Edible Plant Walks in Maryland

Nature Walks

• Nature walks are usually led by a trained guide, herbalist or botanist who is familiar with the edible wild plants of Maryland and can help you to identify them. The Wild Edible Plant Walk at the Integrated Pathways Center for Personal Growth in North Potomac, for example, features the edible and medicinal plants of Muddy Branch State Park and focuses on how to prepare them for ingestion. The guide, Kate Gold, is the author of the E-book "Wild Spring Edibles of the Greater DC Area," which is given to all participants of the plant walks. The walk begins at 10 a.m. and ends with a lunch prepared from the edible plants encountered while on the walk.

Plants Encountered

• Maryland has a very wide range of edible plants that grow in the wild, many of them very nutritious and packed with phytochemicals. The blueberry, the black huckleberry and strawberry are all abundant in the spring and summer, for example, and provide great material for homemade desserts, jams and breakfast fruits. The American chestnut is native to Maryland, and provides protein and healthy oils when in the wild. An abundance of wild greens grow as natural ground cover in many areas of Maryland, and are easily made into fresh salads. Even herbs, like wild ginger, can be used to spice up dishes and add flavor to other ingredients.

Edible Plant Gardens

• Another type of edible plant walk is one through an edible plant garden. Several community urban gardens are quite extensive in Maryland and offer guided tours of their facilities to the general public. Baltimore, for example, is home to 22 community gardens, most of them growing primarily edible plants. There are tours on the weekends, where groups of people visit a handful of gardens by bicycle or bus and are led on walking tours of each garden by one of its member gardeners.

Self Guided Walks

• Another way to take an edible plant walk is to go solo, with the help of a guidebook. "The Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants of Eastern and Central North America" (Peterson Field Guide Series) by Lee Allen Peterson contains an extensive array of listings of edible plants in the Maryland area. Learn edible plant identification on your own by exploring the woods and other wild areas of Maryland with a field guide to assist you.