Become an invasivore and eat your way to a healthier planet with help from Northeast Foraging.

Some plants are takeover artists. Often these are introduced, so-called alien species that spread so prolifically they can crowd out native plants. Some of them, such as mugwort, are allelopathic, meaning that they exude substances that can suppress the growth of other plants.

Non-native species get introduced into a region both intentionally and unintentionally. Some of the most aggressively invasive species, such as Japanese knotweed, were originally touted by the horticultural trade as attractive ornamental landscaping plants. They jumped the garden fence and took off on their own. Other species probably arrived here as seeds clinging to the clothes of colonists and immigrants.

When you harvest invasive species, you are not threatening that particular plant population (trust me, the mugwort will be just fine). More than that, you are giving slower-growing, non-invasive native plants a fighting chance.

Japanese knotweed
Polygonum cuspidatum

This voraciously invasive plant is fair game for foragers in the Northeast. The shoots can swing sweet or savory, and they do a fine stand-in job for rhubarb.

Where and When to Gather
Japanese knotweed loves disturbed and rocky soils. It will grow in both partial shade and full sun. It is especially prolific in urban areas from community gardens to city parks, but also alongside country roads. Collect Japanese knotweed shoots in early spring when they are thick and unbranched.

How to Eat
Ants love Japanese knotweed, and you are almost guaranteed to bring some home along with the harvest. Drop the shoots into a sink full of water immediately to take care of the ants.

Cut off the leafy tips and compost or discard that bit as well as any nascent leaves at the nodes. With very young, tender shoots, that may be all the prep you need. Older shoots may need to be peeled if their skins are already getting a little stringy.

Use Japanese knotweed in any recipe that calls for rhubarb. The taste isn’t identical—knotweed has a greener flavor—but the sourness and texture are similar. Because of that green taste, I usually combine it with other fruits for sweet dishes rather than featuring it solo. Combined with strawberries, it makes a fantastic sorbet or compote.

You can also use Japanese knotweed in savory dishes. It works well in pureed soup. Raw, Japanese knotweed adds a pleasantly sour flavor and crunch to salads, especially grain-based salads like tabbouleh. Last but not least, you can make Japanese knotweed wine (use a rhubarb wine recipe). And Polygonum cuspidatum contains the same resveratrol that gives red wine its health benefits.

How to Preserve
Japanese knotweed can be frozen without blanching. I recommend prepping it to the stage you will use in cooking. In other words, if the knotweed needs peeling and chopping, do that before you freeze. Japanese knotweed compote can be processed in a boiling water bath following the canning times for rhubarb.

Garlic mustard
Alliaria petiolata

Garlic mustard provides one of the best wild vegetables and two different kinds of seasoning. It’s also incredibly invasive, so you’re doing the ecosystem a favor when you harvest it.

Where and When to Gather
Look for garlic mustard in places that will be partially sunny or in light shade once the surrounding deciduous trees leaf out in the spring. Garlic mustard is especially fond of growing in disturbed soils near humans. It is prolific in urban parks and at the borders of tree-lined properties. Different edible parts of garlic mustard are ready to gather from early spring through fall, and even straight through the winter in some areas.

How to Eat
When the new flower stalks are still tender (around 8 inches tall) and bearing the green, unopened flower heads, treat them like broccoli rabe. At this stage they are one of my absolute favorite wild vegetables and I don’t bother adding other greens to them. Stir-fry them in a little extra virgin olive oil with a few red pepper flakes and a pinch of salt—delicious as is, or added to pasta and served with grated cheese.

Before the seed capsules are fully dry, when they are still green and easy to pinch in half, they make a good, mildly spicy raw snack. Not everybody loves the taste of garlic mustard seeds, but I find them very good when lightly crushed and added to curries. They are even better if you dry roast them in a skillet for a minute before using them.

Although the roots taste like horseradish, they are much smaller and stringier. To use them you need to mince them very finely, or chop them and use them to make an infused vinegar.

During the colder months, the basal rosette leaves can be used raw or cooked. They make an excellent winter pesto.

How to Preserve
Chopped garlic mustard roots can be steeped in vinegar for two weeks and then strained out. The infused vinegar has a pungent, horseradish-like flavor that is interesting in potato salad and on strongly flavored greens.

To store garlic mustard seeds, first dry the ripe seedpods in cloth or paper bags for about a week. It’s quite easy after that to winnow out the chaff from the seeds. Many of the seeds will already have fallen out while the pods were in the bags. Just rub the remaining pods gently in a large bowl to release the rest of the seeds. Shake the bowl to settle the seeds to the bottom. The lighter chaff will remain on top of the pile of seeds and can be easily picked off or blown away. Do not blow the chaff away if you are outdoors—you would be spreading any of the seeds that were still attached, which is a bad idea with this plant.

Burdock
Arctium species

Two delicious vegetables plus several kinds of herbal medicine from one plant: what’s not to love?

Where and When to Gather
As the saying goes, “One person’s weeds are another person’s dinner.” Burdock is a perfect example of this. In the Northeast, it is routinely weeded out of partially shaded to full-sun spaces, especially those with disturbed soils such as parks, gardens, and farms. But in Japan, it is cultivated as a root vegetable called gobo. You can find the roots for sale by that name in some markets in North America.

How to Eat
Gobo, or burdock root, is delicious in stirfries. If you leave it unpeeled, it has a somewhat musky, mushroomy taste. Peel it if you want something less earthy. For an even milder taste, soak peeled, sliced burdock root in cool water for twenty to thirty minutes before cooking it.

To use the immature flower stems, peel the bitter skin off with a paring knife (this sounds labor-intensive, but actually they peel very easily). Use them in any recipe for cardoons. Slightly undercooked, they have a texture a bit like celery but with a milder flavor. Cooked until soft, they have a texture similar to artichoke hearts. I like them lightly steamed, marinated in a vinaigrette dressing, and served at room temperature.

How to Preserve
Burdock flower stalks can be peeled, chopped, blanched for three minutes, and then frozen. For medicinal use, tincture burdock root by steeping the chopped roots in vodka or vinegar for a month before straining and transferring to dropper bottles.

*Northeast Foraging uncovers the best wild edibles for New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont and southern Canada. From woodland strawberries, to borage or sassafras bark, the Northeast is brimming with delicious finds.

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Leda Meredith is a lifelong forager and a certified ethnobotanist. She is an instructor at the New York Botanical Garden and at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, specializing in edible and medicinal plants. Leda writes a foraging column for the James Beard Award-nominated group blog, NonaBrooklyn. She is the guide to food preservation for About.com. You may also be interested in the author’s own Web site, LedaMeredith.com.

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Tagged as: Edibles, food, foraging, invasive plants, leda meredith, native plants