There’s an increasing inclination to utilize more native species in home landscaping, and in parks and other conserved landscapes, thanks to books like Doug Tallamy’s Bringing Nature Home, which extol the virtues of native plants over exotic ornamentals for attracting and sustaining beneficial insects. Yet, for some property owners/managers, this alone may be insufficient motivation to “go native”. The fact that many native species are edible by people too provides an additional powerful incentive for people to plant them. Juneberries (Amelanchier spp.), for example, are equally edible by songbirds and people and taste like a cross between cherries and almonds. Edible wild plants offer opportunities for people to connect to nature via their taste buds, thereby building their enthusiasm and public support for adding edible native plants to their home landscaping, as well as conserving other lands that offer foraging opportunities. Adding native edible plants to a landscape can boost biodiversity as well as “spice it up” (literally as well as figuratively – i.e., we can have our acorn cake and eat it too). Join wild edibles enthusiast Russ Cohen, author of Wild Plants I Have Known…and Eaten, to learn about the comestible qualities of at least two dozen species of edible wild plants native to the ecoregions of the Northeast. Keys to the identification of each species will be provided, along with edible portion(s), season(s) of availability and preparation method(s), along with guidelines for safe and environmentally responsible foraging. Russ will also talk about his post-retirement role as a “Johnny Appleseed” for native edible species, collecting, storing, and sharing seed, propagating plants from some of that seed in his nursery, and forming partnerships with land trusts, municipalities, state and federal agencies, tribal groups and others, to plant plants from his nursery on appropriate places on their non-rare-habitat properties (see [ Ссылка ] for more info).

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