this mustard. And also, the mustards can hybridize as well. So, you can have this intermixing. So, this exact one right here … I would say it’s a radish because I … I never find mustards with these pods looking quite like this. But, I can’t say for sure. And the really good news is, you don’t need to know either. The radish, the mustard can be worked with totally interchangeably. Generally, the mustard has yellow flowers and the radish has pink, purple or white flowers, but there’s variation within that as well. I just want to show this. We were standing right next to this and this is a perfect example of a wild mustard or radish the way that you want to harvest and get a large amount of food. So, this is a nice, really bendy stalk, and there you have a substantial amount of food: the leaves, the stem, all of these buds. You can harvest these in really large quantities and you come up to pieces like this and you get a lot of food in a short period of time. So, I wanted to take the opportunity to show you that. And now we’re going to walk this way and see which plant that we meet next.
[Robin:] You can do anything if you look at the two different plants here.
Plantain
Plantago major
So, who knows who we have here? Plantain. Any other names? Plantago is another name. We have numerous species of plantain or plantago. This is a very unique one that I see in very few places outside of Santa Cruz. The sort of standard plantain is the broad leaf or the narrow leaf plantains. And, I’m not sure which species this is, but you can work with it interchangeably, just like you would with the others. And, this is a plant that in some websites is listed as [one of the] top ten most medicinal plants on Earth. And, I agree, along with about 10,000 other plants. [laughter] I don’t know where they’re coming from with that idea, but it is a wonderful … a very wonderful medicine and food. One of the easy ways to recognize this is by the seed heads that you see right here. Plantain or plantago … it has these deeply indented veins that pop out the back. And generally … let’s see if it happens with this species. Not as much. On the other two species, moreso than this one, the veins will separate from the leaf when you pull it apart. Can you see that? So, that’s a clear identifying feature of the plantain or plantago. This is one of the most common plants in North America. A nickname for it is ‘white man’s footprint,’ because it came over from … from Europe and spread. That probably does not associate with this species though. That’s more of the plantago major and minor. How you can work with this plant? There’s numerous different ways. You can eat this as a salad green. This is pretty nice and tender right now. You can saute it, add it in with your cooked greens. The consistency of this, or the flavor of this, is what’s called astringent. So, where the mustard is spicy and the dandelion is bitter, this is astringent. And what astringency is, it’s actually not a flavor. It’s actually an action that’s happening in your tongue where it’s basically freezing up your taste buds and giving that pucker to the … to the inside of the mouth.
“Horta” Cooked Greens
Generally, people don’t like a lot of that. And the way that you can reduce that is by cooking it. I know of it from a dish that’s called horta in Greece. It’s the taking of many different wild greens, sauteing them in an oil. It could be olive oil, it could be, you know, pig fat. It could be any fat or oil. Plus your lemon and your … or your acid like your vinegar and salt. And, by doing that, it really decreases the bitters, the spiciness, and the astringency. And that’s what allows you to eat a lot of wild vegetables. You can make salads, but there’s a lot of times in the year where salads just are not the way to go if you want to eat a lot of wild vegetables, because they have stronger flavors or they’re tougher. So, cooking is the way to go with a lot of them. And some people say, “Doesn’t cooking destroy the nutrients?” It does destroy some nutrients, but it also allows you to eat a lot more and it makes a lot of the nutrients more accessible, more bioavailable, especially when you’re adding the fat and the acid to them.
Plantago continued
Other ways that you can work with plantago besides eating the greens, you can chew up the leaves. This one has a little bit of a saltiness to it. You chew them up and then, if you’re stung by a bee, you can take that and you can put it on there and this is what is called a poultice. So, this is a simple and common herbal medicine. And a lot of herbalists say what’s happening is it’s drawing out the toxin. I don’t know the exact mechanism, but I know that if I get stung by a honeybee, and I do this, generally I swell up way less. It’s pretty fun because the majority of times that you get stung by a honeybee, you don’t have to look very far to find this medicine. It’s growing in most of our yards. I would say this particular species is the most primo for these seed heads. You can harvest these seed heads. These are actually what you find in Metamucil — psyllium husks. So, you can go to the store and buy your fiber, or you can come to the park and you can harvest it for free. So, these seed heads … you can munch on them just like that, or you can remove the seeds. You can fry these and add them to on top of a salad as something kind of crunchy. Eat them just like that and they’re a wonderful fiber. Those are the main ways that I work with plantain or plantago. That’s a little introduction to this plant that you’ll find growing in every state across the United States. So, wherever you’re traveling, you can find plantago. Questions about plantago?
