HAYWARD — When Philip Stark spots weeds, he often sees the beginnings of a flavorful, nutritious meal.
The UC Berkeley professor shared his self-taught knowledge of edible weeds and feral plants recently on a walk in South Hayward.
Feral? Those plants are ones that once were cultivated but escaped, he explained.
Stark led a group through Weekes Park and a nearby neighborhood searching for plants that can be eaten. Thanks to the winter rains, he had no trouble finding plenty.
“You have food growing under your feet,” he said to the group made up of all ages in the park.
As more than 40 people crowded around him, Stark would take a few steps, stop, reach down and point out another edible weed, occasionally picking part of one to show people its characteristics.
Stark is a statistician, not a botanist. But about 10 years ago, he became more curious about the plants he would see on his long-distance trail runs.
“As I started to learn more (and to come home with my running shorts full of weeds for dinner), I started to see edible plants everywhere, including urban areas,” he said.
He uses several resource books for identification, including CalFlora (http://calflora.org) and the East Bay Regional Park District Wildflower Guide (http://www.ebparks.org/Page278.aspx).
“I made a sport of learning a new edible plant every week, and of finding something foraged to eat daily, all year long,” Stark said.
But foraging for a meal is not legal in most parks, public lands or private property without permission, though most people probably would not mind at all.
“The only place you are allowed to forage is in your yard,” he said.
Stark would like to change that. He continues to lobby East Bay Regional Parks to lift its prohibition. He advocates for cities to stop using herbicides on public lands and instead promote foraging.
He rattled off some of the benefits of encouraging foraging and reducing herbicide use: free, nutritious food; less waste; healthier eating; a greater variety of food in diets; water savings; and increased biodiversity.
Stark is the founder of Berkeley Open Source Food (https://forage.berkeley.edu ), which promotes foraging.
The organization is doing a research project to map the availability of wild/feral foods in urban food deserts in Oakland and Berkeley to see whether they could contribute meaningfully to nutrition and to be sure they are safe to eat.
So far the research is encouraging, with no traces of toxins such as lead or PCBs in tested samples.
Among the edible weeds spotted on the South Hayward walk: mallow, sow thistle, oxalis, stork’s bill, bristly oxtongue, dandelions, wild lettuce, plantain and clover. Also seen was nasturtium, grown in gardens and whose flowers are sometimes picked for salads, but the leaves are edible, too, Stark said.
Eating edible weeds and feral plants is nutritious, but foraging cannot provide all of the body’s caloric needs, Stark said.
While only a few East Bay weeds are inedible, much like a shopper at a grocery store, Stark does not consume all the ones he finds, just what he likes.
Some of what are now considered weeds, such as the common dandelion, were once grown as a food source, Stark said.
“It’s a mystery to me why some plants are in fashion and some aren’t,” he said. “We have reduced the diversity of the plants we eat.”
As growers have bred for sweetness, they also bred a lot of nutrition out of food, he said. Wild dandelions have 2 ½ times the iron of commercial dandelion greens, for example. Wild lettuce packs a lot more nutrients than Romaine.
“Some people think all weeds are bitter, but the plants cover an enormous spectrum of flavor,” Stark said.
“Miner’s lettuce is mild. And mallow is nice in a salad; it’s very mild and approachable,” he said.
He often adds a few foraged leaves into a taco or quesadilla to make the dish more interesting and healthier. The edible weeds are rich in nutrients.
For instance, mallow is high in calcium. Miner’s lettuce got its common name because the 49er gold miners discovered that eating the vitamin C-rich plant helped avoid scurvy.
While Stark often will eat weeds raw, he sometimes cooks them lightly. He will roll up ones with a rough texture and cut them into ribbons before tossing into a salad or other dish.
“When I see a yard full of weeds, it says to me, it’s a vibrant yard. I noticed that there’s more food growing where people don’t ‘groom’ their yards with chemicals,” he said.
The March 11 tour was sponsored by the Hayward Seed Lending Library, a community seed exchange at the Hayward Public Library.
Stark quit buying commercial greens some time ago.
“You can’t get more local than picking plants by your front door,” he said.
“And it’s good exercise,” he added.
Wild/Feral Food Week
Berkeley Open Source Food is holding its third annual Wild/Feral Food Week, where chefs prepare meals featuring foraged food, April 16-22. Restaurants taking part include several in the Bay Area, plus some in Northern and Southern California, New York, Philadelphia, Scotland and Portland, Oregon.
Stark invites interested chefs to contact Berkeley Open Source Food.
For more information, go to https://forage.berkeley.edu.
Also: Berkeley Open Source Food also has produced a field guide, “The Bay Area Baker’s Dozen of Wild Edibles,” to assist those interested in foraging.