How to find food right under your feet by foraging in Oregon this spring

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As winter eases into spring and the ground warms, plants are unfurling — offering food to the foragers and wild harvesters who know how to find them.

Purple deadnettle, cleavers, chickweed, dandelions, dock, catsear, wild onions, miner's lettuce, brassicas and English daisies are among the treasures hiding in plain sight.

As long as humans have lived, they have foraged for food. The advent of grocery stores makes it easy for most to leave harvesting to the professionals. But some popular books and social media influencers have encouraged more people to notice the abundance around them.

The bestselling book "Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants" by Robin Wall Kimmerer beckons readers to understand themselves as a part of nature and to therefore engage in a reciprocal relationship with the living world.

On TikTok, Ohio-based Alexis Nikole Nelson, known as BlackForager, has garnered more than 4 million followers for her foraging and cooking videos, often ending with her catchphrase “Happy snacking. Don’t die.”

Related: BlackForager Alexis Nikole Nelson Goes Foraging with Jimmy Kimmel

Foraging is an increasingly popular activity in Oregon where the relatively mild weather conditions support lush greenery nearly year-round, many residents are captivated by the outdoors, and there’s a big interest in self-sufficiency.

David Johnston has gained a following among the 30,000 members of the Facebook group Eugene Foodies! for his photos and videos of partially foraged meals made in nature, usually creekside. He’s been foraging for more than two decades and told the Paste BN Network that the joy is in the process.

“There’s a bounty of good things all around us,” Johnston said. “I was hooked once I realized, ‘Oh, we’re treasure hunting, we’re not foraging.'"

The Paste BN Network in Oregon went on excursions with a few foraging experts to learn more about the delights spring offers and the people who seek them out.

Sam Bretz, forager and fine dining chef

A wild food novice can sample local offerings without an expedition into the forest.

Foraged foods can be found in soaps, jellies, tinctures and fresh at farmers’ markets. Some fancy restaurants will hire foragers to give their meals a fresh and unique edge. It’s like farm-to-table, but forest-to-table.

And it’s getting more popular, said Sam Bretz, who started a foraging company and is currently sous chef at Bar Purlieu in Eugene, Oregon.

“It’s in vogue,” Bretz said. “Chefs are always looking for something that is unique, something that people haven't tried before.”

Foraging has always been a part of Bretz’ life. He grew up in Montana and remembers picking mint, raspberries and wild gooseberries with his grandpa. As an adult, when he began to follow his passion for the culinary arts, he found foraged foods gave his food flair.

He started a foraging company while he was head chef of Restaurant Beck in Depoe Bay. He also foraged in Copenhagen when he worked at Michelin restaurant Kokkeriet, where he was surprised to find some familiar plants in unfamiliar forests.

On a rainy spring day, he pointed out young miner’s lettuce, scientific name Claytonia perfoliata, in a Eugene park. The tender plant can be used like spinach, Bretz said. He excitedly shared how the plant’s common name comes from its historic use by miners to prevent scurvy thanks to its high vitamin C content.

Long before it was used by gold rush hopefuls, Miner’s lettuce was a traditional food of the Chumash People of California’s central and southern coastal regions who ate the plant fresh or boiled. The plant and its subspecies can be found from Alaska down to Central America and has been naturalized in Europe.

Bretz is in the process of opening an ice cream truck and hopes to offer unique and foraged flavors. He pointed to cherry blossoms, which litter sidewalks like confetti this time of year. Stone fruit flowers are edible and taste a bit like almonds. They can be used to make delicious sorbet, Bretz said, as long as blossoms are carefully separated from leaves and branches, which contain higher concentrations of cyanide.

He also found Cardamine hirsuta, commonly called hairy bittercress. Its tender early leaves and peppery-tasting white flowers pair nicely with fish, Bretz said.

The plant is native to Europe, but has become a known headache for gardeners around the world. Sometimes called shotweed, the plant distributes its seed by bursting explosively when disturbed.

While he’s often on the hunt for flavors that elevate his dishes, Bretz said the search is often its own reward.

“It changes your hikes and your walks because you start noticing all the plants around you,” Bretz said. “It becomes a more intimate time with nature.”

