Tarrywile Park
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Here's a park "Wildman" will be exploring in conjunction with the Danbury Recreation Department. A previous summer tour featured large quantities of summer mushrooms, and with enough rain beforehand, we might find choice spring species such as black-staining polypores, chicken mushrooms, wine-cap stropharias, and dryad's saddle. Cattails will be a highlight of the tour. This common water plant features cucumber-flavored shoots, immature flower heads similar to corn-on-the-cob, and copious amounts of golden pollen you can use in place of flour. |
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Cattail Shoots
Never pull out a cattail if there's an animal rights person watching! |
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Wild greens could also be thriving in fields and disturbed habitats. We'll look for lamb's-quarters (a wild spinach), wood sorrel, sheep sorrel, poor man's pepper, field pennycress, common milkweed, hedge mustard, purslane, and Asiatic dayflower. In addition, we may find culinary and medicinal herbs such as black birch, St. John's wort, 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 Tarrywile Park too. At this time of year, you can also peel the immature flower stalk, parboil it, and use it like artichoke hearts. We may even get the first wild berries to come into season as summer approaches. Wild strawberries, juneberries, and mulberries may just be ripening. |
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The 3-hour walking tour begins at 1 PM, Saturday, June 14, at Tarrywile Park in Danbury, CT.
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Call (914) 835-2153 at least 24 hours in advance to reserve a place.
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