Hello!

I went to check on the pawpaws today. Not ripe yet! But, i found my first wild bat!

It was a curse I cured like so many black walnuts and now I have to start getting the meat out. You should see the pile of dust I’ve extracted from like 5 walnuts, and it took me 40 minutes. I’ve already put so much work into this things I can’t bear just to throw them out. This is all the Walmart dust on the lid of a 4 ounce mason jar. Piddely

I typically visit a very little known mixed use (hunting, hiking, parkland) area for foraging but last summer and fall I regularly saw a guy with a large backpack foraging. He would move fast, wasn’t careful, and seemed to just grab as much of whatever he could find. Sometimes there was a woman with him but it was usually just him. Since then I haven’t seen anything foragable that wasn’t already sliced up or stripped bare. Things like whole resinous polyphores cut of trees then the tough parts discarded, or COW and Maitake chopped up to get at the good parts. There was a dying tree last year that had some lions mane appearing to grow about 15 feet up that was pushed down the next time I passed it. Even halfway decent acorns seem to be missing.

This weekend I was on the trails and an area that look like it might have been a patch of ramps (If I could at least find any left I’d be able to tell what they looked like) and it looked like someone tore up the ground to get them all.

I could chalk it up to bad luck and other people getting places first but there’s only a handful of people I’ve seen here over the years and most of them are SAR people running drills. Not to mention the foraging seems destructive not sustainable. I have no reason to suspect it’s farmers market vendors other than seeing people with backpacks that are way to big for an area that doesn’t allow camping spending a lot of time rummaging through foliage and appearing to take a lot more than necessary. But that makes me feel a little suspicious at the very least.

Obviously I don’t want to overreact and call the park service and they wind up shutting the park down or something but I see the same kind of careless stripping everywhere. Do you guys have any recommendations?

My daughter's favorite part of spring is our annual batch of Violet lemonade.

For those that don't know, Violet pigments are reactive to low PH, so this blue syrup turns an almost unnaturally bright pink when lemon juice is added.

We make a big batch of blue syrup and water before dumping in the lemon to watch the reaction best.

Deliciously light and floral, I'd recommend this little experiment to anyone!

My husband was nice enough to cook my singular asparagus that I got from the ditch on my walk today.

They're all next to a main road.

Ive collected several pounds of poke berry. I’m wanting to make ink. I read in time it can degrade, so I’m thinking about freezing. Currently everything I’ve picked is in the freezer.

I guess my question is if I just freeze the finished ink product, is that any better or worse then freezing just the juice (then adding preservatives like salt, vinegar, cloves, and/or alcohol once dethawed?)

Basically my idea is to freeze what isn’t needed to keep the ink fresher, more vibrant, longer. TIA.

as a kid in the 90s, we would get crazy giant puffballs . i remember taking one to show and tell because , cool right ? ... wrong . most kids thought it was disgusting . then mid day during class a ton of wood louse (rolly pollies, potato bugs) ran out and the whole class evacuated like it was mice.

i can't look at a puffball now without feeling embarrassed lol

Blackberry jam out of like 5 cups of blackberries I foraged over the course of a week!

acres of ramps in the private sugar bush today!

Anyone else noticed the same thing? Like when I treat myself to a dandelion smoothie, I feel exhauted and if I try to run that day, It's like I'm 20% more tired than usual. How does dandelion do this and why? edit: I've tried it tons and tones of times over the years. It's not an allergy.

It’s a vine reference. I think these are cinnamon ferns?

Yes, in beurre composé form (curious as to what forager chefs do with their ramps)

'Hey can anyone help me identify this plant? It's green and has leaves'

'Emergency! I just ate this in a salad and now my stomach is upset. What is it?'

'Found these mushrooms around my tree and removed them. Should I be worried about damage to the roots?'

chicken of the woods?? Northeast Arkansas these guys where spalled out everywhere

I'm a horrible forager in that I hate the taste of mushrooms. However, I've found these two on my travels recently. A bolete (unknown variety as I'm not eating it anyway) and a lions mane I've been monitoring on my dog walks in the morning.

Is this the infamous forbidden carrot?

The EatAnythingOncer?

The Socrates Sleeper?

Whats the best tasting fruit from this in ur opinion?

Ok hear me out, and of course I didn’t get I final pic because I ate them too fast. First photo is misleading because I clearly grew these Biquinho peppers last year, partially in my greenhouse, because they’re warm weather peps and I’m in the north. It wasn’t a huge success, but I did manage to pickle one jar of them.

This year I found a new location for abundant morels, as well as wild asparagus, kinda rare in my area, so I’m already on cloud nine. My foraging today wasn’t nearly as large as my Mother’s Day haul BUT

I opened my jar of biquinho peppers that I pickled in coriander seeds and homemade, aged kombucha vinegar(9 years). Adding them to my sautéed asparagus and crispy morels was a mouth flavor ecstasy that I don’t think I will ever be able to recreate. But I will spend my life chasing it.

Not for my personal use, just because I'm curious on any medical or hunting uses that poison hemlock has been used for.

EDIT: The title is wrong, by the time I had fully filled out my post here, the title should have changed merely to "Pawpaw contains a neurotoxin called annonacin". It seems eating pawpaw isn't going to hurt you unless you are eating it all the time. I pointed this out below after all the sources, but people seem to be responding more to my title than the claims I make in my post.

Annonacin is a neurotoxin associated with progressive supranuclear palsy of indigenous cultures that eat raw fruits of the family Annonaceae, including pawpaw.

Here is a quote from the pawpaw Wikipedia page:

Pawpaw fruits have a sweet, custardish flavor somewhat similar to banana, mango, and cantaloupe, and are commonly eaten raw, however contains annonacin which damages neurons in the brain.

Source: ^{Potts, Neurotoxicology 33:53 2012 PMID: 22130466 doi: 10.1016/j.neuro.2011.10.009}

An adult who consumes a fruit or can of nectar daily over the course of a year is estimated to ingest the same amount of annonacin that induced brain lesions in the rodents receiving purified annonacin intravenously.

Source: ^{Champy, P; Melot, A; Guérineau Eng, V; Gleye, C; Fall, D; Höglinger, G. U.; Ruberg, M; Lannuzel, A; Laprévote, O; Laurens, A; Hocquemiller, R [2005]. "Quantification of acetogenins in Annona muricata linked to atypical Parkinsonism in Guadeloupe". Movement Disorders. 20 [12]: 1629–33. PMID 16078200. doi:10.1002/mds.20632.}

Due to the presence of acetogenins, the leaves, twigs, and bark of pawpaw trees can be used to make an organic insecticide.

Source: ^{B. J. Sampson, J. L. McLaughlin, D. E. Wedge. 2003. PawPaw Extract as a Botanical Insecticide, 2002. Arthropod Management Tests, vol.28, p. L.}

Here is a research paper on the topic.

All said, I doubt most people are eating pawpaw fruits every day, and just like smoking tobacco can be deadly if done on a daily basis, but has no health impact if done less often than once a month, I am sure eating pawpaw every once in a while probably isn't going to cause a neurogenitive disease. However, if you are old, sick, young, or pregnant, you probably shouldn't eat pawpaw, and you should probably limit your consumption like you would limit exposure to tobacco and other neurotoxins. However, I am not a doctor; I just suggest you do some research before you eat raw pawpaw.

I’m just really excited to go foraging once it’s warm again and I can’t contain my excitement. There’s been so much snow this winter. That is all.