Fall Walk Schedule

Hudson River Park

I have a new schedule of cooler fall walks: Inwood Hill Park, Staten Island, Hudson River park and Green-Wood. It's an amazingly green city, if you know where to look.

These urban-green walks are as much about discovering new qualities in overlooked plants, as they are about recognizing the botanical city that hides in plain site, and finding nature under our noses. While we walk we talk about indigenous and invasive plants, what to forage when, how to adapt familiar recipes to new ingredients, and about the non-edible flora whose presence in the city makes this a bearable place to be for those who love the outdoors.

Hawthorn

Inwood Hill Park
7 September 2014, 12pm - 3pm

Still one of my favourite spots in the city, with its suprisingly deserted and quiet woodland valley, with contrasting hilly aspects that give way to the Hudson River and Spuyten Duyvil.

Indigenous spicebush abounds here and if we have our eyes open we may spot some delectable edible mushrooms. I am not a mycologist, and I focus on a substantial handful of edibles that I know well. But it's always fun to find new fungi, to photograph, spore print and identify. Spot catbrier to revisit in the springtime for its tender shoots, and see wild blueberries growing in Manhattan's northernmost park.

Inwood Hill Park

We meet at the entrance to Inwood Hill Park at Seaman Avenue and Isham. The nearest subway is the A at 207th Street, two blocks away. Additional details mailed upon sign up.

WALK COMPLETE

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Brooklyn Bridge Park, Piers 1 - 6
20 September 2014, 2pm - 4pm

Over the last six years the former wharfs of the formerly shut-off  East River waterway have been transformed into an accessible edible indigenous plant playground. Bayberry, sassafras, elderberry, bee balm, sumac, beach plums, pickerel weed, cattails...the list is long.

We don't collect plants in such a high profile and carefully designed setting, but I find this lovely series of waterside parks is an ideal outdoor classroom. Walking ten steps reveals a new plant whose edible qualities are under-explored or simply unknown to most cooks and eaters. We learn to ID, scratch and sniff, and talk about eating possibilities.

We meet at 2pm at Pier 1, at the entrance to the (hidden) wine bar and cafe near the pond (straight in line with Doughty Street), off Furman Street - see map link: look for red markers.

The closest subways are the 2/3 at Clark Street, from where it is a 10 minute walk downhill to the park, or the F to York Street.

The walk will end at the foot of Atlantic Avenue. There is plenty of good shopping upstream, and at Sahadi's you can purchase foraging-related items for the kitchen, such as powdered sumac, and mahlab (wild cherry kernels)...

WALK COMPLETE

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Green-Wood

Green-Wood Cemetery

27 September 2014, 12pm - 2.30pm

As I wrote in 66 Square Feet - A Delicious Life, some of the city's most beautiful trees grow in Green-Wood.

Join me on a quiet exploration of one of the most peaceful and green parts of the city. After rain, the lawns are home to mushrooms and sometimes one can find maitake growing on the roots of the mostly stately trees.

Maitake

We meet on the sidewalk at Green-Wood's main entrance on 5th Avenue and 25th Street. Closest subway is the R at 25th Street. More details will be emailed before we walk.

WALK COMPLETE

Other islands

We took the R subway to Whitehall, crossed New York Harbor on the ferry, and then hopped onto the Staten Island subway, which is hardly sub-: it is above-ground (views of stand-alone houses with above-ground swimming pools which I took to be hot tubs). Two stops from the end of the line we got off and walked into the woods.

This is state forest land. Vince had been here twice already, on his own. He had seen osprey with fish in their talons.  He had seen a yardlong snake. He had seen ground hogs. In short, he had seen all the game that this city has to offer, and then some. I could not believe that he was this excited about Staten Island, site of the notorious Poison Ivy Incident of 2009 (no surface had gone untortured).

But he was enthused. We packed bread, some sausage, some cheese.

We found puffballs and mushrooms of unknown genus and species. We saw bunnies, little brown ones, quite unafraid. We heard squeaking frogs which shrieked before they plopped into the duckweed covered ponds we passed on our way to the water.

We saw a blind man who had ridden the subway out with us, being led by his son, walking at a clip through green fields. We saw a tattooed man with long hair holding the small hand of his small daughter: We saw a bunny! they told us. 

We saw dogbane and dog roses and cinquefoil and a mulberry treed bowed down with fruit. My heart broke when it proved insipid. 

We photographed a shrub I did not recognize, with acacia-like leaves, blooming in the sand as a huge blue tanker passed on its way to open water, and at the end, on our circle back, we found a field full of milkweed, in bud. 

On our walk to the station Vince led me past the ground hog burrow where three young ones eyed the traffic, in turn. We passed dense stands of knotweed hacked back from the road; half naked men barbecuing on a porch above a muddy driveway; washing hanging on a line above long grass.

We felt a million miles from home.

The orange ferry returned us, packed among tourists doing the free round trip on the water, from whom we seemed no different. Manhattan appeared in a grey haze. The tourists strained and fretted about the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty. They hissed at their failing batteries and the lack of clear light.

We were rather quiet. We had seen the other side.

High Rock Park

If you click over to the Prospect Park Litter Mob blog, you'll find a beautiful slideshow of our visit to High Rock Park. The fall colours were stunning and very heavy on the yellows. I love the beech forest - it has become one of my favourite spots in New York City.

And here is the Frenchman's take on High Rock Park.

I need help with the id for this small tree or shrub above. It must be hawthorn, Crataegus, sp - but what? At first the leaves and form struck me as a dead ringer for serviceberry (Amelanchier sp.) and I was confused - those berries were eaten last June. The tree had multiple stems, smooth bark and was rounded, about 10 feet high and across.

