15 Wild Plants to Forage in the Midwest

There are many edible plants that beginning foragers can start to identify and forage with ease. Here is a list and description of some of my favorite plants to start foraging in the Midwest!

Dames Rocket (Hesperis matronalis)

Dames rocket is one of the first wild greens to come up during the late winter and early spring months. They are extremely abundant and fairly easy to identify, especially when there isn’t much other look-a-like growth around during this time of year. (place picture after this).

The basal (at the base of the plant) leaves are slightly serrated and grow in a rosette fashion, with the new growth being a lot better tasting for salads. Once the leaves start to change to a darker green they will become more fibrous, thus making them pretty tough to chew. This is where they would be better served as a sauteed green along with any other spring greens. Later in the season the raabs (young unopened flower buds) and flowers also make a delicious edible snack. The raabs act like young broccoli buds which makes sense since dames rocket belongs to the Brassicaceae (mustards) family along with broccoli, so cooking them quickly in boiling salted water would be a great preparation here.

Wild Leeks/ Ramps (Allium Tricoccum)

Ramps as you may very well know are a foragers best friend. While many foragers have been slandered for harvesting large amounts of this wild garlic replacement (since it is still in the Allium family), don’t let this stop you from harvesting this wildly delicious and prolific plant.

Ramps will come up in early spring time, the same time you start to see garlic mustard and dames rocket starting to become more mature. Ramps will grow in dense patches mainly in flood plains where the soil is well drained and sandy. The leaves grow in pairs of 2 (sometimes 3 if you’re lucky) and will have a reddish stalk at the base of the plant. There is a another variety of wild leeks, Allium burdickii, that have a white stem at the base of the plant and are also edible and quite delicious.

The leaves will not get as big as the A. tricoccum species will and are not quite as prevalent in some habitats. The amount of things you can do with ramps throughout the year is almost overwhelming; from fermenting them to dehydrating them and adding them to salt to have a wonderful flavorful salt throughout the year are just some of my favorite applications.

Chickweed (Stellaria media)

Chickweed, also known as chickenwort or winter-weed, is a great plant to harvest throughout the year for salads, or anyplace you would use microgreens. It is more prevalent in the late summer to fall time, where it will fall dormant during the winter. Young growth in the spring is also tasty, but won’t grow as densely as one might find later in the year.

Gardeners know this wild green very well, and while the name weed is in the name and can scare any home gardener or farmer at first it will be easily found in these disturbed soils and can easily be trimmed back and tamed. Many gardeners could consider this a free crop with almost little effort than what a garden already entails. If you don’t have garden friend or one yourself, community gardens can be another great place to harvest this wild green, as long as it is okay with the plot tenants and garden managers there.

Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica)

This wild edible has many different part of the plant that one can harvest throughout the year, which makes it’s small size more beneficial than one might think. Spring beauty is in the same family as the western Claytonia perfoliata, otherwise known as Miner’s lettuce.

While not as crisp and succulent as Miner’s lettuce, the young growth in spring can add an excellent addition to salads. The tubers in the early spring can also be a great consolation prize when many other wild greens aren’t quite up yet and act as a potato substitute. While these tubers are small and take a decent amount to make a good dish, I will always point people towards plant tubers as another great part of the plant to harvest and incorporate into your diet.

Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata)

One of the most invasive plants you’ll see throughout the year, garlic mustard is an excellent wild green you can collect in great quantity. As the name suggests, the greens have a great spicy/tangy mustard to them and can be either sauteed when older and more stringy or added to salads.

I personally prefer to just rip up and destroy this wild invasive edible whenever I don’t decide to eat it, especially later in the spring when there are way more delicious greens I would rather collect and incorporate into my diet. It’s heart shaped leaves along with distinct vein structure on the leaves make it fairly easy to identify, and is one of the very first greens to show itself after the long winter here in the upper Midwest.

Dandelions (Taraxacum sp.)

One of the most mislabeled wild foods out there, Dandelions don’t get nearly the amount of positive attention as they should. You will start to see the classic yellow flower throughout many yards in your neighborhood, and unfortunately so many people try to extinguish them from their yard. Being told since the dawn of industrial lawns that they are weeds, so many people try to destroy them without ever trying the greens first.

