Tag Archives: Nebraska wild edibles

It’s autumn. It’s heavy sweatshirt weather. It’s the season for football and pumpkin-spiced everything. And, it’s time to pick pumpkins and harvest the last of the tender crops from your vegetable garden. But, did you know that beyond the pumpkins and the squash, fall marks the time of year for gathering and preparing tasty fare from wild places? Sure does. The landscape that surrounds us in Nebraska is actually more lush with wild edible material during autumn than you would …

Along with finding and picking morel mushrooms, there is another edible wild fungi growing in your moist woodlands that you should know and consider harvesting and making for dinner — the dryad’s saddle. Topside photo of a dryad’s saddle, a.k.a. pheasant’s back or hawks wing, in Nebraska. Photo by Greg Wagner/Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. Dryad’s saddle? Say, what? The dryad’s saddle (Polyporus squamosus) , a.k.a., pheasant’s back mushroom, or hawk’s wing, is a widespread edible wild fungi that is easy …

I’m all about wild edibles, especially wild fruits, and they are a prominent feature of Nebraska in the summertime. One of the not-so-common wild fruits to harvest in early summer is actually one of my favorites – the sand cherry. And, some are ripe! The western sand cherry, Prunus besseyi, is a native plant. It is a low shrub and a member of the rose family, Rosaceae. This plant was first identified and given a Latin name by botanist Charles Edwin Bessey (1845-1915). …

Gosh, I love to pick and eat mulberries. C’mon, who doesn’t, right? I guess it’s the Nebraska kid in me (and many of us) who like to do that! Growing up on the western edge of Gretna, NE, my buddies and I would hike the nearby woods and seek out those mulberry trees with their ripe, sweet, dark purple fruit from mid June to early July. I fondly recall the days of having purple feet, hands, lips and tongue. What a blast it was (and still is) to take …

In the last 24 hours the Omaha-metro area has recorded at least an inch of rain in most locations and more precipitation is continuing to fall! As I glance around our Omaha Office location of Game and Parks, it appears that the grass started greening up almost overnight! I can’t help but think how good all of this moisture is for  …. you got it — the morel mushroom! It may turn out to be a good more mushroom hunting/picking …