Field Food — What You Can and Cannot Eat in the Wild

Blackberries and raspberries

Know it by: thorny, arching canes and a berry made of many tiny juicy beads clustered together. A blackberry keeps its soft core when picked; a raspberry slips off and is hollow inside.

When: late spring through summer. Part eaten: the ripe berry. How: raw, right off the cane, or cooked into jam and cobbler.

Watch out: no common poisonous berry grows in this clustered bramble form — the cane plus clustered berry is one of the surest identifications in the field. Still follow the 100% rule, and skip canes along sprayed roadsides and fence lines.

Dandelion

Know it by: a flat rosette of jagged leaves on the ground, one yellow flower per hollow stem, and milky sap in the stem. No leaves grow up the flower stem.

When: spring is best; leaves all season. Part eaten: young leaves and flowers raw or cooked; roots cooked. How: young leaves in salad or sautéed; older leaves are bitter — boil them.

Watch out: the real danger is not a look-alike, it is the lawn. Never eat dandelions from treated yards, parks, or road edges.

Cattail

Know it by: tall strap leaves in shallow water, with a brown spike like a hot dog on a stick.

When: spring for shoots; summer for pollen; fall and winter for roots. Part eaten: young shoots, cooked like asparagus; yellow pollen shaken into flour; starchy roots, cooked. How: cook the shoots; never eat cattail raw from dirty water — gather only from clean ponds and marshes.

Watch out: young iris shoots grow in the same wet ground and are poisonous. Iris leaves fan out flat at the base and there is no brown spike. Only gather shoots where last year's brown spikes are standing over the patch.

Prickly pear (Southwest and southern plains)

Know it by: flat green pads with dots of spines, and oval fruit — called tunas — that ripen red to purple.

When: young pads in spring; fruit late summer into fall. Part eaten: fruit raw; young pads cooked. How: every spine and every hair-fine glochid must come off first — use tongs and gloves, roll fruit in sand or grass or singe it, then peel. Pads are scraped, sliced, and grilled or boiled.

Watch out: glochids stick in skin and tongues and are hard to see. If you cannot get a piece fully clean, do not eat it. Same plant, same rules in Mexico — see nopal below.

Persimmon

Know it by: a small tree with dark, blocky bark and soft orange fruit in fall.

When: fall, after the fruit is dead ripe — soft, wrinkled, almost mushy. Part eaten: the ripe fruit, raw. How: eat it soft, or strain the pulp for pudding.

Watch out: an unripe persimmon is a mouthful of chalk that can pucker your mouth for an hour. Not poison — just a lesson. Wait for dead ripe.

Black walnut and hickory nuts

Know it by: walnuts hang as round green balls that stain your hands dark; hickory nuts grow in a husk that splits into four parts as it ripens.

When: fall. Part eaten: the nut meat inside the hard shell. How: let husks dry and darken, crack the shell, pick out the meat. Raw or roasted. Throw away any nut that smells moldy or rancid.

Watch out: the buckeye, listed under "Cannot eat," wears a smooth splitting husk and a shiny brown nut with a pale eye. It is not a walnut, not a chestnut, and it is poisonous.

Spruce tips (northern states)

Know it by: in spring, the ends of spruce branches push out soft, bright-green new tips, much lighter and softer than the stiff older needles. Spruce needles grow singly on little wooden pegs, and spruce cones hang down.

When: spring, while the tips are soft. Part eaten: the new tips. How: a few raw, or made into tea or syrup. Take a few tips per branch only.

Watch out: yew — listed under "Cannot eat" — is a poisonous evergreen shrub with flat needles. Never gather "tips" from a shrub. Tips come from a tall spruce tree you have identified whole: needles, pegs, bark, and hanging cones.

Wild blueberries

Know it by: low shrubs, often knee-high or lower, with small oval leaves and small round blue berries. Each berry carries a tiny five-point crown on its end.

When: mid to late summer. Part eaten: the berries. How: raw by the handful, or cooked into jam, syrup, and pie. Blueberries grow across Canada — barrens and burns in the east, forest clearings in the west and north.

Watch out: identify the bush, not just the berry. Many shrubs carry blue or black fruit, and some are poison. If the plant is not certainly a blueberry bush — small leaves, low growth, crowned berries — leave the fruit on it.

Saskatoon berries (serviceberries, juneberries)

Know it by: a tall shrub or small tree with smooth grey bark and clusters of white blossoms in spring; by early summer the berries ripen deep purple, each one like a tiny apple with a crown — it is a cousin of the apple.

When: early summer. Part eaten: the ripe berries. How: fresh, dried, or cooked into juice, jam, pie, and syrup. The traditional berry of the Prairies and the West, named for the city of Saskatoon.

Watch out: eat the fruit, not the leaves or bark. If the "berry" has no apple-like crown, it is not this plant — stop and re-check.

