Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship
BURLINGTON — Students gathered in a circle at the Intervale Center in Burlington as Bronislaw Grala, an herbalist and teacher at Spoonful Herbals, a nonprofit organization that connects the community to herbal medicine, pulled a wild carrot from the ground.
Grala helped students learn to identify the plant by pointing out the leafy green shoots. Next to him, Katherine Elmer, co-founder of Spoonful Herbals and a lecturer in integrative health at the University of Vermont, explained the healing properties of the plant, including its ability to even out the menstrual cycle.
Other wild carrots grow in the area, but Elmer intentionally collected just one stem from one carrot. If they took more, Elmer said, the plant could get depleted with a lower ability to flourish later in the season.
This discussion was part of a meeting Elmer and Grala host twice a month to teach their students how to sustainably forage medicinal plants.
Overforaging has become an issue at the Intervale Center, a nonprofit that works to enhance agricultural viability on 360 acres of farmland and trails in Burlington, and the greater Winooski River watershed that flows past the center, according to Elmer. The green spirals of the fiddlehead fern, the bright red berries and fibrous roots of the American ginseng and the small white flowers of wild goldenseal are becoming rarer to spot in this area as the species face widespread population decline, Elmer said.
In response, signs have been placed at the Intervale Center to remind visitors not to harvest fiddlehead ferns — the plant most susceptible to overharvesting in the area. Herbalists and environmental stewards at the Intervale are encouraging foragers to follow sustainable harvesting practices to protect these species.
Wild leek onions once grew abundantly along the shores of the Winooski River. The name Winooski comes from the Abenaki word for “onion river land.”
But Duncan Murdoch, natural areas stewardship coordinator at the Intervale, said these plants no longer grow on this land, likely due to overforaging, although other environmental factors like flooding could have contributed to this loss.
Foraging has become a trend in the western world, according to Elmer, who explained that a finders-keepers attitude has impacted how people harvest plants.
“It’s like when there’s a big sale,” Elmer said. “You really only need one candy bar, but they’re buy-two-get-one-free, so you get three.”
Elmer said foragers must unlearn tendencies to take in abundance and instead take only what they need.
Elmer encouraged her students to avoid this greedier mindset by practicing consent and gratitude as they harvest.
“We want folks to know what consent feels like when you’re harvesting a plant or a mushroom in your own body,” Elmer said. “We want everybody to have a way of expressing gratitude that’s unique to them.”
Elmer said they also wanted foragers to understand how it feels when excitement for finding a plant turns into a sensation of greed.
Grala encouraged her students to ask themselves, “What can I do best to make it look like I wasn’t here?”
Foragers should only take one to two stems within 10 square feet, or in areas about the size of a bath towel, Grala said. He encouraged his students to recognize the medically useful part of the plant and remove only a small amount of it.
The Intervale’s ethical forager’s pledge sends a similar message. The pledge reminds foragers to take only what they need, be aware of the health of the plants before they harvest and to remain on the trails while harvesting.
“We made the decision to allow foraging since our mission is strengthening food access. We want people to be able to harvest in a sustainable way,” Murdoch said.
Fiddlehead ferns are the most sensitive herb to population decline in the Winooski River watershed area. The Intervale’s website outlines how to sustainably pick ferns. It emphasizes taking only young plants and only one stem at a time from a single plant.
Overforaging can also have an adverse effect on pollinators. These insects need open space and diverse arrays of flower species to flourish. Some species of flowers, says Elmer, should be left untouched by humans to allow access for pollinators.
“We are very fortunate to have a state with more wild areas and a smaller population density,” said Mike Kiernan, a beekeeper and founder of Bee The Change, an organization that creates habitats to support pollinators. “We have more open spaces and sources for pollinators to be located, and yet despite all these advantages, we are still seeing a decline in pollinators.”
While avoiding certain plants is a key part of learning to be sustainable, Elmer and Grala also teach their students which plants are invasive, edible and should be harvested. Some include stinging nettles, violets, burdock and Japanese knotweed.
“With things like burdock, you can harvest a stem, and there’s still going to be an abundance,” Grala said.
As the class neared its end, Grala reflected on the wild carrot he had picked earlier in the lesson: “When we took that carrot, we ended its life, so extra gratitude for that.”