Tarrywile Park
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Here's a park "Wildman" will be exploring in conjunction with the Danbury Recreation Department, with lots of surprises still in store. There are cultivated areas, overgrown places, forests, and a lake, all with different plant communities. Previous summer tours featured large quantities of summer mushrooms. With enough rain beforehand, we might find choice summer species such as chicken mushrooms, black-staining polypores, boletes, chanterelles, and russulas. There may also be deadly amanitas, so beginners should always consult an expert such as the "Wildman" before eating any wild mushrooms. |
Destroying Angel Beautiful and deadly, this highly toxic amanita mushroom, which grows in Tarrywile, may remind you of someone you dated! |
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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, hedge mustard, purslane, and Asiatic dayflower. In addition, we may find culinary and medicinal herbs such as black birch, yarrow, sassafras, and spicebush leaves in the woods.
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This common, abundant leafy green is much tastier and more nutritious than its relative, spinach. |
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We may also get to collect some of the best wild berries. Elderberries and blackberries are in season. 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 thrives in Tarrywile Park too. |
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The 3-hour walking tour begins at 1 PM, Saturday, August 29, at the greenhouse parking lot (not the main parking lot) of Tarrywile Park in Danbury, CT.
Call (914) 835-2153 at least 24 hours in advance to reserve a place. |