Fiddleheads — ostrich fern only, cooked, always

Know it by: the fiddlehead is the curled young shoot of the ostrich fern, spring only. Marks: a brown papery scale that peels off the curl, a smooth stem, and a deep U-shaped groove running up the inside of the stem — like the groove in a celery stalk.

How, exactly as Health Canada directs: remove the brown husk, wash in several changes of cold water, then boil for 15 minutes or steam for 10 to 12 minutes, and throw the cooking water away. Only after that may they be sautéed, fried, or baked. Cooking first is not optional.

Watch out: other ferns are not fiddleheads. Bracken fern in particular is linked to cancer. If the fern is not certainly an ostrich fern — papery scale, smooth stem, U-groove — do not gather it. Full official guidance: Health Canada fiddlehead safety tips.

Cloudberries (bakeapples)

Know it by: a low plant a few inches tall growing in bogs and tundra, with one single berry per plant that ripens from red to soft amber, shaped like a small raspberry.

When: about mid-August in Newfoundland and Labrador, where they are called bakeapples; the same berry ripens across Canada's northern bogs. Part eaten: the ripe berry. How: fresh — they are soft and do not travel well — or made straight into jam and pie filling.

Watch out: one berry per plant means a patch is picked out fast and feeds local people and bears too. Take some, leave most.

Spruce tips (the North)

Same food as the northern US entry above: the soft, bright-green spring tips of a true spruce tree — identified whole, needles on pegs, cones hanging down — eaten in small amounts raw, or made into tea or syrup. Canada's spruce forests make this the most available spring green in the North. The warning stands: never from yew or any evergreen shrub.

Nopal and tuna (prickly pear)

The same prickly pear as the US Southwest — and in Mexico it is a national food, shown on the flag itself. Young pads (nopales) are de-spined, sliced, and grilled or boiled. Fruit (tunas) — green, red, or purple — is peeled and eaten fresh once every glochid is off. CONABIO counts nopal and tuna among Mexico's representative traditional food plants.

Watch out: the glochids, exactly as up north. Tuna seeds are hard; many people strain the juice instead of chewing the fruit whole.

Pitaya

Know it by: the fruit of tall columnar cactus (Stenocereus), ripening in summer heat — a round, spiny fruit that splits or is cut open to show bright red or magenta flesh full of tiny black seeds.

Part eaten: the fresh flesh, scooped and eaten raw. CONABIO's state biodiversity studies list pitaya among Mexico's traditional edible cactus fruits.

Watch out: wild columnar cacti are slow-growing and many are protected. Never cut or damage a wild cactus for its fruit. Pitaya is a market food for most visitors — buy it where it is sold, and gather only where you know it is allowed.

Garambullo

Know it by: small round blue-grey berries on the blue candle cactus (Myrtillocactus geometrizans), a branched, blue-green columnar cactus of the dry highlands.

When: late spring into summer. Part eaten: the ripe berries, fresh. CONABIO lists garambullo among the traditional edible fruits of Mexico's dry country. Eat them where they are gathered or sold locally; like pitaya, do not damage the cactus to reach them.

Tejocote

Know it by: a small hawthorn tree of the highlands bearing hard orange-yellow fruit like tiny apples, ripening in late fall and winter.

Part eaten: the fruit, cooked — simmered into the Christmas punch called ponche and into preserves and sweets. CONABIO lists tejocote (Crataegus mexicana) among Mexico's traditional foods. It is a cooked fruit, not a trail snack: hard and sour raw, sweet and soft cooked.

Capulín

Know it by: Mexico's wild black cherry — a tree of the highlands with clusters of small cherries that ripen dark red to nearly black in summer.

Part eaten: the ripe fruit flesh, fresh, in small amounts — it is sold in markets across the highlands, and SEMARNAT lists capulín among Mexico's traditional food plants. Spit out the pits. Never eat the leaves, bark, or crushed seeds — like all cherries, those parts carry poison even though the ripe flesh is a traditional food.

Epazote

Know it by: a strong-smelling herb with jagged, pointed leaves — the smell is so sharp that people who know it cannot confuse it with anything else. That smell is the identification.

How: a few leaves as a seasoning — in quesadillas, beans, corn dishes, and soups. CONABIO lists epazote among Mexico's traditional flavoring plants. It is a seasoning, not a salad: a little flavors a pot; a lot can make you sick.

Water hemlock — the deadliest plant here

The USDA Forest Service calls water hemlock the most violently toxic plant in North America. It grows in wet ground — ditches, stream banks, pond edges, marshes — across the US and Canada. Hollow stem often streaked with purple, umbrella clusters of small white flowers, and roots with chambers inside.

