I dont want to keep remarking on the weather but it is so highly unusual this year. Today we had a heat alert with 90 degree plus temperatures in May! Great foraging now but just have to be a bit more alert to catch the plants at their best. You may notice these beautiful flowers of the dames rocket and thought it was phlox. But dames rocket Hesperis matronalis, unlike phlox, is a highly invasive nonnative species that is a great target with a mustard family taste for foragers. I see them most often in the edge between a forest and a lawn or field. The key is that the flowers have four petals and not five like the phlox. We eat the leaves and flowers stir fried with fried rice and also in our wild mustard recipe sneak peak from the Foraged Flavor book on Science Friday’s website here
