Seeds of Dissent

Wild foods are all around us; once you know what to look for, it’s hard not to find something edible growing wherever you are. While humankind relied on foraging for most of its existence, in more modern times people began to turn away from it. When European colonizers came to America, they embraced some Native crops such as corn and sunflower, but largely turned their noses up at wild foods, regarding “Indian foods” as inferior and a matter of last resort.

As Native American people were pushed out or wiped out, much of their cultural knowledge – including that of wild foods – was lost or ignored by history for a long period of time. Some crucial plants, like the abundant, calorie-rich American chestnut, were decimated by introduced diseases. And special cultivars of native plants like goosefoots/lambsquarters were simply re-absorbed into their wild gene pools without their human caretakers.

It is our goal to help share the knowledge of edible (or otherwise useful) wild plants with everyone. This page is not intended to be an exhaustive guide to wild plants. Rather, its purpose is to make sharing them easy and fun.

If you are fortunate enough to have these plants in your area, take the time to harvest their seeds to share with others. The art below can be printed on size 6 ½ envelopes. Images free to use, but are for non-commercial use only.

Store your seeds in a cool, dry place until planting time.