Riding along the American River Parkway, it’s easy to
ignore the greenery on either side of the trail. Much of it might
appear to be little more than unremarkable weeds, but to a
seasoned forager and instructor like Robin Greenfield, those
patches of greenery contain a banquet of delicious edible
plants.
Greenfield says that foraging can begin at home, especially
in a city as fertile as Sacramento. “Where I recommend a lot of
people start is actually in their own backyard or front yard,”
Greenfield says. He adds that trails like the American River
Pathway often have many edible plants, even if some are
categorized as weeds.
Foraging — searching for wild, edible plants and fungi — is
enjoying a resurgence around the world, and many people in the
Capital Region are adding wild food to their diets.
With the rising cost of living, a little free nutrition can
always offer a boost, but Greenfield says the benefits of
foraging go beyond saving money.
“I want to eat in a way that does no unnecessary harm, and
even better yet, that every bite that I take is actually
beneficial, that it’s an ecosystem service, and foraging is one
way to do that,” Greenfield says. “I love foraging because I love
food,” he continues, and “it gives me access to some of the most
delicious and nutritious food that exists on earth.”
A foraged feast
In the Capital Region, with its relatively mild winters, a
great deal of wild food can be found year-round. Jen Benedet, an
experienced local forager, eats an entirely wild and homegrown
Thanksgiving feast every year. She serves wild game,
mushrooms, elderberry jam and baked goods made with
acorn flour.
Jen Benedet served pumpkin pie made with acorn flour and
homegrown pumpkin at a recent Thanksgiving. (Photo courtesy of
Jen Benedet)
While the skillset to find and cook all this food might
take years to develop, new foragers can learn about one plant at
a time and work their way up to a fully foraged meal. Benedet
says that good foraging ethics dictate that foragers not take
more than one-third of what is available, leaving plenty for
nature and other animals that rely on wild food.
Greenfield says that one of the easiest foods for beginners
to find and identify in the region is wild mustard. “This is a
plant that’s considered invasive, that is harmful to the
ecosystem because it competes with native plants,” he says. “Wild
mustard is one of my favorite vegetables. You can eat it just
like you would broccoli, saute it or blanch it, or add it into
your stir fries, or your soups and stews.”
There’s also an abundance of fennel, another non-native
species. Greenfield says he likes to eat the tender shoots, but
the flowers, leaves and dried seeds are also edible.
Many would-be foragers will be concerned about
misidentifying some of these plants, perhaps confusing them
with “toxic lookalikes.” Greenfield
teaches occasional foraging classes in Sacramento
and says there are many other resources available,
such as the
Find a Forager database. Through this
platform, beginners can meet experienced nearby foragers who can
help identify safe plants without toxic lookalikes.
Jen Benedet forages a wide variety of plant foods, including
these curly dock seeds and white hoarhound leaves. (Photo
courtesy of Jen Benedet)
Greenfield also suggests foragers pick up a reference text
like “California
Foraging ” by Judith Lowrie, which includes
images of edible plants and a guide to distinguishing them from
any toxic lookalikes.
In addition to safely identifying plants before they
consume them, new foragers in the Capital Region ought to be
conscious of the region’s snake and tick population. Although
snakebites remain uncommon, with fatalities in the single digits
each year across the country, foragers should be snake conscious
when travelling through tall grass, walking off trail and
searching for food in fallen timber. All of these behaviors are
likely to increase the likelihood of a snake interaction,
according to the
University of California Davis’ peer-reviewed
guidelines on living with rattlesnakes. Foragers
should also be sure to do a
tick sweep after spending time in tall
grass, as
Lyme disease is present in the
region.
Related: Chefs,
Growers and Citizen Scientists Are Embracing Mushroom Foraging
and Its Culinary Potential
Mushrooms can be a delicious food to forage, and California
is home to many edible varieties. However, beginning foragers
should never pick mushrooms or anything else they can’t identify.
Foragers advise that beginners pick a sample and bring it to an
experienced forager to identify it before harvesting mushrooms
for consumption. In 2025, f
oragers mistaking death cap mushrooms for edible
varieties caused 21 poisoning cases and one fatality.
Foraging rules and regulations
In California, the Department of Fish and Wildlife does not
regulate foraging as it does hunting. However, the CDFW is
attempting to educate and recruit more outdoorspeople through its
Recruit, Retain and Reactivate program, which it calls R3. The R3
program has hosted a webinar on foraging — also available as
on-demand videos — through its
Harvest Huddle Hour program, which is
designed for adults learning about or returning to the
outdoors. The CDFW’s
R3 webpage is another useful resource for
would-be foragers, including a guide to regulations on harvest of
some wild and marine plants, the permits required to gather
firewood on public land, and resources for identifying plants and
finding public lands to forage on.
Jen Benedet makes elderberry jam from foraged berries. (Photo
courtesy of Jen Benedet)
The regulations around foraging are different across
federal, state and private land. The Forest Service, for
example,
does not require a permit if you
gather less than 1 gallon of mushrooms per year. Some areas of
National Forests, however, are closed to harvesting mushrooms;
these can be found on the
appropriate page of each given National
Forest website.
The Bureau of Land Management sometimes
requires a permit and asks that anyone
interested contact its local office. While the CDFW does not
require foragers to be licensed as they do hunters and fishers,
it should be noted that foraging in
California State Parks and CDFW lands is
strictly limited by law. Sierra Pacific
, a forestry company that is the largest private landowner
in California, allows recreational use of its Capital Region land
but
prohibits foraging .
Given this complicated web of legal jurisdictions, to which
we can also add counties and cities, Greenfield suggests
beginners work “one plant at a time.” Once they can identify a
plant, they can explore the legal constraints on where they can
harvest it and progress legally and safely into the hobby without
risking legal consequences or their health.
Urban foraging in Sacramento
In addition to the wild bounty that can be found across
California, Greenfield says there is a great deal of food to be
found in the city. Many edible plants, such as rosemary and
loquats, are grown primarily as landscaping plants, and their
food value is often ignored. Resources such as
Falling Fruit , which has thousands of locations
listed in Sacramento alone, can help new foragers find food in
the city. Just be sure to ask permission if the plants are on
private land.
A tree full of tangerines grows in West Sacramento. (Shutterstock
photo)
Greenfield says that even a relatively novice forager could
easily assemble a dinner party entirely from food foraged around
the Capital Region. He suggests starting with a salad of wild
greens — these might include miner’s lettuce, wild mustard,
purslane and chickweed. Seasoning could perhaps come from wild
Peruvian pepper. This could be followed with a fruit plate,
including loquats, blackberries and even wild strawberries.
Finish with one of the many teas or infusions that can be made
with foraged ingredients.
More advanced foragers might enjoy acorn-based dishes,
which have been a backbone of the diet of Indigenous
people , including the Nisenan, the Southern and
Foothills Maidu, the Patwin people, the Wintun and the Wintu, and
the Valley Miwok and Me-Wuk, for millennia.
In the process of assembling this feast, foragers will find
a whole new way to see and interact with the outdoors
. “When I’m foraging,” Greenfield says, “I feel a very deep
connection to the earth.”
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