Hunt for Wild Chicken Mushrooms
in Forest Park
with naturalist/author "Wildman" Steve Brill
At 11:45, Sunday, June 12, America's go-to guy for foraging, "Wildman" Steve Brill will lead one of his world-famous foraging tours of Forest Park in Kew Gardens, Queens.
Forest Park is one of the best places for foragers in late spring. This park boasts a large, mature secondary growth forest, trail edges, thickets, and cultivated areas—all overflowing with wild plants.
Most roots are out of season, but burdock, an expensive detoxifying herb sold in health food stores, abounds near the playgrounds we'll be passing as we begin the tour, and it's in season spring, summer, and fall. The cooked root tastes like a combination of potatoes and artichokes. Nearby, we'll find honewort, an herb with a flavor similar to parsley, celery, and carrots.
Other wild herbs and vegetables we'll be hunting for along the edges of trails include parsley-celery-carrot flavored honewort, piquant greenbrier, sour wood sorrel, healing jewelweed, string bean-flavored Asiatic dayflower, mild lady's thumb, medicinal mullein, wintergreen-flavored black birch, and root beer-flavored sassafras.
If it has rained beforehand, we may also find gigantic chicken mushrooms, gourmet black-staining polypores, and misshapen Berkeley's polypores.
Spring herbs and greens such as pokeweed and greenbrier will be permeating the forest, and with lots of rain and a bit of luck, gourmet oyster mushrooms, dryad's saddle, and chicken mushrooms may also be emerging from dead trees, logs, and stumps. We'll be so busy foraging, the 4 hours will be gone before you know it!
The 4-hour walking tour begins at 11:45 AM, Sunday, June 12 at the stone wall at Union Turnpike and Park Lane, near the Parks Dept.'s Overlook building. The suggested donation is $20/adult, $10/child under 12. Please call (914) 835-2153 at least 24 hours in advance to reserve a place.
For "Wildman's" 2011 tour calendar and additional info, visit http://www.wildmanstevebrill.com