Wild Cress ~ Cardamine hirsuta

Wild Food is Everywhere!

Wild Cress is a tasty little spring green found all around the world, except in the very coldest, wettest, and driest places. It favors the same sorts of climates and environments that people do and has adopted well to human made and managed landscapes. No matter where you live, unless the climate is extreme, you can likely find it, in the right season, growing nearby.

Wild Cress is generally an early season ephemeral. It’s usually only around for a short time from late winter through early summer. It pops up in gardens, cracks in the sidewalk, along trails, in lawns, and alongside rivers and streams. It times its life cycle to the environment, racing to grow, flower, and release viable seed before the soil dries out, the days get too hot, the deciduous trees overhead close in and shade it out, or other plants out compete it. It can sometimes also be found year around, in cool moist places, both man-made and natural.