[chatter]
Brambleberries
Rubus spp.
Would you like to learn about brambleberries? Brambleberries are blackberries and raspberries and wineberries and black raspberries. There’s about a dozen different species of brambleberries that I know. And, a lot of people … they don’t call it foraging. They just call it ‘eating berries.’ It’s one of the few relationships that has really not been lost, even by a lot of American … US American society. And, the reason why is because all of the brambleberries are edible. If you find what looks like a blackberry or a raspberry, but it’s orange, for example, that’s edible. Now, I want to give a little bit more to that. I said, “looks like.” It depends on how close that you’re paying attention. I’m talking about basically the equivalent of a blackberry or raspberry, which is a fruit with many fruitlets. Because there are … for example, there is a plant that some people could confuse with it in this area which is the lantana. Has that really interesting smell. It has the orange and yellow flowers. Definitely, that’s a different plant. But, if it’s growing on a cane … that’s another way that you can use it as a beginner. If it’s growing on a cane, and it has these thorns, you can eat to your heart’s content. Normally, I wouldn’t speak too long about blackberries because most of us know blackberries and it’s not the most important thing to learn. However, there’s a lot to learn about the brambleberries that can make a significant impact in your life. Not only are the fruits edible of all the brambleberries, but many of you have, maybe, made raspberry leaf tea. Have any of you had raspberry leaf tea before? It’s a pretty common herbal tea. Or you can also make tea from all of the brambleberries. So, you can make tea from blackberry leaf as well. It’s a really bitter tea. So, if you’re looking for a nice bitter for digestion, blackberry tea is really nice for that. And, it’s very, very available. You can see the quantity of tea that is available for you here. Generally, if I’m doing that, I’m going to be looking for the more young and tender leaves. So, I’m going to break off these tender growth tips, but you can make it from any of the leaves at any time. There’s just more medicine and more nutrients in it at this stage before it started to die and it has brown and holes in it. And, to make tea from this, what I do is I just bring water up to a boil, steep this in that water for anywhere from three to fifteen minutes. The longer you steep it, the more bitter that it’s going to be. Most of us are probably going to like just a few minutes and try that out to start. The flower petals are edible of all the brambleberries and they’re nice to add to ice cream and things like that. They have their own floral bitterness that I enjoy and you can add that in with your teas as well. Probably my favorite thing, which … I got myself a little bit stuck in here as far as accessing that plant right there. Would someone like to see if they could pick that plant for me? So, put your finger on there, look for the bendiest portion. It’s going to be way higher up at this stage. These tips are edible. You can take these tips and you can peel them and they have a very unique flavor unlike anything that I’ve ever experienced at a grocery store. So, I’ve removed that and now it’s a nice little juicy, I would say floral celery, but it’s it’s own little, magical creation from the earth. When you find the right patches, these can be this tall and as thick as your pinky and you can peel those and they can make a very substantial snack while you’re out and about or you can take those home and enjoy them as well. This is a blackberry stalk, correct. So, you can do that with all of the brambleberries. The leaves for tea … the fruits for eating in many different ways. These tender tips for peeling and eating, or eating just like that. That’s bitter. Or the tips peeled. Another note about brambleberries is how they grow … is they have what are … these are called canes. They’re not vines. And the job of these canes is to spread. They can grow ten feet a year, fall to the ground, and then they can root and they can spread in that way. So, often we need to be thinning these patches and we can thin them by harvesting our food at the same time.
Dock
Rumex spp.
