" I grew up in Kew Gardens, Queens. One day, there were these ethnic Greek women in Cunningham Park and they were picking something. I stopped to ask what they were doing. Turns out they couldn’t speak English but I came home with grape leaves, which I stuffed, and they turned out to be absolutely delicious! After that, I went into all the wild plants that I could research and learn about, and a few years later I started doing these tours. And that was 21 years ago, and I’m still doing them."

Natural wonders abound in the Big Apple; however, nothing compares to an encounter with the original weed warrior, Wildman Steve Brill. Our recent chat was an eye-opening expedition with an author, artist, musician, educator, jazz historian, talk-show host, natural foods chef, and chess expert, one of America’s homegrown living national treasures.

Brill’s books, The Wild Vegetarian Cookbook (Harvard Common Press, 2002), Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and Not So Wild) Places (Morrow, 1994), and Shoots and Greens of Early Spring in Eastern North America (1986) are wonderful reads.

Thousands have enlisted in his Saturday safaris where, foraging through the free taverns on the turf, the Man Who Ate Manhattan continues to point out "heaven in a wild flower" and thereby change the way we perceive Gotham’s green spaces.

MUSHROOM MAVEN HAD CHECKERED PAST

"I majored in psychology at George Washington University, which was sort of a dead end, and I went to podiatry school for one year, and that wasn’t for me. I realized that I just had to go and do things on my own, away from the establishment."

"I didn’t fit in with the hippies in the ’60s or with the more conventional people but, fortunately, I found my own direction. In the ’70s, I sort of dropped out of normal society and became a chess player for a while. I shook hands with Bobby Fischer. He was still sane at that time. Then I just started becoming interested in other things: food and cooking, and health and nutrition."

THIS BUD’S FOR YOU

"I certainly became more aware of health when people in my family were dying prematurely. And I started reading things about alternative nutrition. Starting in the ’70s, I used to listen to radio nutritionist and pioneer Carlton Fredericks. And I started incorporating whole foods. ?I did some cooking, briefly, for a hotel upstate — Awosting. I tried to start a catering business. And for a couple of years, I taught cooking classes in a yoga studio in Queens. It had been a struggle."

GIVING ’EM THE RASPBERRY

"Before I worked for the New York City Parks Department, I was lucky to have a handful of people on my tours. Whenever we saw a park ranger, I’d blow my whistle three times and that meant close your bags and swallow whatever’s in your mouth. I only ate the renewable resources, so there was no ecological harm."

AFTER A DI-VINE MEAL, A TASTE OF THE LAW

"On March 29, 1986, I did one of my usual tours in Central Park. There were two people who paid me with marked $20 bills. They were undercover agents, a man and a woman. And the man kept taking pictures, so I’d hold up the specimen, only I was the specimen!" At the end of the nature walk, I ate a dandelion, and the man had a hidden walkie-talkie. And suddenly every park ranger in New York City jumped out from behind the bushes. They surrounded me and put me in handcuffs, in case I bopped them on the head with a dandelion."

FLAGRANT FLOWERS, FELONIOUS FLORA

"They searched me — I don’t know if they were looking for weeds or weed — and hauled me off to the police station in handcuffs. Fortunately for me, I had eaten all the evidence. After three hours of exposure to intense cigarette smoke, they let me go, which was a big mistake."

"I notified the media. Next day, on the way to the newsstand, five cops stopped me, but they wanted my autograph. I got on Dan Rather that night. They took me to court and we had a media circus. I served Wildman’s Five-Borough Salad to press and passersby on the steps of the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse."

DON’T WALK OVER YOUR LUNCH

Wildman Steve became a vegetarian gradually in the ’80s. "I gave up all animal products in 1990.? And his weed walks brought him health and peace of mind. I met medical editor and writer Leslie-Anne Skolnik on a singles tour for a vegetarian publication," he said. They were married in New Rochelle, NY on June 16, 2002 and reside in Mamaroneck, NY. "She’s made me very, very happy," he continued. "And she’s certainly made me more adventurous. Do you know where she took me on one of our dates? To Antarctica!"

MUSIC, MARLENE DIETRICH, AND MEDITATION

The Foretopman of the Fields is known for his trademark pith helmet, but he wears many hats. Cupping his hands, he plays the Brill-o-Phone, which he learned from his father. "My dad was a businessman, a refugee from the Holocaust. His avocation was entertainment. He won the amateur dancing championship of Germany in the 1920s and got to dance with Marlene Dietrich — his prize for winning the contest. He was a very funny guy and had all these vaudeville show routines."

The knotweed nibbler’s perfect moniker is derived from Jelly Roll Morton and Duke Ellington’s "Wildman Blues." "I’m a big, big jazz fan, and I probably know as much about jazz as I do about wild plants. I have a collection of over 1,500 open-reel tapes. I try to use the ideals of jazz on my tours, of knowing the subject and improvising in as creative a way as possible."

LIKE A DOWNTRODDEN WEED, HE FLOURISHED

"Throughout my school years, I was told I had no talent at all in art and was continually discouraged. The teachers refused to put any of my clay sculptures in the kiln for firing because they weren’t good enough. Back in the early ’80s, when I first had the opportunity to write, I realized I would need illustrations of the plants. And I realized that maybe I could train myself to draw?"— and sculpt as well.

EVENTUALLY, HE BRANCHED OUT

"I used to be on WBAI, but their political concepts apparently did not include environmentalism and so they summarily dismissed me in the ’90s. To this day, no program director will speak to me, return my phone calls, or answer my e-mails. They’re into this kind of left-wing political stuff that predates environmentalism. However, I do have a cable show on Queens Public Access TV and am also completing the first in a series of videos on foraging."

HIS PRACTICALLY SPIRITUAL SIDE

The Green Man found his nickname in the thickets of meditation. "I’ve been doing Transcendental Meditation since 1975. I’m not a Buddhist. I’m more of a practical person than someone who spends a lot of time contemplating spiritual matters. The meditation lets me turn inward a little calm down, and renew my energies."

HARVEST HOME

"I do a lot of work with libraries and scout troops. The interest, unfortunately, is not there, which seems paradoxical for a nature organization. Day camps — I’m doing a huge amount of work with them. The mosquitoes all know me by now."