Wild Edibles

“Pass the fungus,” is not common dinnertime conversation in the Blue Ridge Mountains region, but that’s because folks perhaps have not heard of the white jelly snow fungus.

Fayette County, West Virginia’s Mitchell Dech is one of my foraging mentors, and when he wants me to try an edible new to me … I’m ready to learn about it.

Sometime this month in the Blue Ridge Mountains, one of these highlands’ signature spring plants will ease from the soil … the May apple (Podophyllum peltatum).

Pokeweed is one of the wild plants that is most associated with the Blue Ridge Region.

The purple-spored typically grows in this region’s fields, often appearing from October through December and into early January.