Who knows who we have here? Dock. There’s quite a few species of dock. I would say there’s about a dozen or so that are growing across this nation. And they are variable in desirability. They’re all edible. They can all be worked with, but some are much more desirable than others. I’m going to start with the part of the plant that I eat the least of and work with the least, because it’s so visible, and this is the stage that it’s in right now. And these are the seeds. These are dock seeds right here. This is in the buckwheat family. And this produces a grain. What you’re seeing here is about 80 to 90 percent fiber. And inside of each of those is a single dock seed. What some people do … because it’s a lot of work to remove the seeds from these husks, they’ll actually take this whole portion. So, like, harvest like that. And we have all of this dock seed. Remove these little leaves. Stick this into a high-powered blender and you have dock flour. And you can add that into your baked goods just like that. If you are looking to add fiber to your diet, then this is an excellent way to do that. Most foragers … we don’t have an issue with not enough fiber. We have an issue with too much fiber. Because a lot of the foods at the grocery store have been bred for many years to … to reduce the fiber, to make them more palatable. But, that’s not the case in the … in the wild. We have to actually remove fiber. So, I’m not a huge fan of this because that’s such a high quantity of fiber to be putting through my digestive system. However, I just finally made this for the first time this year, and I’m adding it in with my acorn flour and my wild yam flour and I am enjoying it and I’m very grateful for it. What some people do though is they leave them whole like this and they make crackers and include these in the crackers and it just fluffs up the crackers. So, if you’re looking for crack … crackers that are not highly calorically dense or nutritionally dense but are nice and crackery, I think these are a wonderful ingredient for them. The other thing that you can do … this is the stage when the seeds are dry. That’s when they’re going to be ready for harvesting mature seeds. This green seed head … this is not ready yet for harvesting mature seeds. So, this is the stage you want. And, what you can do is, you can rub this. And, what I would do is, I would put this into a pillowcase and kind of dance on it to remove as much of the husk from the seed as possible. And then, what you can do … it’s called winnowing. So winnowing is using the wind, or the motion of the air to separate the lighter portion, which is this, what we call the chaff, this outer fiber, from the seed. And then what you can do … the modern way of doing it is you take one bucket and you pour the contents into another bucket in front of a fan. So the fan blows away the chaff and the seeds fall into the bucket. And that’s the way that you can get a lot of seed so that you can have just the seed and not all the fiber. You can do that with many plants in California. That was one of the key things that many Indigenous people did because a lot of Indigenous people in California have traditionally eaten a lot of the wild grains that grow here. So, winnowing is a wonderful skill to have. You can do it in a more natural way by picking a … a windy day and having just a winnowing tray or a shallow bowl and you just snap down. People think you go up, but it’s more you snap down so that the contents are in the air for a second and then they blow away that chaff. These are some decent-sized little seeds in here. You can see a few of them there. They’re an interesting pyramid-type shape being in the buckwheat family. Now you can see dock all over back here. Dock expanding back here. And in some parts of this region, you’ll see dock as one of the dominant plants in the field. So, it’s very abundant. Moving on to the leaves. This is not the stage when you’d be harvesting the leaves. So, here we have dock at a different stage. You saw dock with the big seeds like this and now here’s some dock at the younger stage. This is the stage in which I would be eating the greens. And, what i’m looking for especially are the central portions that are slimy. So, there’s some sliminess in here. These leaves are still unfurling. The leaves are kind of together in this little sheath and inside there it’s nice and slimy. Dock at this stage is incredibly bitter and generally unpalatable. Bitter can be wonderful, but this has something else going on that most people put it in their mouth and they’re just, like, they would maybe say that’s disgusting. I don’t want to use that term. What I say is just I don’t want that in my mouth … is what I experience. When you’re harvesting dock, what you’re looking for are leaves that have no red and ideally are still in the process of unfurling. And, what you’re looking for is on either side of the leaf, about a third of the way in, you’ll see that it’s kind of creased there. That’s where it’s still unfurling. So, this is what we’re looking for — pure green. There’s a tiny bit of red. Pure green and young. So, let’s give this a taste. [chews] Very pleasant. Enjoyable. It has oxalic acid or oxalates in it, which gives it a sourness. Like your oxalis or wood sorrels, that sourness comes from the oxalates or oxalic acid. Now, a note on that. Those oxalates … for some people there’s … there’s the ability that those can result in kidney stones … is a belief. So some people want to avoid taking in too many oxalates, which includes domesticated foods, like spinach, for example. The way to reduce oxalates is to cook them. So, I mostly eat my dock cooked, not raw. When the season is right, and the conditions are right, I will eat three pounds of dock in a week or so. It’s a very staple vegetable for me. If you’re concerned about oxalates, you have to decide your own relationship and experience with it. But, that’s my relationship with it. Generally, I like to boil it for a couple minutes, or just blanch it or saute’ it, working with it in different ways. There’s about maybe a dozen or so species of dock. Some have much more desirable leaves for eating than others. There’s some that produce really large leaves that stay tender for a long period of time, and there’s others that produce small leaves that are generally bitter. The other thing that I mention is you can harvest this … these nice stalks and this whole portion you can cook up as a nice vegetable. So, I’ll steam these, saute’ these, add them to soups and stews, et cetera. Lastly, the roots. The roots of dock are very bitter. You can make medicine from them. I make tea with them, a very bitter tea. I like to use maple syrup or honey to kind of decrease that bitterness, and I really enjoy that medicine. The roots are wonderful to work with for that and it’s a liver tonic and I’m also told that it is is helpful in absorption of iron and delivering iron.
