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Food Beneath Our Feet: Foraging Tours in Fairmount Park
August 14, 2022 @ 10:00 am - 12:30 pm
Join Fairmount Park Conservancy for “Food Beneath Our Feet in Fairmount Park” tours with expert forager and naturalist Lynn Landes and Lady Danni Morinich. Lynn is the founder of The Wild Foodies of Philly, a 6000+ member educational foraging meetup since 2010. This will be the second in a 3-part series in Fairmount Park, with the last one scheduled for October 2 (location to be determined).
On these tours you will learn about the wonderful world of wild plants and their “uses” for food, fiber, and medicine. Wild edible plants and animals are the only truly sustainable food source, in that they can reproduce themselves without human help. Wild foods also add diversity and nutrition to our diet, and should be recognized for the priceless gift they are to humanity.
The tour will introduce you to a variety of plants with nutritional and medicinal benefits, including: Spiderwort, Spicebush, Sassafras, and Sweet Birch, as well as Wineberry, Milkweed, Plantain (not the banana), Paper Mulberry, Purslane, and Asian Lemon, just to name a few. In preparation for the tour, please visit www.WildFoodies.org to learn the Basics of Foraging. You can also watch Lynn’s powerpoint, “Wild Foodies 101” if you really want to jump into the “tall weeds” of this fascinating field! After the tour, you will be emailed a hyperlinked list of the plants we discussed, so don’t worry about taking notes during the tour.
Hope to see you there as we forage on, with care!
Estimated distance: usually about 1.5 – 2 miles
Level: moderate exertion
Terrain: combination of flat open parkland and hilly trails
IMPORTANT NOTE: We are exploring and observing edible plants for educational purposes only. We will discuss their nutritional and medical benefits, but we will not remove or consume them. Please DO try this at home in your own backyard, but DO NOT try this in the park. Foraging/harvesting from the park’s natural areas without official permission is strictly forbidden.