He laughed at himself as he described dates gone awry and hikes with friends slowed down when he couldn’t contain his excitement for the foods he found.

He has some recommendations for beginners: Check with parks to understand the foraging rules, be cautious of areas that might use chemical sprays and don’t wipe out a crop of found goodies.

Bretz recommends using an app to identify plants, his favorite is seek by iNaturalist. Sometimes a book on plants in the region can be the best starting place, he said.

“Just go get a book and go sit in the forest,” Bretz said.

Kids with Whole Earth Nature School

In early April, a group of kids dressed in bright raincoats and rain boots stomped through mud, ducked under tree branches and somehow traversed directly through blackberry brambles as they searched for the plants to make a salad.

These foragers were part of Whole Earth Nature School’s Cayote Kids daytime program. Each week, they spend four hours with instructors playing, observing and learning in parks in the area.

Founded in 2008, Whole Earth Nature School offers experiences in nature and wildlife skills to kids through camps and programs.

Instructor JoJo Jorissen said she wants the participants to be left with a sense of “at-homeness” with nature, confidence in their skills and the ability to build relationships with nature and people. Before the search for salad ingredients began, she asked her band of merry adventures what the foraging rules were.

The kids responded, not quite in unison but with enthusiasm, “Ask twice. Ask a knowledgeable grown-up and ask the plant.”

Asking a plant means observing if there's enough of it to be shared. If there's not much, the kids are encouraged to leave it alone.

After going over rules and plants to avoid, the kids ran along paths in the Mount Pisgah area. They know to get away from roadsides and popular dog walking paths to find food safe for eating.

The area does not usually allow for foraging, but the nature school has special permission. It helps that most of what they’re harvesting is invasive.

The Cayote Kids are quick to point out patches of greens they're familiar with. They can easily rattle off what makes each plant distinct. They’re adventurous and unafraid of the bitter, sour and earthy flavors spring offers.

“Foraging definitely expands the definition of what is food and maybe makes someone more open to other cultures and cuisine,” said Alyssa Reeder, a junior counselor who grew up participating in Whole Earth’s programs.

However, the group was torn on whether to use cleavers in their salad.

Galium aparine is commonly known as cleavers, clivers, catchweed and sticky willy, among many other names. The species is native to a wide region of Europe, North Africa and Asia and is now naturalized throughout most of the world. The plant’s tiny, hooked hairs make for great Velcro-like DIY badges for campers and while they are edible, that texture can be an acquired taste.

One child found a sharp piece of wood that looked like a broken walking stick.

“That’s a great digging tool,” Jorissen said.

The new find was promptly wedged into the wet dirt to wriggle out wild onions, which were a more popular salad ingredient.

More than 100 species of wild alliums can be found in North America. While foragers urge caution against confusing them with toxic lookalikes such as Death Camas, the nose knows – wild alliums will smell like onion or garlic and tricky lookalikes do not.

The discovery of some Bellis perennis, often called common daisy, lawn daisy or English daisy, added a bit of beauty to their harvest with its white petals and yellow center. The plant is native to Europe but has become widely naturalized in most temperate regions. Young leaves and flowers can be eaten raw or used in tea.

Many of the easy-to-find and easy-to-eat plants are considered invasive weeds, Reeder pointed out.

“If people are harvesting responsibly, it can be sustainable,” she said.

Holly Hartmann, a popular YouTuber

Holly Hartmann has always been at home outside. She remembers her dad driving around in southeast Kansas in the 1960s, stopping and getting the family out to pick dock, Lamb's ear and pokeweed.

“There are plants that I've known since I was a kid,” Hartmann said. “We just grew up that way.”

The sheer number of mushrooms and plants to meet provide at least a lifetime of learning, she said. As she sought out videos from other foragers to learn more, she found that many just pointed at the plants and didn’t have much to say about how to use them. In 2015, she set up her own YouTube page, Haphazard Homestead, to give people ideas about the easy and practical uses of foraged foods.

“There is a big interest,” Hartmann said. “I hope my videos are helpful.”

Haphazard Homestead has 46,500 subscribers.