Mallow
Malva spp.
This is another … I would say [of the] top ten California plants for me. Mallow … and another name? Cheeseweed. Also Malva, yeah, that’s the genus. This is a highly edible plant that you can eat in large quantities. And this is another plant where sometimes you’re going to find this in a really ideal edible stage. Other times it’s not going to be ideal. That’s the thing with foraging. You don’t need to just know the plant, but you also need to know when to harvest the plant. First of all, as far as identifying mallow, this is another one that I can’t tell you exactly how it looks. I can tell you that this looks similar to me to castor, which is a very toxic plant. They’re very clearly different, but at a distance, I have thought I’ve seen mallow before when it was castor, which makes the castor beans, which are quite toxic. But mallow is a super common what we call ‘weed,’ that you’ll find growing in front yards, backyards, schoolyards, churchyards, the scrappy lawns between the street and the sidewalk and so on. And here we have it growing in this very high up stage. Like, it’s probably what? About two … 2 1/2 feet tall here? What I’m going to harvest at this stage is these tender tips. So, it breaks off easily, just like we were talking about with the radish and the mustard. And this entire tip I will eat. So, I will eat the stalk, the stem, these leaves, the seeds when they’re green and immature, and these flowers. So, that entire portion is edible. And also, once the seeds have matured and they’ve turned into that black or really dark brown color? And they’re dry? Those are also edible as well. I don’t have any experience with them besides just nibbling on some of them, but those are more eaten like a grain. I’ll take this as an opportunity to introduce Foraging California. I would say this is my number one book for foraging in California. So use, he says, leaves raw, cooked or dried for tea. The cheeses … the reason this is called cheeseweed, is that the little seeds look like cheese wheels. Yeah, this one’s on the smaller side, but I can peel this back. And in there is this little wheel. They can be, I’d say, three or four times that size. And then. [chews] They’re really nice. If you could get, like, a whole handful of those to eat at once, I think you might find enlightenment. [laughter] It’s pretty wonderful. I haven’t done it yet. Also, the seeds cooked and eaten like rice, is how he describes it. Then, a note he says in here is, “I remember when I was still in high school trying to learn about mallow. I’d read about it in one of Ule Gibbons’ books and he implied that it grew in California. But, I was pretty certain I’d never seen it. Then one day, my friend Drew told me that he’d discovered some in Pasadena, and we biked across town to a vacant lot next to the 210 freeway. The entire lot was covered in these green mounds that were about two feet high by maybe three feet across, some rows even taller. As we approached, I realized that I’d seen the plant practically everywhere, but I didn’t know it was mallow.” So, I welcome that to be your experience as well. This really grows all over the place. The way that I like to eat it the most is to cook it. I like to steam it or saute’ it. It’s a little bit more of a tougher vegetable at times, but I like to eat it raw, too. And, what I’ve really started to like to do is take these … that stalk’s a little bit on the harder side. I like to take these stalks … [chews] okay, that’s a little on the harder side. Let me try this one. Yeah. Instant mucilaginous quality. Like okra. It’s a nice, like, throat coat. So, if you’re out and you’re eating too many, you know, sort of spicy or pokey things, mallow is a really nice one because it’s got that mucilaginous throat coat quality to it. It never gets bitter or sour or astringent. It always stays the mild mallow. Even in the heat of summer you can eat this. And if you’re looking for this mallow in the heat of summer, where do you think you’d find mallow that’s tender in the summertime?
[Students] The shade.
