Foragers, Where Have You Been?

Some fun things coming up in the next couple weeks:

We just got back from two weeks in Hawaii on Maui and Kauai. What a tropical paradise, with fruit foraging possibilities in every forest, beach, and high altitude-volcano flank! Most of the fruits are introduced species, like breadfruit and starfruit, and we sampled every one we found. We ate plenty of local-caught fish, some opihi limpets raw and freshly pried from the rocks, and a plate of roasted wild boar. We even sampled a few edible blossoms, wild growing cinnamon trees, and Brazilian pepper plants. Lots of pictures coming!

Hopefully we will have a few mini-videos of the fruits up with the descriptions. Robert made some videos, but it will take time to figure out how to transfer them online.

We found very few mushrooms, which was surprising with the humid environment. It turns out most species of mushrooms in the Hawaiian islands were introduced on old wood, and are wood-decomposers. We did find a few, but it will take some research to ID them.

We took a tour with Matt Kirk of the Kauai Nature School, and he showed us some more tropical delights, like tropical almonds, sprouted coconuts, ti leaf, gotu kola greens, and some edible flowers. This was a highlight of our vacation, we learned a lot with Matt.

There is a good possibility of more good news involving some local media. For the past two Novembers we have placed Wild Edibles of Southeastern Connecticut displays in our local library. The response was great, and we may have an opportunity to become more visible in the local community with our foraging experiences.

Joyous Yule and Happy New Year!