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Muttontown Preserve is a wonderful place for wild edible and medicinal plants and mushrooms of mid-summer. The preserve has a good share of wild fruit and berries. We'll be looking for staghorn and smooth sumac, which you can use for making pink lemonade, and to create a lemon juice analog. We may also find bushes laden with flavorful wild blackberries and elderberries. |
 Cluster of Elderberries Use these flavorful berries, sweetened, in pies, sauces, ices, jam, and cakes. |
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Sassafras, which grows in woods and thickets throughout, provides a root that you can use for making tea or root beer, while the twigs of the black birch tree, which contains oil of wintergreen, taste like birch beer. Wild herbs and greens always thrive in this nature preserve. We’ll find lamb’s-quarters (a wild spinach), wood sorrel, sheep sorrel (this is Muttontown Preserve after all), poor man's pepper, lady’s thumb, and Asiatic dayflower, all delicious summer vegetables. In addition, there will be culinary and medicinal herbs such as wild bay leaves, mullein, yarrow, and sarsaparilla, growing in the fields or woods. Spectacular summer mushrooms also abound at this time, especially if there have been recent heavy rains. We'll be on the lookout for gourmet boletes, chanterelles, black trumpets, chicken mushrooms, and hygrophorus milky mushrooms. |
 Hygrophorus Milky Mushroom Use the same seasoning used with meat recipes, and these flavorful, chewy mushrooms will fool nearly every diner. |
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The 4-hour walking tour begins at 11:45 AM, Saturday, August 15, at the Syosset RR station ticket office, 30 Underhill Blvd.
Call (914) 835-2153 at least 24 hours ahead to reserve a place. |
