To be able to go into the woods and come back with dinner is a skill that many of us envy. Imagine being able to get rid of that Supermarket Discount Card forever.

You’ve probably heard about people that eat plants and berries straight out of the forest like it’s their very own supermarket. They’ll just bend down while on a hike and munch on something green and vaguely dirty. Inevitably, they all have encyclopedia-like knowledge of the plant kingdom. They know their Asaram Canadense from their Hexastylis Virginia and can tell you what season yarrow is most prevalent in these parts.

Ila Hatter is one of those people. She’s been teaching classes on edible plants at the Smoky Mountain Field School for almost 20 years. When Eric Rudolph was on the lam, she took news crews into the woods to show them how easily a person could live off the land. Hatter herself began dabbling in wild foods during a time of survival. She was in college.

“It’s free food, and when your budget just won’t stretch, free food is handy,” Hatter says, adding that most people are completely unaware of the bountiful resources readily available in the Southern Appalachians. “I’ll run across thru hikers on the AT that have spent the last couple of days without food because they didn’t know what they could and couldn’t eat in the woods. There are plenty of things out there to eat. You can always find something, even in your own backyard.”

Still, knowing that there are edible plants in the woods and actually having the guts to eat them are two different things. Most people are too wary of the natural world to stray from their supermarket produce aisle. Hatter says this is why she spends so much time teaching classes on edible plants.

“I don’t want people to be afraid of the woods. Too many people are afraid of what they don’t know.”

Obviously, there are practical implications to knowing what you can and can’t eat in the woods-you never know when you’re going to be stuck in the middle of Pisgah with nothing but a water bottle and a set of toe clippers-but Hatter says there’s more to eating wild plants than just survival. “Wild plants are completely organic. You’re not gonna have to worry about pesticides or genetically altered food. Also, the nutrition can be higher in wild plants. Violet greens, for instance, have more vitamin C than oranges, and they taste just like spinach. There are plenty of great plants and berries like that that you can find in the woods that compliment a normal meal.”

by Graham Averill

Shopping List

Here’s a short list of tasty plants and berries that are readily available in our neck of the woods.

Dandelion: We’re the only country in the world that considers the dandelion a weed. Everyone else considers it a food. You can eat the greens, leaves, and flowers of this plant and even use it to make wine.

Chickery Root: Roast it to make sweet coffee like the Confederates did.

Sweet Birch Bark: A natural source of aspirin, it has a wintergreen flavor if you boil it in water.

Wild Grapevines: Also a source of fresh water. Cut into it and the water will drip steadily.

Elderberries: They make kickin jams’ and pies.

Autumn Olive: It has lycopene (17x more than tomatoes), which researchers are examining for a potential cure for cancer.

Kudzu: Yep, this infectious vine is edible from the root to the leaf to the flower. Connoisseurs stick to the smaller leaves, though, because the larger ones tend to be too tough. Tastes like green beans.