Wildman Steve Brill celebrates 37 years of foraging (and St. Patrick's Day!) with a romp through Inwood Hill.

Inwood Hill Park is one of the best places for foragers in late winter. The city's hilliest park, with a large, mature forest, meadows, thickets, and cultivated areas, it's loaded with wild plants. Now is the time for roots. Burdock, an expensive detoxifying herb sold in health food stores, as well as an invasive foreign species, abounds in human-disturbed areas throughout the park. The cooked root tastes like a combination of potatoes and artichokes.

Sassafras, on the other hand, tastes like root beer, which you make from the taproots of the highly-abundant saplings. And the black birch tree, of birch beer fame, tastes like wintergreen. The twigs, which you can chew, make a delicious non-steroidal anti-inflammatory herb tea, as well as a flavoring ingredient for tapioca-thickened Stick Pudding.

The park's paths also lead to the tuber of the hog peanut, with a flavor akin to raw peanuts. Peppery-sweet common evening primrose roots grow along one of the pathways. And chickweed, which tastes like corn, hot-sweet daylily shoots, pungent-tasting pepper sedum, spicy garlic mustard leaves and root, lemony curly dock, and savory field garlic abound too.

Waterproof boots strongly recommended. Register in advance.