While they may be a ‘weed’, they are a bit bitter at first raw, but once you have acquired you taste buds to the younger lettuce like growth in spring, you’ll be happy you gave them a second chance. The flowers are also edible too, with some of the most creative things I’ve seen done with them being simply breading and frying them to make little dandelion fritters. Please give this plant another chance and eliminate it from your weeds category, especially since it can be so prevalent and easy to pick by simply taking a step outside your back door.

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

To me this is the most overlooked wild green out of the ones in this list. While edible, most people in history used this ground cover plant during war time as it was great at congealing blood and stopping wounds from getting worse.

I like to think of this plant as similar tasting to spearmint, but it is also quite bitter. A small amount goes a long way, and you want to apply low heat when cooking with it otherwise you’ll kill the flavor. I like to use it as a flavor addition to fish and other light game meat such as chicken, squirrel or small upland birds. It can also be a good addition to an herb mixture with other herbs such as parsley, rosemary, thyme, lemon balm etc. and will help balance out it’s bitterness.

Wild Plantains (Plantago major)

This is a plant that I guarantee if anyone who doesn’t religiously mow and treat their lawn with pesticides/herbicides will find just outside their back door. The basal leaves have distinct veins starting from the base of the leaf and joining all the way at the top of the singular leaves.

Once you start to identify and find it you’ll start seeing it everywhere and it can make an excellent sauteed green. I will primarily trying to avoid using this green in salads as it can be tough and stringy if not quickly blanched in boiling salted water. I’ve even seen recipes and old indigenous texts that used plantains for teas as well as wound care back in the day. Like most wild greens it is packed full of vitamins and nutrients and unfortunately is looked as a weed rather than a useful plentiful plant that goes way over looked.

Violets (Viola sororia)

This plant produces some of the most beautiful spring flowers that are fairly easy to distinguish from the common Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) that also produces purple flowers during the spring.

The flowers of violets will have five petals just like the squill flowers, but instead of growing in a typical ray like the squill flowers will, they will grow in a similar fashion to how orchid flowers do, bilaterally symmetrical. While Siberian squill is not edible, the common blue violets are and add an excellent color to your plate that also give some subtle sweetness! The leaves are also edible and tender so I typically will add them to salads or even a light summer soup. They are packed with vitamin C as well and have also been used as a cold remedy in teas and tinctures!

Nettles (Urticaceae sp.)

We’ve all been warned as kids to stay away from stinging nettle as it causes very uncomfortable rashes due to their translucent spiny thorns. But what is never talked about is that it is one of the best wild greens to harvest if you know what to look out for and how to harvest them safely. Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) is the most common nettle that people will find both in on the edges of forests and urban areas.

Wood nettle (Laportea canadensis) is another nettle species that does not get the credit it deserves and is actually better tasting in my opinion that stinging nettles. It’s leaves are more ovate then stinging nettle leaves which are long and lanceolate, but do have quite a bit more stingers.

The plants can get quite massive, and thus allows for easy picking and can produce substantial harvests. The best and safest way to pick these plants it by picking the top meristem (the young top growth of a plant) with gloves to avoid the stingers. To destroy the stingers all you have to do is simply blanch them in salted boiling water and it will render them harmless. From there I either like to eat them with just a nab of butter and some salt and pepper, otherwise you can get more creative with them and make them into green cakes as shown to me by the famous Forager Chef, Alan Bergo, with a nice lemon slice and a fun dipping sauce!

Fiddlehead Ferns (Matteuccia struthiopteris)

You will typically see fiddleheads during the spring and summer time in fancy restaurants or farmers markets where they can fetch quite a high price. But if you know where to look for them it can make this wild treat a nice addition to your diet. Ostrich ferns (Matteuccia struthiopteris) are the most common type of edible ferns people will harvest out in the wild, mainly due to their size and sturdiness.

Other fern species, while edible, don’t have the meatiness that the ostrich fern tops do and typically don’t grow in the quantity that would make sense to harvest from. Your mostly likely to find these ferns growing in hardwood forests that are located in floodplains due to ferns liking moist disturbed soils where they can grow in massive numbers. I personally just like to blanch them for a minute or two to soften them (as they are quite tough) and this also makes them safe to eat. DO NOT EAT FIDDLEHEADS RAW! They will make you sick if you eat them raw due to an unidentified compound that causes nausea and GI issues. From there I simply like to sauté them in oil or butter and serve them alongside fish or just on their own with a little seasoning and some fresh lemon juice.

