Take advantage of the beautiful weather and take your family on a picnic or hike in the woods. Right now in my neck of the woods I can find Common Elderberry with both the flower and fruit! The fruit is early, I’ll see them more abundant in May.

Interestingly, the Elderberry is a member of the honeysuckle family. You will find it along creeks and rivers. Mostly damp areas. They get pretty big – about 13 feet tall. The tiny white flowers and the dark purple tiny berries are both edible. Right now is a great time for them – I can pluck the flowers and make a nice tea and have a handful of berries with my tea!  The berries have potassium, calcium, beta carotene and vitamin C. Yes, having a snack from the Elderberry bush is a healthy thing.

Some sources say that too much of the berry raw is not a good thing but that the taste improves with drying. I’ve never eaten a huge amount in one sitting – they aren’t that sweet. But I do like to dry them in my dehydrator and add them to trailmix and granola. For the cooked fooders out there, throw a handful of the berries in your pancake batter or bake them in muffins.

From the book “Identifying & Havesting Edible and Medicinal Plants” (see below) they offer that an infusion of the flowers (steep them like making tea)cleanses the skin and sooths sunburns and because of the bioflavinoid content, it strengthens the capillaires. You can even steep the flowers in oil to make a soothing massage lotion that soothes burns and rashes. There is a multitude of uses for this flower. There are usually several bushes together, but if there aren’t, always leave some flowers or they won’t make berries and the birds will be disappointed. The lacey clusters are beautiful close up – the flower being less than a quarter inch wide.

TEA: Gather elder flowers when in full bloom. You may use them fresh or spread them out on some cloth or screen and let them air dry. When they are completely dry store them in a jar and use like you would any dried tea. 4 tablespoons dried elderflower to 1 quart water. Good hot or iced!

The common Elderberry DOES NOT have thorns. If you find one with thorns or reddish fruit – don’t eat them, they aren’t poisonous but they may make you sick.

Get out there and try to find some. Learning about wild edibles comes from finding one plant at a time and using it some how. Keep track of it throughout the year to learn what the plant looks like during the different seasons. Before you know it, you begin to build a knowledge base of what is out in your part of your world and you become more connected to the earth. And if you ever get lost in the woods…well, you’ll be the one that is perfectly fine and healthy.

(drawing above is charcoal and color pencil, 15×23 - Mockingbird on Elderberry by me)

Here are some common elderberries that a bird has been eating on the left. And on the right is a nice full head of green-soon to be ripe berries.

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EDIBLE WEEDS are a great source of extra nutrition. The more you learn about edible wild plants, the more you will be dumbfounded by why so much money is spent on putting poisons in the yards to be rid of the “pesky plants.”

DO YOU KNOW WHY WEEDS are so hard to get rid of in your yard? Most have really long roots! The roots pass up the upper depleted soil and reach way down to where the soil is still packed full of nutrients. And this is why the edible varieties are super nutritious and we shouldn’t pass up the opportunity to add edible wild plants to our daily raw and live food diets. Dr. Ann Wigmore always added common Plantain and Lambs Quarters to her famous “Energy Soup.”

I don’t know when I first became interested in learning all about “wild edibles.” It must have been since I was a kid spending weekends in the mountains in Colorado. We always sought out the wild raspberries and I remember thinking how cool it was that I could help myself to food fresh from the woods.

I feel fortunate that I grew up with parents that always planted a vegetable garden by our home. This trained my palate early on to the awesome flavors of “ripened on the vine” food.

Fresh ripe carrots right out of the ground, washed off with the garden hose and desperately sweet strawberries plucked ripe from the vine – there is nothing compared to that. My aunt and uncle grew beautiful concord grapes that spanned the length of the yard. The scent was amazing, I can still conjure it in my mind. Another aunt that had a huge cherry tree in her front yard. My dad made awesome cherry pies from that tree.

So I guess the gifts of the earths garden have always been a part of my life – and now I am teaching myself more in depth about wild edibles.

Plantain and wild onion

Please note:There are more edible wild plants than there are toxic ones – but please don’t try any if you aren’t absolutely sure is an edible one. And there are some that are edible but have poisonous “look-alikes.” And also, some parts of a plant may be edible, while another part is not. Read some books, take a class, research the Internet. Find out what’s in your yard and parks. Three of my favorite books are:

1. Edible Wild Plants – A North American Field Guide by Thomas Elias and Peter Dykeman. Very good, color photos, has a “seasonal” guide so you know whats in season and where.

2.The Forager’s Harvest – A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting and Perparing Edible Wild Plants by Samuel Thayer. His website ForagersHarvest.com has  articles and resources.

3. Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and not so wild) Places by Wildman Steve Brill with Evelyn Dean. Larger format book with illustrations. I usually don’t care for foraging books to be illustrated – photos do a better job for identification. But this one is pretty good and very descriptive. This book even includes recipes!

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