Foraging and Fishing - Early April

A keeper speck caught just before sunset.  The fishing and the foraging are both good right now.

      I have not posted in a while.  Partly because I have been working a lot, and partly because the little time that I have when I am not working I have been out getting free food from nature!  The foraging* is excellent now, and so is the fishing!  I love spring.  This post is just a summary of what I have been finding and catching over the past week and a half.  Some of the fruit showed up a little early, but winter never really came, and spring was very warm.  Most of these species are pretty common, so you should be able to find them too.
Dewberries (Rubus trivialis)
      The dewberries are perfectly ripe right now.  They are very similar in taste and appearance to blackberries, except they grow along the ground in a vine form rather than on upright, or arching canes. I have been seeing them on nearly every roadside and in vacant lots.  Way back in February I wrote about spring blossoms and recommended noting the location of the white, five-petaled dewberry blossoms.  If you did, you already know where to go to pick your fruit.  If you didn't, you can probably still find some by walking along a sunny roadside, or going to an old field or lot. This year is a great year.  I can't remember seeing this many before.  I actually filled a 1 gallon container in a little over 1 hour.  Plus, they taste really good this year too.  They are sweet and plump.  There picked fruit have many uses.  I eat them plain, freeze them into popsicles, ferment them into wines and meads and make jam with them.  All are delicious.  Perhaps the only use I have tried that was not delicious was the dewberry cobbler, but that probably resulted from my lack of baking skills rather than the fruit themselves.

Some dewberries.  Note that they are not blackberries.  They taste the same though and can be used like blackberries in recipes.  In fact, they are so similar that many people around here mistakenly call them blackberries.

I'm working hard in the dewberry patch.

Blackberries (other Rubus sp.)
      I have only found one vine so far that had ripe fruit.  However, while you are out picking looking for other edibles that are in season, take note on where the blackberries are.

Blueberries (Vaccinium sp.)
       A few blueberries have ripened.  John Dougherty and I spent an afternoon foraging at UWF and after seeing many sparkleberry (Vaccinium arboreum) and deer berry (Vaccinium stameneum) bushes that look similar to blueberries, John finally spotted some blueberries (Vaccinium sp.).  I didn't identify it to species.  There weren't many (yet) because it is still early for blueberries, but they were delicious.

Loquats (Eriobotrya japonica)
      It is getting a little late for loquats now, but a few very ripe and sweet loquats can still be seen clinging to some late blooming trees.  I eat these raw, make them into jelly, and sometimes add them to mead.

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)
      John Dougherty and I used an old source to locate a small population of yarrow that has been in Pensacola since at least 1992 (when the first specimen was collected from our particular site).  It took some searching, and the area around the site has probably changed in the last twenty years, but we could still identify the aromatic herb from quiet far away.  We excitedly dashed across a street into a vacant lot to collect our find which we intend to use for beer.  It is also a great herb for tea and mead.  Sadly, when I drove by on Friday, the site had been mowed over, but I figured if the plants have been there for twenty years, they must be pretty resilient.  Today we returned to the site and were pleased to see that the fast growing "weeds" had already recovered.  Although we had success locating this population of yarrow, we failed at locating other populations of yarrow and mugwort.  We did, however, spot other yarrow plants around Pensacola, but they were on private property.  Finally, I would just like to explain something to my readers in regions that are more mountainous than Florida.  As you can see, I am very excited that we found yarrow.  To those of you living in the mountains, or up north, this may seem strange but, this montane flower is not very common in the warm climate of Florida.  My supply of dried yarrow from my days working in Wyoming is almost gone.  It is such a common herb in the Rockies that I used it in many tea, beer, and mead recipes.  Once I left Wyoming, I could no longer recreates these recipes without buying yarrow, which I wouldn't do.  I like to collect my own herbs.

No, I am not giving John a bouquet of flowers.  I am just presenting them so he could photograph this yarrow.

Mullberries (Morus rubra and Morus alba)
      I normally collect large amounts of these every year by placing a tarp under trees and shaking the fruit off.  I honestly don't really care for the flavor of the fruit when raw or cooked but, they do make a delicious wine!  Because I will be moving soon, I didn't want to start a batch of wine.  Thus, I didn't collect any mulberries this year but, I have noticed mature fruit on trees in Pensacola.

Wild Onions (Allium canadense)
      This common wild edible is still easy to find.  Look for mature plants with many small bulbets on a stalk.  See my earlier post, Spring Weeding = Free Food, for more information.

Florida Betony (Stachys floridana)
      Another edible I recently writer about, Florida Betony, is still growing but it is harder to spot now that other plants have started to grow in.  See my earlier post, Spring weeding = Free Food, for more information.

Pinewood King Boletes (Bloetus pinophilus)
      Now that I learned how to identify these mushrooms, I have been noticing them a lot more.  They appear  about a day or two after rain showers but, with it being so hot, they don't last long.  I also don't know how much longer the fungi will be producing mushrooms.  See my earlier post, Mushroom Mystery Solved, for more information.

Some more boletes popping up.  Note the mushroom on the left that has been nibbled.

It looks like I'm not the only one who knows how tasty the boletes are.

Flounder (Parlichthys albigutta and Paralichthys lethostigma)
      A few flounder can still be gigged.  They are not as dense as when they were returning from the Gulf in March, but if you look you might get a few.  John Dougherty and I found a nice one last week.

John shows off this flounder.

Blue Crabs (Callinectes sapidus)
      On Friday, I got off work and the water was so calm so I decided to go look for flounder.  I didn't actually see any on that trip but, there were a lot of blue crabs.  I think it is time for me to start running the traps.

Speckled Trout (Cynoscion nebulosus)
      It is easy to find some keeper size speckled trout.  I like to fish the sandbars that extend out from points, especially when a seagrass bed is nearby.  I normally use live baitfish but, last time I went John convinced me to try both gulp shrimp and top waters.  We caught specks on both.

      I wish I could have wrote a detailed post about each one of these topics, but as you can tell, there is a lot going on.  I like writing my blog but, during this time of the year I'd rather be outside.  Plus, the more time I spend outside, the more I learn that I can pass on to you, the reader.  Not to mention, I have got to stock my freezer with fruit and fish to prepare me for my future days as a grad student.

*Note:  It is your responsibility to correctly identify any plant or fungi that you plan on eating.  Consult a local expert and/or an accurate field guide.  Do not eat any wild plant or fungus unless you are 100% sure of its identity.