Huntington State Park
Sunday, July 27

This is one of the best places for great numbers of the world’s most prized (and expensive) wild mushrooms. They include gourmet boletes, brittle russulas, chanterelles, black trumpets, and gigantic chicken mushrooms. On past tours, we've also found wonderful flavored parasol mushrooms and delicate tasting corals, plus the delectable rooted oudemansiella, with an underground structure (not a true root) that snaps when you break it.

There may also be deadly amanitas, so beginners should always consult an expert, such as the "Wildman," before eating any wild mushrooms.

Fruit far surpassing anything available commercially also fills the park. Thickets are lined with large quantities of sweet, juicy blackberries and tart wineberries. After picking them during the tour, many participants forgo lunch and continue collecting this irresistible fruit during the break.

There are also flavorful elderberries, and sweet-sour black cherries drop from trees along the edges of fields. And in 2003, the group found a rare, unnamed sour cherry species absent from technical botanical manuals, probably a foreign species or hybrid that escaped from cultivation. The fruit is especially tasty.

Wild greens also thrive in fields and along trail edges. We'll find lamb's-quarters (a wild spinach), wood sorrel, sheep sorrel, poor man's pepper, purslane, lady's thumb, and Asiatic dayflower. In addition, there will be culinary and medicinal herbs such as black birch, yarrow, sassafras, and spicebush leaves.

Most roots go out of season by the start of May, but burdock root, which tastes like a combination of potato and artichoke, stays in season from spring to fall, and it grows in Huntington State Park too.

With so many of the best edibles in season here year after year, it's no wonder this tour has drawn large groups year after year for over a decade.