[Robin:] Shade. Exactly. So, if you are looking in shady areas, you’ll sometimes see mallows that are this tall, [raises arm] tender as can be. I’ve had mallows that are, like, tip of my finger to here, tips that are tender and weigh a quarter pound just from that one tip before. And then, lastly, mallow is where marshmallow comes from, but a different species of mallow. I don’t know if that species grows in North America. I wouldn’t be surprised if it does, but that’s where marshmallow comes from … from a very close relative.
Sow thistle/Dandelion/Lettuce Group
Here we have …. Does anyone know?
[Students:] Dandelion.
[Robin:] Oh, I’m glad that we’re talking about this. Because this is not dandelion. Sow thistle. Sow thistle is a great one to talk about, because so many people tell me that they see dandelion everywhere. And I’m, like, I don’t see much dandelion. So, I think what they’re seeing more often is sow thistle actually. Dandelion is only dandelion if it’s one single stalk with one single dandelion flower on it. If you see a stem that has numerous flowers that look like a dandelion growing on it, that’s not a dandelion under any circumstances. However, it’s in the group that we call the dandelion, lettuce, thistle group, which is a group of many edible plants. Does anyone know what family they’re in? This is the Asteraceae family, which is one of the largest families of plants that there are, and it’s also a very safe family to work with. The legume family and the carrot family have a lot of the most toxic plants, whereas the Asteraceae family is a very safe family to work with overall and includes the dandelions, the lettuces and the thistles, which I like to talk about as a group because you don’t need to be able to tell the difference between a sow thistle and a dandelion because you can eat both of them or work with both of them. However, if you want to work with them optimally, you want to know which is which. Because the sow thistle and the dandelion actually are quite different. This here is sow thistle. This is … actually, an ideal sow thistle for harvesting the tender leaves. The leaves in this stage are still relatively tender. It kind of looks like a little lettuce in a garden. This is in a pretty ideal state for harvesting these leaves still. So, I’m harvesting these nice intact more young leaves. But, what I do mostly with sow thistle is … this will put out these shoots that can often be really tender. They can be, you know, like this
big and that whole portion can be tender, and I’ll eat those shoots. What do you think the flavor of sow thistle is?
[Student:] Bitter.
[Robin:] Bitter! Yep. Dandelions are bitter. Sow thistles are bitter. The lettuces … the wild lettuces are bitter. If it’s sour or it’s spicy, you do not have any of these. They also generally have a milky sap. They’re not always super milky, but generally, they have a milky latex. I eat a lot of sow thistle … those stalks. And, I’ll just eat them fresh. They’re nice and bitter. For some people, that’s too much. So, there’s a few ways that you can reduce bitterness. I mentioned you can cook it, as we talked about making horta. Another thing that you can do is you can dehydrate your greens. Turn them into a green powder and then use that as a supplement in your smoothies and your soups and such. But, my favorite way of reducing bitterness is to come out and eat sow thistle every day for ten days and at the end of ten days, they’ll just be less bitter. [laughter] Because your palate will be adjusted to it. As you become adjusted to bitterness, it becomes less bitter and you actually start to crave bitterness. Anyone here crave bitterness? From plants, not from humans? A few? Okay. So, more of you will start to crave it as you start to take in more of the bitters. This will have yellow flowers that look dandelionish when it’s in that stage. This is, as I said, sow thistle … all of the thistles are edible. This is the one that is the least really pokey of the … the thistle. Like, I can take these sow thistle leaves, put them directly into my mouth. Most of the thistles … you have to remove that. You can basically cut off the leaves to eat just the center mid-vein, or on many of these, you can cut the stem, peel it and eat that like you would a celery. And you can get pretty large pieces sometimes. I’m not really a juicer, however, if I was juicing my greens, I would definitely put some of this in there. It’s nice and juicy and it would add some good medicine to any of your garden greens. So, while we’re talking about this, I’ll … I’ll mention dandelion. The entire dandelion is edible: the flower, the stems, the leaves and the roots. You can work with them in dozens of different ways. I like to just enjoy the flowers of the sow thistle as well. Just enjoy the flowers. Add them into salads. I like to dehydrate them whole and then add them into teas later, especially like in the winter. It just … I love seeing them in the cup. You can dig up the roots and