We can eat dandelions, but do they taste good?

Not really.

That is, not by themselves, pulled fresh out of the ground.  The greens have a bitter taste that I personally like, but I imagine most people won't. If pulling dandelions up from the ground and eating them is your first taste of wild edible foraging, you will probably be disappointed.

Now that being said, once you add dandelion greens to a salad, they enrich and embolden the flavor.

Fresh dandelion greens on top of leftover corn, tomato and eggplant salad

I tried picking some dandelion greens, washing them, and adding them to my leftovers of a flavorful vegetable salad (prepared by dear friends Andrew and Yelani), and the mix of the bitter greens with the sweetness of the corn and tomatoes was a perfect pairing.

Harvesting dandelions has so many benefits. They're weeds, so you're not harming a species by yanking a few of them out of the ground. They're a forager's dream in that you can use multiple parts of the plant. And they're extremely healthy.

The younger leaves are less bitter and can be added raw to salads and sandwiches (wash them first!).

Unopened flower buds can be fried or boiled.

You can make wine out of the flower petals.

You can blanch the leaves for cooking (just add a little olive oil).

You can make tea from the leaves, roots, and flower petals (don't use the whole flower head).

You can make dandelion coffee out of the taproot of the plant.

For more on making tea and coffee from dandelions (and preserving any leftovers), the Forager's Harvest blog has a very helpful entry.

The health benefits: dandelions have lots of vitamin A, calcium, and potassium. They can help with weight loss, improving memory, and PMS (in tea form). Dandelion is also a diuretic. For more on the nutrition and health benefits of this miracle weed, check out the Edible Wild Food blog.

For now, I'm going to stick with eating the greens. Something to bear in mind: pick dandelion greens right before you're planning to use them, if you're eating them raw. They will begin to wilt in your hand within seconds after picking them, so it's not the kind of plant you want to pick early on your foraging walks.

Foraging and Delayed Gratification

One of the frustrating things about foraging: most foraged plants are seasonal. Granted, this means that you can find some edible plants at any time of the year to harvest, but it also means that the edible plants you want to eat may not be ready for a while.

I have seen several lush fig trees with small green figs blooming on street corners throughout uptown - but they are ripening slowly. Today I spotted some furry green pecans growing in the university area... these won't be ready until fall.

I've also seen canna growing all over the city (mostly in private yards, but in some public spaces too). The beautiful red canna flowers may be blooming now, but foragers typically harvest the young rhizomes (horizontal roots), not the flowers - and these shouldn't really be harvested until the fall.

Canna growing along the street in the Riverbend area

Finally, to my surprise, I saw a ginkgo tree - according to the USDA site, these don't even grow here! In the fall, when the fruits fall to the ground, you can remove the seeds from the squishy fruit (with gloves), wash them, bake them, shell them, and fry or boil the nuts. Very healthy and delicious.

But for now, I have to wait.

Ginkgo in the Black Pearl

The Eat the Weeds blog has some helpful information for harvesting and enjoying ginkgo, if you're so inclined.

New Orleans' volatile weather adds another challenge to a by-the-book forager: many things ripen before or after they're supposed to according to nature guides or other informational sources.

I've noticed that some trees are already sprouting bunches of large bananas, while some are just beginning to flower. Kumquats are supposed to ripen in colder weather, but I've seen them growing all over uptown.

My personal strategy is just to track the things I want. You can find maps online of different cities and the location of various edible plants - for example, this one from Atlanta shows where you can find different fruits on a map of the city, and it wisely cautions foragers not to trespass. As you locate accessible wild edible plants, you can track them in this manner - and you won't forget where you saw a plant you're hoping to harvest.

Happy foraging!