What wild plants do you collect and eat equivalent to the US temperate zone?

When I was a kid we used to pick wild blackberries in NY, and the kicthen at the resort we used to stay at would make pies with them. My neighbor in TN used to pick them sometimes also, and my MIL would make a syrup like topping for ice cream.

The father of a friend of mine picked mushrooms on his property and we would eat them. When asked how he knows if a mushroom is poisonous or not, he answered, “I only pick the ones I know are safe. If I don’t know I don’t pick it.”

Where I live in zone 7 there is literally food all over the place. Blackberries are my favorite but I have been known to gather chickweed for salads and sandwiches. I used to make sassafras tea as a kid. On rare occasion I’ll find some wild blueberries. I still can’t resist grabbing a few honeysuckle flowers when I walk by them.

I loved wild black raspberries when I was a kid, @JLeslie. I would get up of a morning, pick a cup or two, and make waffles for breakfast. The smell of them baking was heaven. I have mushrooms in the icebox that I picked yesterday. I only pick and eat Morels. Sadly, now that wild turkeys are back, there seem to be few wild berries around.

I’ve only seen wild blueberries once, @ARE_you_kidding_me, and that was in the Ozarks. Occasionally I see wild strawberries around here, and they are no bigger than a pea…far ro small to pick and eat. I’ve used small dandelion leaves for salad and once breaded and fried the flower heads.
As a side note, there is a program being advertised here on how to identify and kill honeysuckle in the wild.

We have tons of wild blackberries here and miners lettuce, wild sorrel, and various other edible native plants. Yes, dandelions too.

We don’t have miner’s lettuce here, @Coloma. I had to look up what it even is, and it’s a west coast thing. Pity.

@ibstubro I should ship you some, jeez it is a foot tall or more here and everywhere. We pull big bunches for the chickens, they love it. haha

And you make salads of it, @Coloma? Or mix it in with other greens?

Yes, I have used it with nastursiums (sp?)and other fun things in a salad. It has a zippy kind of dillish flavor but they say it tastes like spinach cooked. I have never cooked it.

There are a few known wild blueberry patches near me :) Poke sallet is a delicacy here as well. Most people don’t realize that Kudzu is edible, the young shoots are actually tasty.

Sounds really good, @Coloma. Especially raw.

I’ve never had the nerve to try poke, @ARE_you_kidding_me, but I was reading about it recently. I think they said it’s not poisonous unless the berries are on/ripe. That would make sense from a ‘protecting the young’ standpoint. Poke is a weed I tolerate, because it’s so pretty and succulent looking.

IT’S POISONOUS AS HELL. You can’t eat the berries and you must boil the leaves and discard the water several times before the leaves are edible.

In theory the [poke] juice could be made into jelly. While the berries are the least poisonous part of the plant, never eat the seeds or the root.

Poke Berry Jelly

When I was a kid, I picked poke berries for a woman 70–100 for her to make rheumatism medicine. We always joked that fermenting poke berries apparently took out the toxicity. She may have fermented them, but she was one up on us that the berries aren’t poisonous and my last link has a recipe for rheumatism medicine that’s very innocent.