Sunken Meadow State Park (Teens/Adults)

Sunken Meadow Park

The seashore is always a special place for edible wild plants. Early spring is no exception, and Sunken Meadow Park exemplifies the best of the habitat. In addition to the beach habitat and adjacent thickets, it's got cultivated areas, wetlands, and woodland trails.

The most spectacular find in the sand within sight of the ocean, sea rocket is a pungent, succulent mustard found nowhere else, and it's as healthy as it is tasty. 

In the LI sound itself, we're sure to find rockweed, which is an excellent ingredient in soups and Japanese dishes, although you can also prepare it like kale chips. Rockweed tastes so good, you'll love it even if you're a jazz fan! It's also a great source of iodine and other minerals, so herbalists used it for thyroid problems for centuries. If the cause was iodine deficiency, it would be effective.

We'll probably also find sea lettuce, great sautéed with garlic in olive oil, or added to soups. You can even candy this seaweed. We could also find Irish moss, one of the best thickeners of soups and beverages.

In thickets away from the water, we'll come across the northern bayberry (our native version of bay leaves), sour sheep sorrel, and yarrow. We should also find, field garlic, poor man's pepper, and mullein growing along the edges of trails or in fields.

If there has been sufficient rain beforehand, there could be choice gourmet mushrooms such as dryad's saddle, which, marinated and baked, makes an outstanding meat substitute. Savory fairy ring mushrooms may also be around.

You can't get better early spring foraging than this!

Meeting place:

The 3-hour foraging tour of Sunken Meadow Park at the benches between the Sunken Meadow Park Bath House and Parking Field #1, in Kings Park, NY.