Having a picnic in Central Park takes on a very different meaning if you’re hanging out with “Wildman” Steve Brill, the infamous naturalist who’s been leading foraging tours in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania for 28 years. You don’t need to bring any food with you to eat an abundance of seasonal, local produce. In fact, there’s a plethora of edible plants and roots all over the park right in the middle of Manhattan – if you only know what you’re looking for.

The tour I’ve signed up for starts at 11:30 on a beautiful Sunday morning in April. The group of about 30, armed with plastic bags to store our specimens, trails after the Wildman, hanging onto his every word. He’s bouncing with energy, full of bad puns and corny stories, and spouts endless amounts of information about the native plants and how to prepare and use them. In short, he’s quite entertaining and very approachable.

We’ve barely entered the park when he spots his first find, wood sorrel. Brill holds up a bunch; it has heart-shaped leaves and a lemony flavor. We snap photos and take notes; one tour member has a video camera and is recording the whole thing. The group samples his batch, then scramble to find more; there are patches of it scattered about, right off the path where hundreds of people jog and walk their dogs every day. But Brill doesn’t pause for long. Throughout the day, he’s constantly searching for new plants to show us, pushing the group forward to the next discovery.

A minute later, he spies some wild lettuce, then plucks some common mallow, a plant with dark green ruffled leaves that have a mild flavor and can be eaten raw or cooked. He points out shepherd’s purse, a distinctive plant with delicious mustardy leaves and flowers that taste like broccoli. There’s field garlic, which looks like scallions; we dig up bunches, being careful to fill in the holes as Brill instructs us. We find chickweed, hedge mustard, wild chervil, field penny cress… the list goes on and on. He gets incredibly excited when he discovers pokeweed, which he claims is one of the most delicious plants you can forage. The only problem is that it’s toxic – when eaten raw, that is. It must be boiled for 15 minutes in several changes of water before it’s safe to eat.

Brill also points out the plants that can make you violently ill or worse; some of them look remarkably similar to other perfectly edible plants, like the star of Bethlehem, which resembles field garlic but can increase your heart rate and cause cardiac arrest. There’s white snakeroot, which is growing among the edible violets we gather and can lead to nausea, vomiting and even death. He stressed the importance of knowing what you’re doing when you’re foraging; it’s incredibly dangerous for a complete novice to go out and start picking plants on his own. And of course, Brill is quick to warn the group when we come across poison ivy.

The amount of edible things we find growing wild in Central Park is astonishing. And we haven’t even stumbled across any mushrooms, which are abundant after several days of rain but are nowhere to be found on this bright, sunny day. Brill finds a black birch tree and breaks off some twigs for us to chew; it tastes like wintergreen and can be used to make tea. A few minutes later we find burdock, which is prized for its thick white root and used frequently in Japanese cuisine; it’s usually thinly sliced and boiled to remove the bitterness. Some of us have brought trowels, which come in handy for digging up the deep roots. Green, speckled leaves growing close to the ground nearby are trout lily, which taste faintly like cucumber. He also shows us jewelweed, which can prevent itching if you break off the stem and rub the juice on your skin for several minutes immediately after a mosquito bite.

By the end of the tour, my plastic bags are stuffed full of edible specimens and I’m slightly dazed by all the plants and names floating through my head. There’s one thing for sure – I’ll never walk though Central Park, or any patch of grass for that matter, the same way again. Nearly all of the plants I’ve gathered are what I’ve always thought of as annoying weeds, and I’m sure to most people they are. The foraging tour with the Wildman was incredibly eye-opening – who knew all this edible and tasty food was growing for free all around us? (Later that week I notice both chickweed and burdock for sale at the Union Square Greenmarket.) And while I probably won’t make a habit of foraging for food, it’s definitely made me look differently at those weeds growing along the side of the road. That’s shepherd’s purse, thank you very much, and it tastes like broccoli.