Our guest today, back now for his second time, is Adam Haritan of LearnYourLand.com. He’s probably best known for his fantastic YouTube channel by the same name. He’s got over 175 videos there that teach folks how to identify and use the wild species all around them.
Recently he launched a tree identification course that caught Daniel's eye, and we thought it would be fun to talk with him about trees from a wild food perspective.
Trees provide us with so much, and it’s easy to take that for granted. Wood for our homes and for fuel, fruits and nuts for food. But it goes much further than that, from maple syrup — a simple carbohydrate source we can easily manufacture at home, to Pine Pollen that’s abundantly available in late spring as a testosterone support, to the edible spring leaves of basswood — many trees are important to the forager. In addition, they often host mushrooms that we prize as well, like the Chaga we harvest exclusively from birch trees, to the Maitake that’s found just on oaks.
It turns out, that while most new foragers tend to get pretty focused on annual and biannual herbaceous plants or fruiting shrubs, knowing the trees where you live can really accelerate your ability to utilize the wild resources on your landscape.
So, like the Lorax, Adam and Daniel are here today to speak for the trees. Encouraging you, if you haven’t already, to get to know them a bit. After all, they can enrich your life, feed and heat you and your family, and convert the so-called “wall of green” that most botanically illiterate folks see in the woods, on the side of the road, or on the trail edge from a conglomerate of trunks and leafy canopies to a dynamic, intermingled party of individual species we call a forest!
It starts, just like getting to know people, with one species at a time.
View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/141