Inwood Hill Park
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Inwood Hill Park Overlooking the Hudson
"Wildman" totters at the edge of the precipice. photo by Fiona Heeran |
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Inwood Hill Park is one of the best places for foraging in late summer. The city's hilliest park, with a large, mature forest, meadows, thickets, and cultivated areas, it's loaded with wild plants throughout the foraging season. There's an excellent stand of burdock near the meeting place, where this deep taproot is relatively easy to excavate. The root is great in soups, stews, rice dishes, or for making the Japanese delicacy, kinpira gobo. Further into the woodlands, we'll find herbs and greens such as lamb's-quarters, wood sorrel, and goutweed bordering the trail. Sassafras root, the original source of root beer, is around too. You can use it to make beverages, or as a exotic-tasting, cinnamon-like seasoning. The black birch tree, on the other hand, contains oil of wintergreen, and provides the raw material for birch beer. You can freshen your breath by chewing on the twigs, or use them to make tea. A strong tea provides non-steroidal antiinflammatory aspirin-like compounds, good for pain and inflammation (it's used in commercial massage liniments), and for preventing heart disease. At the edge of a precipice at the park's summit, overlooking the Hudson River, we'll find pepper sedum. This unusual herb grows on bare rock. A tropical plant without the ability to die back in the winter, it's in season all year, growing where it does because it needs the heat the sun-baked rock provides in the summer to reproduce. The plant tastes somewhat like black pepper, and makes an excellent seasoning for any savory dish. On the park's shady east side, we'll be able to gather the leaves of the common spicebush for tea, and the berries, which you use in place of allspice. This side of the park has the most mushrooms. On past tours, we've found large quantities of chicken mushroom and hen-of-the-woods, as well as pear-shaped puffballs and honey mushrooms. Before the tour ends, we'll visit the butternut tree near the plaque where Peter Minuet allegedly bought Manhattan. If it's been a good year for the tree, hundreds of flavorful nuts, unavailable commercially, will be littering the ground. |
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Butternut
Dry the nuts to shrivel the green husk, crack open, and use the nutmeat in cookies, cakes, granola, or anywhere you use nuts. |
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Don't miss a fantastic tour of this vastly under appreciated park. |
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The 4-hour walking tour begins at 11:45 AM, Sunday, August 31, at the playground at Dykeman St. and Broadway, which is not in Inwood Hill Park.
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Call (914) 835-2153 at least 24 hours in advance to reserve a place.
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Listen to "Wildman's" radio interview with the world's leading expert on Inwood Hill Park, the late Botany Bill Greiner.
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