Some trail wisdom from "Wildman" Steve Brill:

"Try any unidentified plants on your teachers. Don't worry, your school has plenty of substitutes."

"There are wild leeks growing in the White Plains Greenway and sometimes you want to go out in the woods and take a leek."

"That mushroom isn't poisonous, but its about as tasteless as some of my jokes."

It's no wonder children love the Wildman.

"Thank you for coming to our school," one girl wrote on his website. "I liked the poor man's pepper (or at least the name of it). The "Death Breath" doesn't work on my brother (he's got worse breath!)"

Brill, a Jewish resident of Mamaroneck, has been leading foraging tours of New York's wildest edibles since 1982. This month will find him foraging in White Plains' Saxon Woods, Dobbs Ferry's Croton Aqueduct, and Central Park in Manhattan.

One could even say that Brill's career began in Central Park in 1986, when he was arrested there for eating a dandelion by two undercover policemen who had infiltrated his tour. Brill was taken away in handcuffs for removing vegetation from the park. Charges were later dropped, and the city hired Brill to lead official tours of the park.

Brill, who no longer works for New York City, leads amateur botanists on scavenger hunts for food that grows naturally throughout New England, providing cooking tips geologic history plant lore and biology lessons along the way.

Brill is a well-read botanist and enjoys learning about plants, but he really began foraging because he was hungry. Having worked as a cook, he takes a culinary approach to the science.

"Most of these [guide] books are written by botanists who wouldn't know a kitchen if it fell on their heads," Brill said. 'And so I developed the field myself I discovered what you do with the plants, where to collect them and how to use them."

He has written his own guide book for identifying plants, and in 2002 he published "The Wild Vegetarian Cookbook" (Harvard Common Press), full of recipes to be prepared with foods found in the field or in supermarkets. The book spills over with information about each green, nut, root and mushroom, typical of Brill's animated teaching style and explosion of information.

On a recent tour of a stretch of the Appalachian Trail In Pawling, participants hadn't stepped away from their cars before Brill expounded on the healing properties of Colt's Foot Tea and the migration of the Wild Parsnip from Europe.

Leading 15 amateurs into the woods, most of whom had never foraged before, Brill pushed everyone off the path in search of wild mushrooms. He personally approved each mushroom before allowing anyone to take it home, and warned everyone: "Eat small amounts of new plants the first time you try them, anyone can be allergic to anything, even if others can eat it."

Then, to the delight of the children, he described the exact way each poisonous mushroom would wreak havoc on your kidneys and liver.

After witnessing Brill's animated storytelling, it comes as no surprise that he works primarily with children, leading tours for schools and summer camps.

"Each town has its own day camp, and I work with a lot of these," Brill said. "Mount Vernon had me do nine sessions with the same kids. These children are now able to walk down the street and identify dozens of edible and poisonous plants."

Brill spent a day this summer-with 200 campers at Hastings-on-Hudson Day Camp.

Camp director Lisa Carmody remembers the children, armed with plastic bags for collecting samples, learning about the plants "literally in their own backyard."

"The kids loved him" Carmody said. "He is very entertaining and silly. It's very educational but the kids don't realize it, he slips it right past them."

When talking to Jewish school groups, he tailors his presentation to include a comparison to environmental awareness in Israel.

"Israel has to deal with terror even more than we do, but they still haven't turned their back on conservation in the way we have," Brill said. "People in Israel are a little more sensitive about conservation than people are here. The problems are a little more in front of their face there because it's a drier area. In that arid climate, you're not supposed to touch or pick anything because without the water it doesn't grow back. And here people are killing so-called weeds."

During the spring, summer, and fall Brill leads tours for students and the public, but during the winter he takes a hint from the snow and he hibernates.

"I have lots of stored food, dehydrated and in the freezer and that's when I'm writing my books," Brill said.

He lives with his wife of two years, Leslie-Anne Skolnik, who he met on one of his tours. With their 4-month-old daughter, Violet, they live in an apartment filled with drawings of plants, reference books, and jugs of homemade wild wines.

But you won't find cultivated plants.

"I'm always trying to be in tune to what is in season," Brill said. "I've never had access to a garden, but there is so much available in the wild. It would be like bringing ice cubes to Alaska."