Prospect Park
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Because Prospect Park includes so many varied habitats, it's loaded with shoots and greens in mid-spring, and many of these are edible and medicinal. We'll begin with spicy hedge mustard and poor man's pepper greens, growing near the Grand Army Plaza entrance, proceed southeast to a vast stand of celery-flavored goutweed, stopping for violet leaves at the edge of the path. |
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Young Hedge Mustard This nutritious green tastes like the hot mustard you get in Chinese restaurants. |
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In an overgrown field, we'll find an abundance of pokeweed, superb boiled in 2 changes of water but poisonous raw. It's especially good seasoned with soy sauce, plus garlic lightly browned in olive oil. Later, we'll find vast stands of burdock, a despised "weed" with an edible and medicinal root. This time, we'll also find the immature flower stalks in season. Parboiled and peeled, they taste like artichoke hearts. After lunch, we'll find spicy field pennycress, another member of the mustard family, growing near corn-flavored chickweed. Not far off, we'll find spinach-flavored lamb's-quarters. And we'll have our last chance of the season to find sour curly (yellow) dock leaves and stems before they become unpalatably bitter. |
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The 4-hour walking tour begins at 11:45 AM, Memorial Day, Monday, May 26, at Prospect Park's Grand Army Plaza Entrance.
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Call (914) 835-2153 at least 24 hours in advance to reserve a place.
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