Central Park, how green your garden grows.

Central Park was bustling yesterday, as New Yorkers celebrated Labor Day with picnics and books, on bikes and with balls, but I trekked uptown for another reason: Wildman Steve Brill's foraging tour. A few weeks ago, my friends Michael and Liz took Wildman's tour of Forest Park, and the abundance of that trip inspired another. Turns out, New York City is teeming with edible plants, and yesterday I spent four hours learning to identify those in-season, gathering and taking notes. We even managed a quick picnic of our own, but the day's culinary highlight was our dinner salad of foraged Asiatic dayflower, lady's thumb, lamb's quarters and yellow wood sorrel. I know it sounds and looks rustic, and I'll gladly admit it was heartier than the salads I'm used to eating. I snapped the picture below after washing my finds, but before I leafed through them (pun intended) to remove stems and other plant parts I found unappetizing.

The sturdy, tear-shaped leaves pictured on the lower right are from the Asiatic dayflower, which flowers a beautiful purple and has kernel-like seeds -- all edible. Sadly, my flowers had closed by the time I got home, but they reminded me of pea shoots in texture and a bit in flavor, too. The leaves, however, were so...weedlike, I opted to chiffonade them, making them easier to eat and prettier to look at. The lady's thumb and lamb's quarters were also pretty hearty, and Wildman warned us about the flowers on the former, which taste -- go figure -- like plant. Wanting the full experience and the health benefits of the latter (lamb's quarters is an excellent source of B-complex vitamins, beta-carotene, calcium, fiber, iron, potassium and vitamin C), I used everything I had of both, cutting and tearing where I found appropriate.

The most naturally edible looking of the foraged plants -- and by far the tastiest -- was the yellow wood sorrel, which looks like clover and tastes like lemon. Its delicate leaves were a welcome addition, but despite its presence I couldn't help but think, "This salad looks foraged from a compost pile." Quickly, I added the only other raw edible I foraged: a red devil apple from the apple trees behind The Met. These red-fleshed gems were new to me, and pretty tart on the apple spectrum. I picked up four or five (you can't very well erect an apple ladder in Central Park, so we shook a branch and collected ours off the ground), and I might bake the rest. I also read they make a lovely pink-hued hard apple cider.

Tossed with this oil and vinegar dressing (along with some foraged wild mustard seeds from Forest Park), my Central Park salad almost looked conventional. It certainly tasted like salad, and -- to my relief -- we all lived to tell the tale. I look forward to joining Wildman on future tours (he's leading one at Stone Barns Center on Sunday, Nov. 8), and to sharing those experiences with you. Mostly, I'm excited to have a garden to call my own, especially one I don't have to tend to.