She took the Register-Guard on a tour of an unkept piece of parkland in her neighborhood to show what’s hiding in the swaths of green. Foragers should look for foods that are safe, legal, ethical and practical, Hartmann said. Every public piece of property run by a different agency will have different rules, so it’s best to check each time.

“I've talked to city workers in public areas, and said, ‘Is it OK if I pick here?’ and they go ‘Yeah, whatever, I don't care,’” Hartmann said.

Invasive weeds tend to be less of a concern for agencies, she said.

“Could you ever over-pick blackberries in the Northwest?” Hartmann said. “Knock yourself out.”

Little bunches of purple orbs stuck out in the otherwise green and yellow land. These flowers are called Grape hyacinth, but unlike true hyacinths, they are not toxic.

Scientific name Muscari armeniacum, these little flowers are part of the lily family. The blue or purple and sometimes pink or white flowers are edible, but not the stem or leaves. The flower is native to Eurasia but has been naturalized elsewhere, including northern Europe and the United States.

Its flavor is flowery but bitter. Hartmann said she wouldn’t eat a whole bowl of them, but they add another depth of flavor to a wild salad with a dozen other interesting ingredients.

Hartmann isn’t too fancy, she’ll tell you. She encourages foragers to keep their harvest clean and organized to minimize work in the kitchen. Hartmann uses her many recycled cereal and bread bags to collect her foods.

“This is regular food for regular people,” Hartmann said with a wink (wild foods are typically fiber-filled).

She spotted young catsear, also known as hairy cat's ear, flatweed and spotted catsear, scientific name Hypochaeris radicata, and added it to the mix. The plant is native to Europe but has been introduced to other continents and is considered a weed. Sometimes called false dandelion, its leaves are often less bitter.

Near the end of her tour, she gasped.

“Do you know this one?” Hartmann said, snapping off a larger plant’s leaf and offering it. “Wild field mustard.”

Compared to some of the more distinct flavors she offered earlier in the tour, this one tastes a bit more like something that could be found in the crisper drawer of a refrigerator.

Brassica rapa is a plant species growing in various cultivated forms including turnip, napa cabbage, bok choy, rapini and wild field mustard. Believed to have originated in central Asia, now both cultivated and feral Brassica rapa can be found in most parts of the world.

On a park bench, she rinsed and cut all her findings into little pieces for a big, wild salad.

Hartmann encourages people to get familiar with a few spots in their neighborhoods and to focus on one area as the seasons change. She said eventually, the careful observer will feel at home.

“You just feel like you're surrounded by friends,” Hartmann said. “You have a different feeling about how you live in the world.”

Cautions and recommendations

Michelle Jacob, a professor at the University of Oregon, recommends people engage with wild foods from a place of gratitude, respect and responsibility as well as the knowledge that they are on Indigenous homelands. She's an enrolled member of the Yakama Nation.

"I speak from my Yakama perspective, from my own tribal peoples. We're taught that our plants are our relatives," Jacob said. "One of what our many elders refer to as our unwritten laws is that we have a responsibility to be respectful and in good relation with our plant foods."

She's the author of several books. Her latest are "Huckleberries and Coyotes: Lessons from Our More than Human Relations" and "The Auntie Way: Stories Celebrating Kindness, Fierceness, and Creativity." In the latter, she has a story about learning from her elders the importance of carefully preparing oneself to be around plant relatives.

"When I learned from and with elders, they always wanted people to have that good mind and good heart," Jacob said. "Certainly for Indigenous peoples, but for all peoples, because when folks are relating to place in that way, then they're much more likely to not be doing damage."

Those who may be curious about the history and tradition of the land they live on can often find information on tribal websites.

"We're so fortunate in this time, the historical moment that we're living in. Tribal nations have generously provided curricular resources," Jacob said.

Expert foragers encourage people to look into the rules of the areas where they wish to forage. Most parks do not permit the removal of plant material without a permit, but are less concerned with the removal of invasive species.

Contact reporter Tatiana Parafiniuk-Talesnick at Tatiana@registerguard.com or 541-521-7512, and follow her on Twitter @TatianaSophiaPT.