Forage Fellows 🍄🌱

Crossposted from https://slrpnk.net/post/23934324

With lemm.ee's closure imminent and no replacement community for [email protected] I decided to open this community!

Welcome to [email protected]

It's the time of year to collect green walnuts for making nocino or vin de noix. Ive never done it before, but figured I should try since I have so many black walnut trees growing near me. Apparently, you should only use nuts you've picked yourself, not the immature fruit on the ground because the tree has rejected it, and it likely has pest damage.

I made a fruit picker out of a plastic bottle cut to have a notch at the top to hook around stems. What I've learned so far is that most walnut trees are either too tall to reach the nuts, even with a long pole, or they are too young to produce nuts. It seems like the best place to gather them is on the edge of fields/paths/etc, where big trees may have low branches. Standard fruit pickers will likely not work, either, because they are designed for larger fruit like apples, so they cant grip something as small as an immature walnut. Since they are not ripe, the tree also does not want to release them. I was only able to get a few to start, because I need to modify my picker to have a cutter or something like that.

Since I only gathered a few, I figured it wasn't worth doing nocino as it takes 6 months, so it did "walnut molasses" while I figure out how to modify my picker.

https://foragerchef.com/green-walnut-honey/

Hi all, as you may have heard, this instance is unfortunately shutting down at the end of the month. As far as I know, this is the only Lemmy foraging community, so I’d like to keep it going elsewhere if possible.

Does anyone know of or wish to create another foraging community?

If not, I’d be happy to make one on slrpnk.net. There used to be one but I think it was closed due to mod inactivity.

There is a patch of wild black currants off the hiking trail we walk each morning. They are starting to get some color, now to beat the birds to some of them.

Not exactly traditional foraging but I have a lot of these that grow without care in untended parts of my garden and I’ve heard they are edible. The tubers are decent size for something that isn’t a crop and I could harvest a good number pretty easily if I wanted.

However, the sources I find online that talk about their edibility don’t seem too reputable, so I’m curious if anyone has first-hand experience. Are they safe to eat in quantity? Any preparation tips?

Please share any knowledge you have!

I have Ostrich fern on the front of my house that I have been waiting years to try. I keep missing the window when they are ready so I was overjoyed when I saw my fiddlehead popping up. I chopped 9, steamed with in a pan with a little butter for 5 minutes. I plated them with just a sprinkle of flaky salt and had them for lunch today.

They were great and tasted a little like asparagus but with a more savory, earthly flavor. They were amazing and totally worth the wait. I might check tomorrow to see if I can sustainability grab a few more to have them again.

10/10 would forage again.

I don't have a lot of experience with foraging but since we have so many dandelions this seemed like an easy way to start! They're laid out on a clean sheet to dry in the sun (it'll hit them in about an hour and stay on them just about until sunset).

At least where I live anyway lol. That wondrous single week where we exclusively eat elm samaras before they all disappear. All the ones here are the invasive Siberian ones too so I don't even have to be careful or considerate about harvesting them! This whole big bowl came from a single small branch.

Dandelion are in full blossom right now. I want to dry some flowers to have dandelion tee later in the season. How do I do that? Should I lay them on news paper? I don't now how to do it.

Bonus question: Do you know if I can eat cherries tree flowers?

Thank you follow foragers!

Ahoy foragers! I know it's been a cold quiet winter, but we're standing at the base camp of a very fruitful season of foraging! I saw the other day that a morel had been spotted in Georgia, and I did some crunching of data soon to be published on my soon to be published website, and have it on good authority that next week might be our first promising window for morels!

I've never eaten one, have no idea how they taste, and am on one hell of a mission to find one this season.

For me, ramps and morels! I know we still have a couple of months, but I'm already prepping my knowledge and researching my locations.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/16647060

Candy caps (Lactatius rubidus) are fruiting abundantly on the Northern California coast right now. My family and I picked about 2 pounds today. For those unfamiliar, these mushrooms develop a strong maple flavor and odor when dried.

I’ve never had so many before, so I’m interested if anyone has made anything interesting with these. I’ve made ice cream in the past which was excellent but it might be good to mix things up a bit.

I’m particularly interested to see how they would work in more savory dishes and if anyone has eaten them fresh. Is it worth doing or do they need to be dried to be appreciated properly?

I’ve got my work cut out for me. But the timing should be perfect with thanksgiving.

View the spoiler for my guess at what I think it might be, but please first come to your own conclusion before looking at mine — I don't want to bias your guess.

They were found in mid-november in the Salish Coast region of Cascadia. They were growing out of woodchips composed of a mixture of western hemlock (majority), and western red cedar.

Side view of one full mature specimen:

A group with a sample of the substrate (the cap appears to be umbonate):

A closeup side view, and internal view of the stem (it appears to be hollow):

Cross section of the gills — they appear to be adnate, or sub-decurrent:

Underside of view of the gills:

Spore print (first on white background (the split is due to two halves), second on a black background):

Examples specimens once dried:

Examples of the colony, and the location/substrate in which it was growing:

Cross-posts:

• https://sh.itjust.works/post/28348065
• https://sh.itjust.works/post/28348063
• https://sh.itjust.works/post/28491127

My first time finding lobster mushrooms! A nice patch of them was on a path I walk several times a week. I picked the biggest ones and left some smaller ones that are still growing. I plan on checking back in a couple days.

I learned today that lobster mushrooms are actually a parasitic fungus!

Anyone have any recipe suggestions?

I recently found out that Screwbean Mesquite is ground into meal and flour and used in baking. As a kid we would chew on Mesquite Beans, but we never messed with these.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19329231

We’ve seen a lot of media chatter about these AI generated foraging books and unfortunately I think the danger is real. Be careful what information you absorb and make sure it is from a reputable source.

Although, to be completely fair, I’ve seen plenty of wrong or misleading information from books authored by humans as well.

The USDA's plant database shows something like 50-ish native viola species in Pennsylvania, where I live. As far as I can tell, they're all more or less edible, but what about the flavor? Are there any especially choice species that really stand out? Internet sleuthing doesn't seem to turn up much of anything. So far, I'm getting the vague sense that purple ones generally taste better than yellow or white ones, and that short species might be sweeter than tall species.

This seems like the sort of thing that somebody somewhere must have figured out by now, since violet used to be a pretty popular flavor. The classic liqueur Creme Yvette is very specifically flavored with these obscure Italian Parma violets, which implies that they must taste somehow unique. So what about the rest of them?

This is a little off the beaten track as far as usual foraging posts go, but I had a question. Has anyone tried spinning Eastern Tent Caterpillar webs into a usable thread/yarn? I'm definitely not one of those people who hates them and wants them gone; they're native here and relatively harmless, despite what naysayers would have you believe. However, they sure do make a ton of webs! I'm sure they could probably stand to part with a little here or there right? Like, after they're done with them?

Not sure if it would work, but if it is spinnable, seems like it might be a convenient local source for an ahimsa silk alternative.