MORNING SUN, Iowa — Out in the woods and even in one’s own backyard, many people may be surprised to find that one man’s weed is another man’s daily dose of nutrition.

One group of area residents from Muscatine and Louisa counties had a taste of that truth on Saturday at the Virginia Grove Recreation Area in rural Morning Sun.

Louisa County Conservation Board naturalist  Kathy Dice led the morning  foragers’ walk for a group of 12 people and pointed out a variety of wild edibles that she later used to create a full menu.

The program began with a walk through the campground and surrounding woods, where Dice quickly began pointing out a variety of outdoor tastes and textures.

She found several small, ripe May apples (low-to-the-ground plants) which she peeled and cut up with a small knife for group members to taste.

When May apples are green, they can cause severe diarrhea, said Dice, so it is important to be sure they are yellow and ripe.

Elderberries, gooseberries which had dried into currants, and hickory nuts were among the foods Dice turned up while foraging. She said the hickory nut sometimes contains a small, edible grub which is very sanitary because it has spent its life inside the nut.

Dice said she has tasted hickory nut grubs and they taste like the nut on which they have been feeding. 

Violets, which can be found in the woods and are commonplace in backyards, pack a generous portion of antioxidants in their leaves said Dice.

“They’re one of the healthiest vitamins you can eat,” she said. “Five leaves contain 100-200 percent of your daily requirement for vitamin C.”

Violet leaves also supply calcium and vitamins A and B said Dice.

Dice told the group that milkweed pods can be peeled and boiled for about three minutes for a soft, rather gooey, dish that is similar to cooked zucchini, and later cooked some for the group.

Dice told group members to be sure they never eat something found outdoors unless they know it’s safe. She also advised them not to eat things simply on the advice of another person, unless that person eats it first.

There are several things growing outdoors that can cause unpleasant reactions, said Dice, and some people may try to use those plants to play a trick on an uninformed companion.

One example is the little, hard berries that grow on the prickly ash tree, which is also called the toothache tree because it causes numbness of the mouth.

Dice said that these  berries have been used by some people to numb the pain of a toothache.

One member of the group, Jim Strasser, 68, of Morning Sun, described himself as a “guinea pig,” when it comes to tasting native plants and offered to try a bite of the berry, which he said did have a numbing effect.

“It gives you a real salty taste in your mouth,” said Strasser. “But it wasn’t that bad. It would do in a pinch.”

Dice did not gather edible mushrooms and fungi or  direct the group members to pick them. Instead, she cautioned that some members of the fungi group can be very poisonous and should be identified only by experts. Dice said she is not an expert on the subject of edible fungi and did not want to take any chances.

She talked about one mushroom found in Iowa that is referred to as the death angel, a deadly fungi that can shut down kidney or liver function.

“It doesn’t sound like an angel to me,” said group member Rayna Buxton, 8, of Winfield, Iowa.

After teaching the group how to identify and gather nutritious greens and nuts, Dice cooked those foods in the Virginia Grove picnic area using portable burners.

Dice also brought a variety of books on wild edibles and plant identification for the walkers to leaf through.