you can roast them, and that’s what people call a coffee substitute. Which was [drunk] in many of the western European countries prior to coffee being there. And I love roasted dandelion root tea. I do dandelion, chicory and burdock, as three of my roots. Not dock. Dock roots are super bitter, which we’ll talk about over there, but burdock. One last thing: lettuces. A lot of the lettuces … we have the prickly lettuce here in coastal California … look pretty similar. Once you get to know them, you’ll be able to clearly tell the difference between a prickly lettuce and a sow thistle. But, if you can’t tell the difference, it’s okay. Prickly lettuce tends to be much more bitter. And, I work with the lettuce more medicinally. Some of the wild lettuces are worked with as a mild sedative. And there’s actually one that you’re not recommended to drive after taking it because it’s actually quite strong. And then also for pain, for headaches … some people work with the wild lettuce. If you are wanting to learn about the medicinal herbs of California, then this is Medicinal Herbs of California: A Field Guide to Common Healing Plants by Lanny Kaufer. He is based out of Ojai. And this is a wonderful resource to get to know. And this book will really get you connected with the many different medicinal herbs of … of California. And, if you are having that question of, like, “What’s it … what are in these things?” “What are the medicines?” Then this is a really great book to spend time with. For example, I love the … the elderberry chapter, which I saw so many elderberry today. Right now, when you’re leaving here, while you’re driving home? Keep your eyes open for these bushes full of white flowers, and then also, these dark blue berries? That’s elderberry. That’s one to get to know. That’s one of the most wonderful medicines there is and it’s growing in incredible abundance around much of California right now.
Salsify
Tragopogon spp.
This is in the same group as dandelions, thistle and lettuce. This is also something that people might think is a dandelion sometimes. This is salsify. I don’t have a lot of experience with salsify. I’ve only eaten it a handful of times and I’ve probably never had this particular species. But, what I do with salsify … it has these nice tips. You can see the milkiness. Now, milkiness doesn’t mean that there’s … there’s many plants that are milky. But that’s one identifying feature of these plants. Oh, this is the species with purple flowers. Some of them have yellow flowers. There’s numerous different species. And salsify …. [chews] Whoa! Really nice! That was sweet. I’m getting no bitterness from it whatsoever. I am going to take these home [laughter] for myself. Oh, there’s another one. This could be a native plant and I’m not seeing a lot of it. I would actually probably put this back if I could right now. I just kind of jumped there. There may be more. However, we don’t know this plant well enough for all of us to harvest it at this point. Let’s take the time to get to know this plant. Let’s pass around this one and we … everybody who wants to nibble it can nibble this to get to know it. Very nice. So that’s salsify. And, that’s all I’m going to say about salsify for right now. These have all already gone to flower, closed back up, and have developed seeds, and now are opening up. So, there you have the beautiful salsify in another stage. And, wow, that is definitely becoming one of my favorite plants on Earth. Thank you, salsify. We love you!
Legume family
This, to me, very much looks like a vetch. Vetches are in what plant family?
[Students:] Peas!
[Robin:] Yeah. The legume family. Fabaceae. And this is one of the more toxic families. So, if you come across peas or beans in the wild, never assume that they are edible. The majority of them have toxic alkaloids that can do real damage to your kidneys, to your liver. Some of them are edible, some of them have been staple foods for people around the world. But, this is a family that you have to really know. I’ve eaten numerous vetches and some are considered highly edible. Some vetches are toxic. I don’t know this vetch, so it’s not one that I would work with. I’m going to guess that it’s probably toxic because I think the majority of them are and that’s the safe bet. Of course, the number one rule of foraging is only eat a plant if you’re 100 percent sure of proper identification and you know that is edible, and especially when you’re working in the legume family or the carrot family. So, this was just a small note because we were walking past it. And while we’re on this small note, what are all these seed heads?
[Students:] Plantain.
[Robin:] Plantain. I mean, look at all this plantain. And this is … some of this is in the older stage. You can see that it has started to turn brown and gotten a little drier as well.
Closing
So, I’ll share a few remarks. If each of you just eat a little bit more radishes and mustard, then my job will be very much having done today.
