A Beginner’s Guide to Foraging
Foraging 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Foraging
Foraging can be an incredibly daunting task, and most people have no idea where to start! I’m forever grateful that my mother got me started early and that my curious nature kept me going throughout adulthood. Listed below are a compilation of tips and tricks that will help you get started so you, too, can supplement your diet with nutritious, natural foods that are invasive on our islands.
•Get Curious: The first step to foraging is to simply open your eyes and look around! Whether you’re in the state of Hawai’i or elsewhere, most of us are surrounded by edible plants, even in a lot of urban areas! It sounds simple, but the key is to be mindful: pay attention to your surroundings and start wondering what the varying types of vegetation are and how you can use each one. Once you find a plant, the next step is to identify what it is!
•Identification: The hardest part of this whole process is learning how to identify plants. But once you learn this process, foraging becomes second nature. There are multiple ways to identify plants, and it all comes down to what works for you!
The first is books. In all honesty, this is probably my least favorite way to identify plants. It’s nearly impossible to find a comprehensive book on edible plants because most are specific to a certain location or subtype, so one would have to acquire multiple books in order to be able to rely on books alone as a source for plant identification. Books are great once you have a bit of experience identifying plants, but as a beginner you probably don’t want to haul a bunch of books around while you’re hiking. I do enjoy flipping through them while I’m at home as a means to retain some of the information for next time you go out.
The second means of idenfifying plants is plant identificaton applications for your phone. As a general rule, I wouldn’t rely on these as a beginner. They are often inaccurate, but can be useful if you have a bit of experience identifying plants already and can tell when something isn’t exactly the same in photos as in real life. However, often times if the plant looks similar, it is! Which means you can sort of progress from there and find out about related subspecies in the same family, which may lead you to a more accurate identification. Thus far, I have found Google Lens to be the most reliable way of identifying plants by image.
My third and favorite means of identifying plants is Google! I honestly find this to be the simplest and most reliable method. Simply type in a series of keywords that describe what the plant looks like and any other identifiers (i.e. large yellow flower Hawai’i) and search! Once results come up, you might not find what you’re looking for right away, but you can usually comb through an image search and find what you’re looking for eventually. When thinking of keywords, think location, color, shape, and type (i.e. tree vs. fruit vs. flower vs. fungus). Speaking of keywords, it is useful to know certain adjectives that describe plants, such as simple vs. compound leaves, or alternate vs. opposite vs. whorled leaves, or roots vs. rhizomes. On a smartphone, you can also tap the camera icon in Google’s search bar to upload a photo of the plant you are trying to identify to Google Lens. I find this method to be one of the most reliable ways of identifying a plant, plus it’s very easy to research details once you identify it!
Fourth and final is community: I’ve learned so much just by talking to other people who have an interest in plants. Some people have a wealth of knowledge that don’t identify as foragers: farmers, florists, botanists, and especially those that are indigenous to the place in which you live. Some of my favourite sources in Hawaii can be found on Instagram as @sunnysavage, @nattybynature, and @followsthewai, and most have links to professional and educational sources that can be found from their profiles.
AI: A lot has changed since I first wrote this article, and AI has changed the foraging game. Identifying plants has become a lot easier due to things like Chat GPT and Google Image Search. Once again, these can be unreliable and it’s always best to cross-reference sources.
•Research: Once you identify the plant, the next step is to research. The points of research may be specific to the individual (for example, the things I want to know about a plant tend to have more to do with edibility, while someone else may be looking for plants to recultivate in a garden. For me, the most important points of research are as follows:
Name: Common name, Latin name, Hawaiian name, and any other names that may be applicable.
Status: Native vs. Non-native and everything in between (endemic, naturalized, invasive, and culturally significant).
Environment: Elevation (low, medium, or high), Season, and Location (mesic, arid, coastal, etc).
Edible Uses: Edibility and how the plant can be used for food in various cultures or how best to translate the ingredient into an edible food or drink.
Flavor: How the plant tastes in various expressions.
Medicinal Uses: Traditional and modern uses for treating various ailments.
Characteristics: Note certain characteristics about the plant, such as how the leaves are structured or the colour of the flowers so you don’t forget for future foraging journeys!
• Experimentation: A lot of plants don’t yet have a lot of information available, but as long as I can find out if it’s safe to consume, I often experiment on my own with how best to use it. Sometimes it’s easy, and other times it takes me several attempts. When there’s a will, there’s a way!
•Don’t Play into Fear: The last point I want to make is a delicate one. Colonized literature will have you believe that the only edible foods are the processed, FDA-approved ones, despite the fact that indigenous cultures have been eating some of these “toxic” plants for centuries. And while I will be the first to say to do your research and find out what something is before ingesting it, I will also say that the wonderful world of wild food isn’t nearly as scary as the commercial food chain would have one believe. So please, don’t let the modern idea that wild foods will kill you stop you from experiencing and incorporating some of these nutritious foods into your diet. After all, some of them have amazing medicinal benefits, are incredibly delicious, and, it’s totally free!