Purple Dead Nettle (Lamium purpureum)

Another common plant or ‘weed’ you’ll find in large numbers just outside in your lawn or any other disturbed area is Purple Dead Nettle.

While the name might fool you, these do not belong to the nettle family and does not have any harmful stingers on its stems or leaves. It is easily distinguishable by its purple leaves and flowers, and will most likely be growing in big patches once it has found soil that it likes. It’s an excellent addition to salads and its flowers are also edible as well. An easily identifiable green that you can pick in large amounts with ease and help add some color to your beautiful plates.

Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)

Milkweed is one of those wild and domesticated plants that has some controversy around it in the botany and conservation world, but has many edible parts that come with it throughout the year. Milkweed is an large source of food and pollen for Monarch butterflies, so when light was shed on the many different edible parts of the plant people can harvest it sparked some debate.

Foragers I believe for the most part go out with the best intentions in trying to not destroy plant populations while also trying to harvest food sustainably. But once we start taking food from nature (even in small numbers) especially from species that are endangered then is can cause some trouble. When harvesting milkweed, there are 5 main parts of the plant that are edible; the shoots, leaves, unopened flower buds (also called raabs), the flowers themselves, and the milkweed pods.

Monarchs like to eat the older buds and leaves, but they also like the nectar from the flowers. Good news is that the parts they like to eat are typically mature parts of the plant that humans would find too tough to eat at that stage of growth. Also always making sure to collect and harvest from dense patches of milkweed instead of small colonies is a good sustainable practice. The young tender growth of the leaves and shoots are great to pick in the spring and early summer time, while the young flower buds and pods are a great treat to harvest further into summer. When picking the buds I will try and collect ones that are no bigger than 2″ long and the outer shell is still velvety to the touch.

These make a great ‘fritter’ by simply soaking them in an egg wash or buttermilk, then coating and frying them in cornmeal. All parts of the milkweed plant must be cooked to be safe to avoid any GI issues. There is only one similar lookalike to milkweed which is Dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum). The easiest way to identify them from each other is that milkweed stalks when cut will not only leach a milky white substance from the stems (thus why it’s called milkweed) but will also be completely hollow inside. Dogbane on the other hand has a solid inner stem and does not leach this white milky sap. Also a little forewarning when collecting milkweed is that this milky sap can cause skin irritation, so if you are collecting the shoots or leaves, do make sure to wear gloves to avoid the sap from getting onto your skin.

Watercress (Nasturtium officinale)

Watercress is one of the most succulent and delicious wild greens you can forage for… if you can find it. You’ll find watercress in springs, brooks or slow moving streams. It is invasive so when you find it it will be in large numbers. This is great because if you find in grocery stores it while fetch a high price.

You want to try and harvest watercress in water that is clean and has a low change of contamination as liver fluke can be a cause of concern when harvested in contaminated waterways. The leaves will be oval or lanceolate when older as compared to the circular shaped leaves when bought in the store. It’s succulent like leaves make it a fantastic green for salads and also makes a great vibrant green puree. Eaten raw it has a nice spicey flavor similar to mustard greens and the flavor only intensifies when it grows older. I like to compare it to wild arugula substitute and the flowers when older are also edible too! One of my favorite wild greens to collect and once you start to find large patches of it I’m sure it will become one of yours as well!

Lamb’s Quarters (Chenopodium album)

One final wild green I like to point people towards is Lamb Quarters, also known as wild spinach or pigweed. If you’ve ever worked on a farm or a larger community garden you will start to see this plant everywhere. When I first started to try and find it I was having the hardest time because I was always looking in disturbed soils in forests rather than in open fields or gardens.

Once I started working for a local organic farmer here in Central Michigan I was overwhelmed at how much was growing everywhere… and I mean everywhere. It’s leaves are very distinct in shape, having as almost arrowhead shaped leaf with rounded margins. There are many types of lambs quarter species in the Chenopodium genus and all are edible, but C. album is the one I’m most use to working with. I will typically harvest the young top growth in clusters rather than just the singular leaves to save time. Use this in place of where ever you would use spinach in a dish or simply by itself sauteed with a little garlic, lemon juice and some chili flakes. There is no need to boil it like some other greens, but I would suggest trying to pick the young growth possible, as older growth at the bottom of the stalk in later summer tends to be too stringy and fibrous.