So...?

Hidden in plain sight

Where is this?

It's in the city, I'll say that much.

Yup, New York City...

And on the subject of green (red and yellow) spaces in the metropolis, it is Prospect Park Litter Mob time again. This Tuesday, 9am, corner of East and Center Drives in Prospect Park - whose woods should be stunning. We will de-litter for a little over an hour, and then do some woodland restoration -I'm not sure what it will be, yet. 

Here are directions - and please let me know if you are able to help.

Update:

Back to the Mystery Place: Dinah - you are right. High Rock Park, Staten Island. To see the full, spectacular autumn in this park, visit the Frenchies' beautiful blog post about it.

High Rock Park

For many New Yorkers, Staten Island is the butt of jokes. I don't know how this started, but it's less to do the landscape than it is with perceived cultural attributes. It's like the New Jersey thing, too. We just love to hate New Jersey, and it's easy to buy into, like joining a pack of thick-necked bullies taunting the weasel-faced kid. You're going to NJ!? Have you had your shots!? Or the superior geeks despising the dull-witted thicknecks. You're going to Staten Island!? Why!?

There's something primitively gratifying about hating something with common purpose. And in our PC world we have to indulge this animal trait on the sly, but even the New York Times gets on board, a recent profile of a gated SI community ending with the clever, ambiguous line, uttered by a complacent homeowner innocent of its probable reception: "It's so beautiful...It's like New Jersey!"

Weed-free and in fall, this could be a good picture

Vince's first experience on Staten Island was memorably horrible, involving sucking mud, urioshol and a terrible rash that persisted for weeks. It just confirmed our opinion of the place: avoid.

Actaea pachypoda, doll's eyes - (very) poisonous

My experience of Staten Island has been limited to an obligatory work-related outing to the botanic garden, and a couple of trips back an forth by ferry, never setting foot off the boat. The ferry's free, it's a nice ride. Unless you are Spalding Gray, and it is your last.

Arisaema triphyllum - Jack-in-the-pulpit

It becomes harder to go on bullying when you study the subject at closer hand, of course.

Phytolacca americana, pokeweed berries - reputedly poisonous when raw

So - it was nice to walk in the woods. I am in search of new green places to visit within the five boroughs and these woods appealed because rain might have brought mushrooms and because it seemed there might not be another soul in sight. Who goes to parks on Staten Island?? So with Frank's door-to-door van service off we went, sandwiches packed.

Persicaria sp

In the excitement of camera packing I forgot entirely to equip myself with paper bags for mushrooms. So most of the mushrooms were photographed in place, and some possible Agaricus (below) brought back for what turned out to be an aborted spore print.

Still new to North American mushrooming I have never seen so many kinds in one place.  Not bringing any of these back for a spore print is a black mark to my mushroom-identifying name, but there it is.

In High Rock Park, the woods are on a grand scale, very beautiful. The forest floor where we entered was a clean litter of leaves that had bubbled up over scores of risen mushroom caps, hands' breadths across. There were huge old beeches, as well as oaks and maples. These leaf litter woods with an endlessly disappearing view of trunks, were gorgeous.

Other parts of the forest were less attractive, their understory a tangle of catbriar (Smilax rotundifolia) and bittersweet (prob. Celastrus scandens), the result an interestingly repellent mix of canes and low green leaves and a foreshortened, cluttered view.

Poison ivy

Vincent  lagged far behind us, as a small boy might,  religiously turning over every log he could find. Eventually he found his salamander. He also saw a lot of huge earthworms, which, until last week, I had thought were an indicator of soil health. Apparently not! They are invaders of forests and can compact the forest floor, destroying the fragile leaf litter layer. Speaking of which, surely in Prospect Park, where cruising men have created a network of compacted paths under the old trees, the earthworms may help that very specific situation by aerating? But in natural leaf litter, where no foot has fallen repeatedly, the worms are said to destroy the humus layers.

Lindera benzoin - Spicebush

Less beautiful were the monstrous mosquitoes. People think that South Africa is populated by ravenous insects. It is not. New York is. I have never met as many mosquitoes (and ticks!) as I have here. Not to mention poison ivy. Hiking on this coast is a perilous and itch-inducing adventure.

We shall return in fall after a cold snap, when the woods will bleed and flash colour and the mushrooms will be worm-free. I have become quite suspicious of humid-weather fungi. Oyster season is upon us.

Young hen of the woods - too buggy too eat.

Leaving Staten Island by car is interesting, because you could be anywhere. Visually, it has nothing to do with New York City. It is simply, Town: America. Cars set people apart, and those who can, drive, because public transport is limited; the houses are free-standing, there are strip malls.

And in the middle of it, there are mushrooms, guarded by mosquitoes...

Free Compost!

As much as you can handle.

It will be available this weekend at the Fresh Kills (hm hm hm) landfill on Staten Island.

Details here.

Fresh Kills Composting Site
310 West Service Rd.
Staten Island,
10314 (near exit 7 of Rt. 440)

The city is suspending its leaf litter pick ups, but this compost is the fruit of past endeavours...

This is one of the best free things New York has to offer.

Instead of paying anything between $8 - $17 a bag, depending on where and what it is, rent a little truck and go and fetch your own. Pool with friends. This is the last time it will be on offer.

$20 compost bins will also be available on site. For vegetable peelings and scraps, to make your own compost.

Compost is the best thing for your garden.

And let's lobby for more leaf litter pick ups. It kills me to see leaves going out with the trash. Mayor Mike, if you are really going to go all potentate on us, leaf litter pick ups, please? It would soften the blow.


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