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The Queensway (Teens/Adults) is unfortunately unavailable

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Prospect Park (Teens/Adults)

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Discover the hidden culinary treasures of Prospect Park as you learn to identify and harvest edible and medicinal plants, mushrooms, and berries. Join us for a unique foraging experience led by an expert guide. Don't miss out on this opportunity to explore the park's natural wonders and enhance your knowledge of wild foods.

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The Queensway (Teens/Adults)

  • All levels
  • 13 and older
  • $10
  • Woodhaven Blvd, New York, NY
  • 2 hours

Start Dates (0)

  • $10
  • The Queensway @ Woodhaven Blvd, New York, NY 11373
  • 2 hours
  • The suggested donation is $10/children
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Class Description

Description

What you'll learn in this nature tours class:

In conjunction with Friends of The Queensway, this tour explores a long-abandoned RR line that runs through Forest Park, and it's one of the best places for foragering in mid-spring. The secondary growth forest, trail edges, and thickets overflow with wild plants. We’ll explore adjacent trails in Forest Park itself as well.

This is the season for shoots, greens, and flowers. On the embankment off Forest Park Dr., above the Queensway, we’ll come to a large stand of Devil’swalkingstick. This small tree gets its name because only The Devil could use the very thorny trunk as a walkingstick. The large, red-and-green shoots at the tip of the trunk are prickly too, but you can trim the prickles away with a knife and cook the shoots, which regenerate, to make a vegetable similar to asparagus. 

This is the season for shoots, greens, and flowers. On the embankment off Forest Park Dr., above the Queensway, we’ll come to a large stand of Devil’swalkingstick. This small tree gets its name because only The Devil could use the very thorny trunk as a walkingstick. 

The large, red-and-green shoots at the tip of the trunk are prickly too, but you can trim the prickles away with a knife and cook the shoots, which regenerate, to make a vegetable similar to asparagus. 

Handle this delicacy with gloves until you’ve trimmed off the prickles, then prepare like asparagus.

Another shoot in great abundance will be Japanese knotweed, which looks like asparagus and tastes like rhubarb. The faster you collect this tasty, nutritious, invasive wild plant, the faster it regenerates. We'll also find tender, young grape leaves throughout the tour. 

These are exceptional, parboiled in salted water, and stuffed with traditional or non-traditional fillings. Greens such as greenbrier, Asiatic dayflower, and wood sorrel, all with their own unique flavors, will abound on this trail as well.

Burdock, an expensive detoxifying herb sold in health food stores, grows throughout the area too. The cooked roots taste like a combination of potatoes and artichokes, and the parboiled, peeled young stems also taste like artichokes. This invasive species hails from Europe an Asia, and the more you pick, the faster it grows back.

Sassafras grows in open places in the woods and along the edges of trails. It tastes like root beer, which you make from the taproots. You can also use it for brewing a delicious, detoxifying tea, and as a cinnamon-like seasoning. The young leaves thicken soups, creating gumbos. Sweet cicely, which should be flowering, has leaves and roots that taste like black licorice, wonderful in salads, oatmeal, and various savory and sweet dishes. The black birch tree, of birch beer fame, is a common forest tree that tastes like wintergreen. 

The twigs, which you can chew, make a delicious non-steroidal anti-inflammatory herb tea. You can thicken, season, and sweeten the tea to make Black Birch Jello, or use the twigs to flavor puddings! Everyone will also find plenty of leafy green vegetables, such as chickweed, which tastes like corn, pungent garlic mustard leaves,  mild-flavored violets, and spicy field garlic.

School Notes:
If you can't attend the class you signed up for, please call or email "Wildman" Steve Brill a day before the start of the class. No-call/no-show creates an inconvenience to all participants since we can’t tell if absentees are having transportation issues, and this delays the start of the tour/class.

Kindly note that price posted is our suggested donation only.

Refund Policy

  • Participants can cancel 2 business days before an event and get a refund less a 5% nonrefundable registration fee.
  • If the participant failed to show up in the tour or failed to notify about their absence 2 business days before the class, they will be required to pay a $25 penalty per person before being allowed on another tour.
  • In any event where a customer wants to cancel their enrollment and is eligible for a full refund, a 5% processing fee will be deducted from the refund amount.

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"Wildman" Steve Brill

Foraging expert Steve Brill has shared his foraging wisdom at schools, museums, parks departments, environmental organizations, and with scout troops since 1982. He’s written three books and an app, stars in a DVD and maintains a website.

His History with Foraging

As part of his exercise regime, he...

Read more about "Wildman" Steve Brill

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"Wildman" Steve Brill

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At the NE corner of Woodhaven Blvd and Forest Park Dr, in front of Victory Field in Woodhaven, Queens.

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