Building Your Foraging Library, Part 1

Start with a book on weeds!

Why Weeds? Many people think of weeds as the enemy. However, weeds and human beings have been involved with the dance called co-evolution for thousands, if not millions of years. That dance continues today.

Botanically speaking, a weedy plant is one that quickly appears when light reaches the soil. Human beings have a few habits that encourage the growth of weedy plants. We often remove, shorten, and thin existing plants and we also create, move around, and pile up bare dirt, all of which allows sunlight to reach the soil. These habits of ours not only encourage weeds to grow, but they also give weeds exactly what they need to thrive.

In the foreground toward the left, we see bare soil in a vacant lot. In the spring this entire space was bare. At the base of the young bitter dock (Rumex obtusifolius)* and the cleavers (Galium aparine) we find some toxic creeping buttercup (Ranunculus repens)*. The tiny yellow flowers are from nipplewort (Lapsana communis). The nipplewort usually …