By
FRANK CARINI/ecoRI News staff
Expert
forager Russ Cohen pointed out a number of edible wild plants, including some
invasive black locust, during a recent tour of the grounds of the Audubon
Environmental Education Center in Bristol, R.I. The edible part of the black
locust is its sweet, jasmine-fragranced flower clusters, which come out in
mid-May. (Joanna Detz/ecoRI News photos)
BRISTOL, R.I. — Along stretches of the 14.5-mile East Bay Bike
Path a tasty treat strangles native vegetation and crowds out views. There’s a
solution to this growing — no pun intended — problem and it doesn’t involve
chemicals. All that's needed is a knife and fork.
Japanese knotweed is a robust perennial herb that emerges in early
spring and forms dense thickets that can grow up to 9 feet high. Large colonies
often exist as monocultures, reducing the diversity of plant species and
altering ecosystems. Reproduction from horizontal underground stems, even small
fragments of them, gives this weed its dominance. Once established, it’s
difficult to remove.
This invasive plant is commonly found in
moist, open habitats such as riverbanks and disturbed wetlands and along roads
and bike paths. Basically, Japanese knotweed is everywhere.
“Japanese knotweed is at the top of the invasive species list. It’s nasty and it takes over,” said Russ Cohen, a longtime staffer for the Massachusetts Department of Fish & Game’s Division of Ecological Restoration/Riverways Program. “It’s also yummy. Tastes like rhubarb.”
Cohen would know. He’s made delicious pies with the vile weed.
He’s also an author and expert forager who has been eating wild
plants for decades. He leads tours all across New England, even in cities,
pointing out food that has sprung up without human help.
His tours teach people
about foraging etiquette, impact and responsibility, and how to distinguish edible
plants from poisonous ones. He tells people not to eat stuff that tastes bad,
because poisonous stuff usually tastes, well, bad. He said that principle
doesn’t apply to wild mushrooms.
He stresses that seasonality is important. “We’re detached from seasonality
because we can go into a grocery store anytime of the year and buy whatever we
want," he said.
But it doesn’t work that way in the wild. For example, Japanese
knotweed — its stringy stalks need peeling before eating — is best harvested in
April. After that, when it grows big and starts resembling bamboo, it’s too
tough and bitter. He also advises potential harvesters to choose sites
carefully, such as those not frequented by dogs looking to relieve themselves
and away from heavy traffic.
“Don’t harvest Japanese knotweed shoots growing near a Dumpster at
an auto-body shop, or in an open space that may have been sprayed with
chemicals,” Cohen said. “It’s not hard to find. There’s plenty of it around.”
Before leading a June 17 tour at the Audubon Environmental
Education Center, Cohen shared some juneberry he had picked earlier that day
along the Charles River in Boston during his lunch break.
In fact, if you ever bump into the Arlington, Mass., resident,
he’ll probably be carrying a foraging basket, and he’ll likely share whatever
is inside.
Russ Cohen found plenty of wild plants to eat, including smooth
sumac, on the recent walk. While edible sumacs are relatively common, they are
a native species, meaning anyone interested in picking them needs to show some
restraint so that enough fruit remains on the plants to ensure a sufficient
supply for birds and other wildlife, Cohen says.
Cohen said Rhode Island alone is home to more than 90 species of
edible wild plants, some of which are more nutritious and/or flavorful than
their cultivated counterparts.
“Wild, edible plants are all over the place,” he told the dozen or
so people who recently followed him for two hours. “They’re a mixture of native
plants, weeds and invasives.”
That doesn’t mean foragers should be picking plants bare. In most
cases, astute foraging will not hurt an ecosystem, Cohen said, but foragers
must be aware of the role plants, especially native ones, play.
Overpicking,
for instance, could lead to local extinction. Raking the woods searching for
delicious treats could alter the humidity of the forest floor and negatively
impact the habitat’s ecological balance.
Cohen noted that picking most wild nuts and berries has little
impact on the plants, their habitats or the ecosystem. There are exceptions,
however. Some native species berries serve an important ecological role.
The
high-calorie berries of spicebush, for example, are relied upon by migrating
songbirds to fuel their southward migrations, according to Cohen. He said it is
incumbent upon foragers to show restraint, and leave plenty of those berries on
the plants.
Digging up plants or stripping off leaves causes stress and has a
big impact, he said. Endangered species are off-limits, but, he noted, there
are few species in Rhode Island or Massachusetts that are both edible and
endangered.
Of the some 70 invasive species in Rhode Island, about 20 are
edible, he said. “Pick as much of these plants as you like,” Cohen said. “It’s
guilt-free foraging.”
He stressed, however, the importance of not spreading these plants
around when harvesting them. “Don’t spit the seeds of invasive species onto the
ground,” he said. “Like a responsible dog owner does, bring a bag.”
He also spoke of concerns he often hears about the impact human
foraging has on wildlife.
“There’s not a 100 percent overlap between humans and animals,”
Cohen said. “Many animals can eat poison ivy. Don’t try it. Animals and humans
have different taste buds and different digestive systems.”
For many, milkweed tops that list of foraging concern. Monarch
butterflies only lay eggs on milkweed, which has rapidly disappeared from their
range in the past few decades. In fact, the United States has lost nearly 170
million acres of monarch habitat east of the Rocky Mountains since 1996.
It’s
no coincidence that the monarch population has
plummeted from relative highs during the 1990s, in large part because of
habitat loss and a changing climate.
Rhode Island is home to common, swamp and orange milkweed, all
suitable monarch habitat. The only variety that is edible is common — it has
very broad leaves — and it is delicious, according to Cohen. The plant has four
edible stages — leaves, stem, flowers and pods — and harvesting the pods, he
said, has little impact on the butterfly’s life cycle.
While he doesn’t believe human foraging has had much of an impact
on milkweed’s decline — he largely blames pesticides such as Roundup — he
checks any common milkweed for eggs and monarch caterpillars before harvesting.
He also makes sure to help spread the plant’s seeds.
It did concern him, however, when he recently saw wild common
milkweed on a restaurant menu in Portland, Maine. “If it sells well, there will
be copy cats, and the impact would be quite large if that trend grew,” Cohen
said. “Commercialization would change people’s relationship to the plant
because they would see dollar signs.”
His concerns about wild plants being on restaurant menus goes
beyond milkweed. He said he has seen the harm done to
native species, their sensitive habitats and/or wildlife that rely on them by
“unscrupulous, commercially driven harvesting to meet the demands of chefs and
produce markets.”
“Fortunately, there are many tasty and abundant non-native
species,” he said, “and I hope restaurants seeking to add wild plants to their
menus will focus on those instead of natives.”
Among the wild edibles Cohen grades as the tastiest and the best
for foraging are dandelions, juneberry, black raspberry, fox grape, curled
dock, mulberry and black locust, which, like Japanese knotweed, is an invasive.
When he retires from the Massachusetts Department of Fish &
Game on June 30, Cohen hopes to use of some of this free time to encourage more
people to plant edible plants.
To watch a short video of a Cohen tour in 2012 at a farm in
Massachusetts, click here.