Learn One Plant per Month
One plant at a time is my recommendation. You only need to know one plant in order to eat one plant. You don’t need to know all the toxic plants like poison hemlock in order to get to know one plant. If you learn one plant per month for the next year, that’s 12 plants. Imagine being able to walk out your door and have confidence to be able to harvest 12 different plants. If you do that for five years, that’s 60 plants. Just in a few months, you can go from being a Muggle to Harry Potter status in your community. Just by learning one plant per month. But, of course, it’s a lot easier to do when we do it together in community. So, I encourage you to get to know one another, share phone numbers, addresses, create a foraging group for Santa Cruz. And if you’re really looking for an immersion, this year I have three weekend-long foraging schools in Minnesota, Wisconsin and New York. So, if you’re already taking trips that way, maybe you could coordinate it at the same time for a real deep foraging immersion. All of the details are at robingreenfield.org/schedule.
This is the toilet paper plant cutting. So, for those of you who came out because you want to grow your own toilet paper, you can take a cutting of this, plant this, take the pointy side down, put two nodes in the soil and two nodes above generally. So, these two nodes below and these two nodes above, and this can turn into a toilet paper plant that can produce plenty of toilet paper for a family of five. It’s a really wonderful plant. Go to robingreenfield.org/ … Hello, hawk! Thank you for being you! robingreenfield.org/tp will tell you all the details about how to grow your own toilet paper.
These are my top foraging books for California. So, take pictures of these books. This case of books is just some of my top books of foraging as well as general rethinking the way we exist.
Food Freedom Book
Over here, I have Food Freedom. This is the story of my year of growing and foraging all my food and medicine in Florida in 2019. 2018-2019. So, if you got a lot out of tonight and you’re looking to dive deep, this book is a great resource for that. It’s the story of my year of growing and foraging all my food, a critique of the global industrial food system and an empowerment manual for liberation through food. So, the back fifth of it is all resources for growing food, for foraging, for community food sovereignty and for building community. This book says right here is not for sale. It’s an experiment in the gift economy. So we accept donations and that donation can be money. You can use the QR codes right here to donate, or you can put money into these jars … the jar right here. One hundred percent of the profits from this book are donated to Black and Indigenous-led food sovereignty initiatives, because we believe that’s one of the most powerful ways that we can heal our relationship with the Earth. So that’s where the funds go if you make a donation. Just to give you an idea, the books ended up costing us about $4 or $5 apiece. We practice complete transparency. All of the information is on our website. So, we encourage you to donate whatever works for you and that can also mean taking this knowledge, growing more food and then distributing that food to people who don’t have access to nourishing food. That is a wonderful way to utilize the information in this book. I’ll be happy to sign books. What I’m going to do now is hang out for probably a half hour or 40 minutes and sign books as well as share hugs for anybody who would like to.
1 Million Community Fruit Trees Initiative
And then lastly, right now we have an initiative to plant One Million Community Fruit and Nut Trees over the next decade through a grassroots collaborative effort of thousands of people. So, I’m not planting a million trees — we are planting a million trees. But I’m creating the system that’s designed to really facilitate it and make it a lot easier and get over a lot of the barriers. So, we are teaching people how to harvest the seeds and cuttings right in our own area to keep the costs low, grow the easiest-to-grow, most productive fruit and nut trees, then distribute them within the community. We teach people how to grow 1,000 trees in a 4′ x 8′ raised bed, or 50 trees per five-gallon bucket. So, this can be done right in a backyard or front yard very easily. And, we are looking for people to be involved in three main ways: to grow the trees. So, if you want to become a Micro-Nursery Steward; to plant the trees; and then, lastly, to help fund this. The costs of this are much lower because we’re growing the trees ourselves, and doing this through a very decentralized system. But, it takes money to grow a million trees. So, if any of you have that and would like to contribute that, we very much welcome it. Whether it’s a dollar or whether you want to drain your Roth IRA and put that into a future through growing food and medicine for everybody. Go to communityfruittrees.org to find our fundraiser. Our goal is to raise $20,000 on my tour, because that is what it takes to produce 20,000 trees this year to get this kick started. And then the next years we’ll move to 50,000 and 100,000 trees to get us to a million trees over the next decade. There’s a lot more that I could say, but I’m going to go ahead and say I love you all very much. I’m so grateful to be here with you and very happy to share hugs and looking forward to all the wonderful food and medicine that we’ll get to enjoy together. [applause] Thank you so much. And goodbye friends on the internet.
Foraging Resources
Join the foraging revolution!
California Foraging Guide
My beginner’s guide to foraging
Find a forager to learn from in your region
Read my book, Food Freedom
The 1 Million Community Fruit Trees Initiative
The Year of Foraging
