Prospect Park
Sunday, March 2

Prospect Park is a great place for foragers to explore at the end of the winter. Like Central Park, this Olmstead-designed landscape features a variety of habitats filled with delicious native and exotic plants.

Cold weather greens abound throughout the park. We'll find goutweed, which tastes like parsley, garlic-flavored garlic mustard greens and sprouts, and chickweed, which tastes like corn.

Both sweet-sharp daylily shoots and chive-like field garlic will already be producing bumper crops.

East of the boathouse, we'll examine a dense stand of chicory, growing along with the ubiquitous dandelions. Both greens have a savory-bitter flavor, and they're at their best right now, before they flower.

Throughout the park, we'll find wonderful stands of burdock, with roots that taste like a combination of potatoes and artichokes. Often very difficult to weed, the deep taproot grows in unusually rich, soft, rock-free soil in several places here.

The first tiny leaves of wild parsnips, growing just east of the skating rink, will clue us in to the location of the large, sweet roots. And the abundant, green, fragrant twigs of sassafras saplings will let us find roots for making wild root beer.

And we'll be able to observe the first wildflowers of the season on witch hazel, common spicebush, and carnelian cherry bushes. These blossoms are tiny, since there are few insects to attract, but "Wildman’s" jeweler's loupes will make all the details clearly visible.