I probably posted this before, but I find that the dandelions growing in the shade of my hemlock and spruce trees have a less bitter, more delicate flavor than the ones growing in full sun. I much prefer the shade grown ones, especially the flowers.
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Fwiw, long have I seen in northern IL plants that looks like parsley growing just about anywhere grass grows.
Finally gathered some. Definitely parsley. Time to make pesto.
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Whoa whoa whoa!
The water hemlock that grows on my property is indistinguishable from parsley without a taxonomic key, and pesto made from that would likely definitely be fatal.
Thereâs a number of things that really look like actually are a kind of parsley that are deadly poison. Be careful!
Water hemlockâs been reported out of control to the north, south, and east of illinois.
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So update to that effect.
I did decide to double check it. When crushed, it smelled of parsley, and it tasted of parsley.
I decided to not risk it, after reading of the similarity to Hemlock. Went to the store and bought some.
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phew! You had me worried. Itâd be great if it was parsley, but the lethal dose on some of the parsley look-alikes is really low.
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FWIW, this is a sprig of what I am talking about. Looks, smells and tastes just like every bit of garnish Iâve ever eaten, grows in small bunches close to the ground, does not grow particularly tall:
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Nice picture; sure looks like family Apiaceae! That covers parsley, carrot, fennel and quite a bit of poisonous stuff too. Itâs a very large family, and the most distinguishing features tend to be in the roots, flowers and seeds rather than the foliage.
The really super deadly and invasive C. maculatum will grow very tall if itâs got full sun and plenty of water (itâs called water hemlock because it likes having wet feet). Mine has purple spots here and there on the major stems. In the shade or dried-out roadside ditches it grows lower to the ground.
But honestly, if youâve chewed some up and experienced no vertigo, gastric distress or numbness in your tongue or extremities, itâs almost certainly not water hemlock. And the leaves seem more palmate than hemlock, to me. If I had to guess, Iâd say wild carrot or some kind of water dropwort.
Personally, since Iâm right next to the University of Delaware, Iâd take a sample over and use their botanical taxonomic keys to nail down the species. If you have a ag extension or ag collegel locally, you can press some of that between wax paper and mail it to them, they are usually happy to help out.
This is the kind of thing I canât stand not to track down, personally. If it grows near me and looks edible, I HAVE TO KNOW. (Thatâs how come I know about water hemlock - I thought it was wild carrot originally.)
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Hen of the woods,
Or Chicken of the woods?
I always get confused by the names. Iâve come across Chicken of the Woods a couple of times, but never situated such that I could get to it.
Bracket fungi in Europe are generally safe - those that you canât eat are too woody to be edible rather than poisonous, as far as I know. I donât fuck about with mushrooms though. The calories to be had are very low, and the potential for horrible outcomes too high.
It was the orange one. Iâm not completely sure of the name, because an old hillbilly gentleman (I mean that in a nice way, since he calls himself a hillbilly) called it hen of the woods, and chicken of the woods, and also chicken of the tree.
Conium maculatum is just straight-up hemlock and your description matches it closely. I thought you might be thinking of hemlock water-dropwort (Oenanthe crocata) but I see there is also a Cicuta maculatum - spotted water-hemlock. One of those occasions when the full genus is useful - although in this case the desirability of any of the plants remains close to 0.
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Thatâs the way of common names! Itâs usually Laetiporus sulphureus although I think the Laetiporus family are all edible, and generally pretty similar to each other = so itâll be whichever species is common to your part of the world.
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There are so many ways that common wisdom fails, but when it comes to which local mushrooms or plants are good to eat, asking an old timer is the way to go. Unless you have actual scientific knowledge, of course. 
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Whereabouts? I used to live in Great Broughton, just outside Cockermouth.
@anon75430791 Apiaceae ainât nothing to fuck with. What youâve got there could be river water-dropwort (O. fluviatilis), parsley water-dropwort (O. lachenalii), foolsâ parsley (Aethusa cynapium) or something I donât recognise. It doesnât look much like parsley to me, but it could be something like saxifrage. (I have no idea what is native or introduced where you are).
Itâs a crazy plant family, as it contains some of the most important wild foods and herbs (carrots and parsnips, for example) alongside some of the supervillains of the toxic plant world, and identification can be quite challenging. Foolsâ parsley is meant to smell nauseating and garlicky when bruised - I guess youâd have noticed that.
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On the subject of garlicky - I was taught to identify Jack-by-the-hedge (Garlic mustard or Alliaria petiolata) last summer while helping on a bushcraft day, and now I keep finding it everywhere. It has a garlic flavour but quite mild (much milder than that of wild garlic), and thus is very suitable for using in pestos in large quantities.
I went to Staines to pick up my sonâs birthday present, and walking down one of those paths you get in suburban England, that run between the back gardens of houses on adjacent streets, partly shaded by their wooden fences, I found the verges to be completely carpeted with this stuff. Sadly it was likely to be dog wee central.
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Garlic mustard is very invasive here. I pull hundreds of them every year, much more than I can eat!
I too am a forager, with a Canadian wild food company that has over 150 different things in a given year, been going at it for 18 years now. Milkweed is one of my favorites, you can make fritters as mentioned, use the flowers for a flower syrup. We make pickles with the pods, but you can also deep fry them, stuff them or cook them up like a less slimy okra.
Milkweed doesnât need all that boiling, common milkweed can just be lightly sauteed, you can blanch before cooking but it is not necessary unless you are feeding people with latex allergies. You can also eat the shoots, but its best to leave them so monarch butterflies can get to the leaf.
This time of year you can pick morels, pheasant back mushrooms, wild leeks (ramps), day lily shoots, wild garlic, fiddleheads cattail shoots and cattail hearts, nettles and much more. I grabbed some jerusalem artichoke the other day and cedar and tamarack leaf to make syrup with.
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A bunch of people mention cattail, You can eat more than just the shoots.
When the cattails get to about waist height cut them and eat the hearts. As they grow taller the premature flower head can be grilled and eaten like corn. as the plant dies off in the winter and before it shoots up in the spring you can dig up the roots dry them and make a flour out of them. You can make a flour out of the flower head too, but it is not so greatâŚ
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Interesting - I suspected that what you referred to as âwild leeksâ or ârampsâ would be Allium ursinum - which in the UK is called âwild garlicâ, ârampsâ or âramsonsâ - because in German (as the Latin name may suggest) itâs called âBärlauchâ which translates as âBear leekâ. It turns out that youâre probably talking about a different species, A. tricoccum. Interesting how many familiar-seeming plants there mustâve been for europeans when they first arrived in the New World - I wonder how many âfalse friendsâ there are?
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Sounds like a product for your local farmers market is waiting to happen!
The think I think weirdest about this plant is the way the leaves change shape - when itâs low to the ground you have these crinkly lilypad-shaped leaves like in my last post, but when it bolts (which Iâve never eaten) the leaves become more nettle-shaped with a toothed, pointed leaf.
Nope I mean Allium tricoccum (ramps/wild leeks) , and allium canadense (wild garlic)
