Sustainable Foraging

Once you’re confident about your first-hand experience identifying a wild plant, know the right time of year to harvest, and feel the calling to pick and use it, the best way to do that is to grow it yourself or harvest it from a friend who has it on his/her land or from a farm that is growing it. If you choose to harvest in the wild, please do so in a mindful and respectful way. Here are some guidelines:

• • The Chumash and other indigenous tribes give thanks and ask permission of the plants before picking. This may be done in the form of a prayer, a song, or a small offering of a sacred herb or something symbolic of the plant’s value. Juanita Centeno, my Chumash teacher, instructed us to do this upon encountering the first specimen of a native plant we intended to harvest. She told us to then continue looking for the plant where it was abundant before picking.

• • Juanita Centeno’s Way: A 3-Point Guide to Ethical Interaction with Plants
    1. Stop and Give Thanks
    Acknowledge the plant as a living being. Pause to recognize its presence and the role it plays in the ecosystem before you consider collecting.2. Make an Offering
    Establish reciprocity through a gift of value. This can be:
    Physical: Tobacco, sage, water (a libation), or any biodegradable item of personal value
    Verbal: A prayer, a song, or a spoken “thank you”
    Actionable: A commitment to the land, such as volunteering for habitat restoration or supporting conservation.3. Look Around
    If it is the only one you see, or the first of its kind you encounter on your path, leave it be. This ensures the plant’s lineage continues and checks the human impulse to take without regard for the future.
  • Jacque Tahuka Nunez of the Acjachemen tribe of the Orange County region gives this simple advice:
    • “Don’t take more than you need.”
    • “Give back.”
    • “Be resourceful.”

• • Learn about the conservation status of your chosen plant at Calflora.com, the California Native Plant Society’s Inventory of Rare and Endangered Plants, or at NatureServe.org. Is it native or introduced? Collect native plants only where they are abundant or, at the very least, not rare or endangered. Eat the weeds!

• • Pick where local laws allow it and, again, only where sufficient quantities of your chosen plant are growing. Preserves, state parks, and designated USFS campgrounds and wilderness areas are set aside for the public and not intended for harvesting. Some National Forests allow for gathering small quantities of aboveground parts for personal use (i.e, what will fit in a grocery shopping bag.) If you plan to collect plant material in the Los Padres National Forest, here is the most recent USFS statement on collecting permits as of 2/26/26: “We don’t issue those types of permits on the Los Padres currently. You can collect plant material for personal use as long as it is incidental and can be carried in your arms. If you would like to collect more than an incidental amount, you can contact our Southern California zone ecologist, Nicole Molinari at nicole.molinari@usda.gov.”  Outside of the Los Padres, permit requests must be submitted to the local Forest Botanist in your region or forest.

• • Collect only the aboveground parts unless you are on private land with permission or you are in possession of the USFS collection permit linked above for educational purposes. In any case, never take more than 10% of the mass of any single plant. Prune while picking to try to encourage new growth and leave the plant looking better than you found it.

• • For your own protection, do not pick where there are signs of pollution, spraying of herbicides, or alongside paved roads and highways where most spraying takes place. Dust can be washed off before preparing fresh material or drying for storage.

• • Approach new wild foods with baby steps: first a taste, then a chew, then a swallow. Spit it out immediately if you notice a bitter, acrid or otherwise disgusting taste. If it seems palatable, to exercise an abundance of caution, wait 24 hours before ingesting any quantity beyond a tasting.

©2026 Lanny Kaufer  HerbWalks.com