Mistaken for: wild carrot, parsnip, and other white-rooted plants of wet ground. The root smells carroty and tastes sweet — poison-control cases begin that way. The toxin, cicutoxin, can bring convulsions within the hour and frequently kills. Rule: never eat any wild white-rooted plant of wet ground. Source: USDA Forest Service, water hemlock.

Death camas

Grass-like leaves and a stalk of cream flowers, growing from a bulb — in the same meadows, sometimes the same patch, as edible camas, and near wild onions. The USDA's poisonous-plant researchers study it because it keeps killing livestock and has poisoned people.

Mistaken for: wild onion and camas. The tell that saves lives: a true wild onion smells strongly of onion in every part — leaf, stem, and bulb. Death camas does not smell of onion at all. But even with the smell test, this page does not teach onion or camas picking: the two grow mixed, bulbs look alike underground, and a mistake is fatal. Leave bulbs in the ground.

Poison hemlock

A tall plant with a smooth stem marked with purple spots, fern-like leaves, and a musty smell when crushed. Every part is poisonous — this is the hemlock that killed Socrates.

Mistaken for: wild carrot and parsley. Wild carrot has a hairy stem and smells of carrot; poison hemlock's stem is smooth, spotted, and smells musty. Never eat a carrot-family plant you cannot name with certainty — this family holds both foods and killers.

Nightshade berries

Deadly nightshade and its common cousin bittersweet nightshade grow across the US and Canada — shiny black or bright red berries on soft vines and sprawling stems, with purple star-shaped flowers.

Mistaken for: wild cherries and dark berries generally, most often by children. Teach the kids' rule and enforce it: no wild berry of any color goes in a mouth unless a grown-up who knows that plant says yes.

Pokeweed

A big, fast-growing plant with thick purple-red stems and hanging clusters of dark purple berries. Roots, leaves, and berries are all poisonous raw, and poison centers take calls about it every year.

Mistaken for: a traditional green. "Poke sallet" is a real tradition — made safe, when it is, only by exact picking of the youngest leaves and repeated boiling in changes of water. A small error makes people very sick. This page does not teach it. Treat pokeweed as cannot-eat.

Buckeye

A smooth husk splits open to show a shiny brown nut with one pale tan "eye." It looks like a chestnut. It is not food. Buckeyes and their cousin the horse chestnut are poisonous in every part — nut, leaf, and bark.

Mistaken for: chestnuts and walnuts. A true chestnut comes in a husk covered in sharp spines, like a sea urchin, and the nut has a pointed tip. If the husk is smooth, walk away.

Yew

A common yard and garden evergreen shrub with flat, soft, dark-green needles and bright red cup-shaped berries, each holding one hard seed. The seed and the needles carry a heart poison that can kill with few warning signs.

Mistaken for: a harmless evergreen — and its "tips" for spruce tips. Yew is a shrub with berries and no cones. Never gather green tips from a shrub, and never eat the red berry cups: the flesh is not the worst part, but the seed inside it is deadly, and no one should be chewing either.

Oleander (the South)

A flowering ornamental shrub of the warm states — long narrow leaves, pink, red, or white blooms. Every part is deadly: leaf, flower, stem, and smoke.

Mistaken for: nothing edible — the danger is the wood. People have been poisoned roasting food on oleander sticks and brewing tea from its leaves. Never cook with oleander wood, never burn it where the smoke reaches food or people working close.

Moonseed

A vine bearing clusters of dark blue-black fruit that look like small wild grapes. The fruit is poisonous, and it has fooled grape pickers.

Mistaken for: wild grapes. Cut one open: a grape holds several small pear-shaped seeds, and the grapevine climbs with forked tendrils. Moonseed holds a single crescent-shaped seed — the "moon" — and the vine has no tendrils. Any "grape" without tendrils is not a grape.

Colorín seeds (Erythrina americana)

The colorín is a small tree of towns and dry hillsides, famous for flame-red flowers and pods of bright red beans. The beans are the danger: Mexico's traditional-medicine atlas, published by the national university (UNAM), records that the seeds carry alkaloids whose poisoning works on the nerves and muscles — weakness and paralysis, up to stopped breathing — and that the seeds are proven poison in animals.

Mistaken for: food beans, and picked up by children as beads and lucky charms. Bright red beans from a pod are never food. Keep them out of kids' hands as food, full stop.

Trompillo (silverleaf nightshade)

A silvery-leaved, prickly plant of dry ground across northern Mexico and the US Southwest, with purple star flowers and round yellow berries. It carries solanine, the same poison as a green potato — strongest in the green berries, present in the ripe ones too. The USDA warns it poisons livestock and people.

Mistaken for: tiny tomatoes or groundcherries. A groundcherry grows inside a papery husk; trompillo berries hang naked on a prickly, silvery plant. No husk, prickles, silver leaves — not food.