Loftwings and Demons

I really love identifying edible plants.  I also try to learn as much as I can about the poisonous ones, too, since I do sometimes eat edible plants I identify, and it's very important to me that I not mistake a poisonous plant for an edible one.  And even if I can confirm a plant is edible, I try to be careful about where I forage it because of factors like pollution. 

One of the things I have learned, though, is that an incredibly large amount of plants are edible and can provide valuable nutrition.  There are edible fruits, seeds, nuts, tubers, leaves, and even bark all around us.  One of the things I'm constantly doing is mentally cataloguing what plants are growing around me and which ones I can identify as edible.  I rarely go anywhere that I can't identify something edible, though out of caution I often don't collect any of those edibles.  It's nice to know they are there, though.

One reason for my caution are the large number of laws that limit or disallow foraging.  I think a lot of these laws are anything from misguided to outright terrible.  There should be limits on where and how much people forage, but those limits shouldn't be 'just don't do it'.  As it is, it's illegal to forage on both public and private land a lot of the time, and I've certainly never seen it actively encouraged.  A lot of foraging guides I read are like 'try to just forage in your own yard' but like...lol...I live in an apartment...I don't have a yard.  I think there's a lot of problems with anti-foraging laws, one of which is that they contribute to so many people going hungry when they are surrounded by food. But anyway, this is another thing I always have to watch out for, besides watching out for poisonous plants and avoiding collecting from polluted areas.  These laws are not always enforced, of course, but they're something I always watch out for. 

One goal I have is to learn what all the highest calorie foods around me are.  When it comes to foraging, it's extremely useful to be able to identify, gather, and prepare high calorie foods.  Seeds and nuts tend to be good candidates for this.  Tubers can be, too.  Cattails are also very good for this if they grow in an area where you live.  Fruit can be, but if most the calories come from sugars it may not be very filling.  Some fruits are more calorie-dense than others (or have edible calorie-dense seeds), and so are more worth taking time to collect and gather.

In the US, some common edible plants are:
*cattails
*acorn (must process out the tannins)
*pine (nuts, needles, and inner bark)
*blackberries
*mulberries
*walnuts
*hickory nuts
*dandelions
*plantains (the leafy weed plant, not the banana-like one)
*wild radish
*wild mustard
*mallow
These are a few of the edible plants I've encountered before. As always, it's important to positively identify a plant to be edible before eating it.  There are some pretty deadly plants out there that have been mistaken for edible ones.  And even if you know a plant isn't toxic, it might still not be good to eat if it's growing in a place with lots of toxins in the air, water or soil, or if you happen to be allergic to it.