Wild Edibles

Image Credit: Jim Ehle (Morel mushrooms, left), Abrahami (hickory nuts, top right), Alan Fryer (blackberries, bottom right)

Did you know that Missouri forests and prairies are full of wild veggies and fruits that you can eat? It's true! You could make a whole salad, or even a whole meal, from flowers and greens plucked straight from the wild.

You might be wondering what kinds of meals and dishes you can make with the wild veggies you find. And how do you know what's safe and what's poisonous? Luckily there's a lot of great resources online to get you started!

• Reference pictures are crucial for correctly identifying wild edibles. Click here to see the Missouri Department of Conservation's great field guide with images and descriptions of all kinds of edible plants in Missouri.
• Foraging for wild edibles can be dangerous if you don't know what to look out for. Some toxic plants are look-alikes to edible plants, and even some edible plants have poisonous parts that you should stay away from. Click here to see a list of these plants to watch out for in Missouri, along with pictures and descriptions to help you identify them.
• The Missouri Department of Conservation provides a PDF copy of each chapter from the book Wild Edibles of Missouri by Jan Philips. It is a comprehensive guide to edible plants in Missouri that includes recipes for making salads, soups, juices, and more from wild plants. Click here to access the book.
• For great step-by-step recipes using wild edibles, visit the Youtube channel Missouri Wild Cooking run by the Missouri Department of Conservation. Their recipes include: sweet and sour rabbit, wild rice and mushroom soup, and morel mushroom and asparagus fettuccine. Click here to visit the Youtube Channel.
• The Foraged Foodie blog is a great resource wild edible recipes, tips and ideas from an experienced forager. I love the big, bright images she posts of her meals and foraging spots.

If you are interested in learning more, don't miss Peaceworks' Center for Sustainable Living Wild Edibles program Wednesday, April 13 at the Boone Government Center. The program starts at 7pm with light refreshments at 6:30pm. Don't miss it if you want to learn how to find and use edible plants you can collect around Columbia! For more information on the event or to invite your friends, click here to see the Facebook event page.