How do you know what’s edible?

I certainly didn’t start out knowing anything or having a magic recipe. It’s all been a slow and steady process of identifying plants and researching edible uses, sometimes minutes and even hours standing in one spot on a trail, getting absolutely wrecked by mosquitos, just to finally be able to identify that that certain pretty plant I saw is, in fact, not edible. Sometimes I think I identify something and I post about it, just to have someone more knowledgable correct me! It’s taken me a lifetime plus a concentrated several years to get to a point where I feel confident identifying most plants I see on the island. However, I’ll always be learning new information and that’s kind of what I love about it. It’s never too late to start learning, even if its just a few plants you can eat and incorporate into your diet!

That being said, the ways in which I find out what is and isn’t edible vary. I have plenty of books at home which I hardly ever open let alone take on the trail with me, and I also have a few plant identification applications on my phone, which I wouldn’t recommend using unless you have a basic understanding of plant identification, because they can be unreliable and only point you in the right direction rather than identifying the exact plant you’re looking at.

Most of the time, I just use Google or Google Lens. I simply string together a bunch of descriptors for the plant at which I’m looking and press search! Or upload the photo to Google Lens. This is the most reliable source I have found.

Where do you find everything?

The short answer is anywhere! I think a lot of people imagine me foraging deep in a jungle somewhere unknown to most people on O’ahu, finding all kinds of strange nuts, juicy fruits, and exotic flowers. However, most of my foraging is done on well known trails or even in town close to my home. Rather than thinking that I’ve ventured further and deeper than other humans, I think its more a question of the kind of personality traits I’ve developed in order to be more mindful of my surroundings and the curiosity of wondering what plants may be nutritionally or medicinally useful. But the upside to all this is that literally anyone can start foraging and start incorporating free and nutritionally dense foods into their diet! And most of these plants can be found anywhere: along well known trails such as Diamondhead Crater and Mānoa Falls, coastal areas near your favorite beach, in the cracks in the sidewalk outside your home, and even in the Foodland parking lot.

What’s your favorite place to forage?

This ties in a little with the last question, but Mānoa Valley and Tantalus contain some of my favorite trails near town, as I’ve found the greatest diversity of edible plants in those locations. The beaches between Hunakai and Kahala have proven interesting, and I’ve found quite literally 22 different edible plants just in the area surrounding the parking lot for my three story walk-up apartment in the middle of Mo’ili’ili.

What’s your favorite ingredient that you’ve found?

I don’t really have a “favorite;” however, there are certain ingredients I’ve found that were more exciting than others for various reasons. Blue marble fruit was one of these simply because of the color. Finding coffee for the first time was exciting, mostly because learning how to process it from the raw fruit into the dark chocolate colored liquid we all know and love was incredibly more laborious than I had ever imagined and it made me appreciate what the indigenous people who first discovered how to do this had to go through to give us something we now can conveniently order for just a couple of dollars. Crotolaria pallida was exciting because it took me over two months to finally identify what it was. Pink velvet bananas were exciting because it was my first time seeing a wild banana and they were perfectly cute, pink, and floral looking. Sea purslane was exciting because I had to swim all the way to an island off shore from Kailua to track it down for the first time. Blue Vervain was exciting because of the flavor (it tastes exactly like mushrooms!), and snow mushrooms were exciting because it just doesn’t look like something you should be able to eat. Last but not least, strawberry guava because it was the first plant I ever learned to identify here in Hawai’i. However, Java Plums is my current favourite because of the colour and medicinal benefits that I love to enjoy.

What are your best sellers?

Definitely Liliko’i, followed by Strawberry Guava, Wood Sorrel Tonic, and Mango/Hawaiian Chili Pepper. However, I really feel Java Plum should be but just hasn’t caught on because people don’t know what it is!

How did you get into foraging?

The truth is, I’ve been doing it since before I can remember! My mother has a picture of me foraging wild berries when I was just three years old. My mother taught me all about wild plants and their uses, just as her mother taught her. In all honesty, I didn’t realise this was a specialised or unique skillset until an embarrassingly late age (it was around 2019 when I started posting about it on social media and got a lot of positive feedback). However, I did lose sight of this skill until I moved to Hawaii in 2016, at which point my curiosity and wonder got reignited by all the unique and vibrant plant life we have here on the islands!