| As always, if you're new to foraging and want to give it a try, please read the first diary in the FFF series for some important information.
  
Today's first edible comes from the black locust tree. A member of the highly successful legume family, black locusts are native to the New World and grow in drier woods, meadows and along seashores throughout the U.S. and most of the Southern Canadian provinces. They have brown grey bark with vertical furrows that grow deeper with age and feather-compound leaves with between 7 and 21 smooth, oval leaflets. Where the leaf stem meets the twig, black locusts grow pairs of small, hard spines. (Above, left to right: Black Locust Leaf and Flowers, Black Locust Bark and Black Locust Pods, all by wide eyed lib)
Similar to their other beany relatives, black locusts have edible parts and poisonous parts. The bark and the leaves in particular contain a toxin that can cause acute digestive distress. In addition, many sources state that the seeds--found inside black, hairless, flat yet bumpy seedpods--are also poisonous, but Euell Gibbons used to feed them to his family. The seeds are small and labor-intensive to gather, so the risk has never seemed worth it to me.
The flowers, however, are edible and delicious. They are white, resemble pea flowers, are bilaterally symmetrical and hang from the tree in showy, deeply fragrant clusters. They're slightly sweet and taste something like flowery peanuts. They make an outstanding trail nibble but are worth collecting in quantity, since they can be frozen raw and used all year.
They have many of the same uses as wisteria flowers (covered last week), and the two plants are in fact related. Enjoy them in salads, added to soups and stirfries right at the end or stirred into pancake or muffin batter or even oatmeal. They also make a very beautiful garnish for any dish.
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 Sometimes good things come to those who wait. So it is right now for those keeping an eye on their local mulberry trees. The red mulberry tree is native, while the white mulberry is from Asia. Both colors, as well as black mulberries and pink hybrids, can now be found throughout the U.S. and Southern Canada. (right: Red Mulberry Tree by wide eyed lib)
Mulberry trees have rough, brown bark with distinct horizontal grooves or furrows. The bark is sometimes tinged an orangey-red, and the leaves are oval, alternate and lightly toothed at the edges and some of the leaves are lobed while others, often on the same tree, are not. (As an added bonus, in early Spring you can gather the still-curled early leaves and boil them for 20 minutes, discarding the water. Although I've never tried this, they're reputed to be tasty and mild.) In mid-Spring, inconspicious male and female whitish-green flower clusters about an inch long hang on short stalks. Shortly after the flowers fall off, the composite fruits begin to develop.
 Red and black mulberry leaves are rough on the top and somewhat hairy underneath while white mulberry leaves are smooth on both sides. Red and black mulberry trees are also usually taller and tend to concentrate their energy on growing upward, while white mulberry trees have a tendency to spread out. It's useful to be able to distinguish among them since all have white, unripe berries, and you'll have quite a long wait if you're waiting for white mulberries to turn red or black.
(Above: Developing Red Mulberries by wide eyed lib)
 After you've got your trees staked out, you'll need a game plan. The berries pictured above will probably take another 3 weeks to ripen. Delicious and efficient mulberry gathering requires sun on picking day and the prior two days (because rain washes out the berries' flavor), plus a tarp or old sheet. Lay the tarp or sheet under a branch particularly laden with sweet, ripe fruit, then shake the branch vigorously (or carefully jump up and down on a high branch) to dislodge the berries. The riper they are, the easier they'll fall. (Right: Unlobed Mulberry Leaf by wide eyed lib)
Mulberries make excellent preserves, pies, muffins and pancakes. They're also delicious eaten out of hand or over cereal. Although they're too perishable to keep in the fridge longer than a day or two, they can be frozen or dried. Mulberries can be used anywhere you'd use a raspberry, blackberry or blueberry, although you'll probably want to add a little lemon juice since they lack acidity.
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Two other developing fruits I'm currently keeping an eye on...
 
Wineberries (above, both photos by wide eyed lib) are just about ready to flower.
 
Common hawthorn (above, both photos by wide eyed lib) is already flowering, but watch out for those thorns! Ouch!
I'll cover both of these plants in more detail once their fruits are ripe and ready for picking.
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Finally, let's end with a few flowers from plants already covered in the series.
 
Dandelion's compound flower and seed head (left and above, both by wide eyed lib). Hard to believe that each of those little yellow "tongues" is a separate flower, isn't it? (Originally covered in this diary.)
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White and red clover flowers (above, both photos by wide eyed lib) are far more delicious than their leaves and make a great tea with many medicinal uses. (Originally covered in this diary.) According to Purple Priestess at the big orange (who was quoting from an unnamed source):
A delicate sweet and medicinal tea is made from the fresh or dried flowers, it is alterative, antiscrofulous, antispasmodic, aperient, detergent, diuretic, expectorant, sedative and tonic. Red Clover has also shown anticancer activity, poultices of the herb have been used as local applications to cancerous growths. Internally, the Red Clover plant is used as an alternative medicine for skin complaints such as eczema and psoriasis, cancers of the breast, ovaries and lymphatic system, chronic degenerative diseases, gout, whooping cough and dry coughs. Red clover is now involved in research for a certain medicinal alkaloid 'slaframine' which is often found in diseased clover, this substance has shown antidiabetic and anti-AIDS activity.
 
Finally, here is English plantain (above, both photos by wide eyed lib), closely related to common plaintain, which was originally covered in this diary. English plantain differs in that it has narrower, more upright leaves that end in a point and shorter flower clusters on longer stems, but the two plants have all the same medicinal and culinary uses.
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If you're interested in foraging and missed the earlier diaries in the series, you can click here for the previous 8 installments. As always, please feel free to post photos in the comments and I'll do my best to help identify what you've foraged. (And if you find any errors, let me know.)
Here are some helpful foraging resources:
"Wildman" Steve Brill's site covers many edibles and includes nice drawings.
"Green" Deane Jordan's site is quite comprehensive and has color photos and stories about many plants.
Green Deane's foraging how-to clips on youtube each cover a single plant in reassuring detail.
Linda Runyon's site features only a few plants but has great deals on her dvd, wild cards and books (check out the package deals in particular).
Steve Brill's book, Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and Not So Wild) Places is my primary foraging guide. (Read reviews here, but if you're feeling generous, please buy from Steve's website.)
Linda Runyon's book The Essential Wild Food Survival Guide contains especially detailed information about nutritional content and how to store and preserve wild foods.
Steve Brill also offers guided foraging tours in NYC-area parks. Details and contact info are on his website.
Finally, the USDA plants database is a great place to look up info on all sorts of plants.
See you next week!
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