Urban foraging: How to look for edible and medicinal wild plants growing in your city

Discover the urban bounty of wild edible plants in Bengaluru with Shruti Tharayil's Wild Food Walks this weekend.

Our cities still hold many surprising secrets. Not just concrete jungles, they are also home to a thriving ecosystem of wild edible plants. The plants and trees that we see everyday are not only ornamental and ecological in their purpose. While we may associate fresh produce with farms and markets, a wealth of nutritious greens and herbs can be found right under our noses.

Shruti Tharayil, founder of Forgotten Greens, is on a mission to uncover this urban bounty. Through her Wild Food Walks, she guides participants on a journey of discovery, teaching them to identify, forage, and cook with wild plants found in city landscapes. This weekend she hosts walks in Cubbon Park and Lalbagh in Bengaluru.

Foraging your greens does not always mean heading outside urban confines, Shruti explains. “We have these preconceived notions that wild food is only available in a forest, or that to get wild food you have to go to a remote village. That is what I try to debunk through my work. We have enough wild food growing in our cities, it is just that we do not have the eyes to see it.” 

Shruti works as an educator, writer and independent researcher. She consults for diverse projects and communities on topics of decolonising and re-imagining food systems in today’s context. Hailing from the Ezhava community in Kerala, who used to be foragers, she is usually on the road cycling across south India. On these trips, she learns about food from indigenous,and pastoral communities.    

Which greens grow wild in Bengaluru?

The diversity of the plants is always a surprise. Shruti has done these walks previously in Cubbon Park, but shares that each time she goes to the park, she discovers something new. For example, oxalis corniculata, commonly known as wood sorrel, grows abundantly in Cubbon Park. This can be consumed raw in salads, chutneys, or cooked with lentils. “There are also stinging nettle plants in Cubbon Park. You can make soups out of it. It is highly nutritious and a superfood,” she adds. The sessile joyweed or alternanthera sessilis is another commonly found plant. It is versatile in its usage —  it can be added to dal, salads, stir-fries, and is suitable for modern recipes like noodles or pesto too. 

A recipe that Shruti recommends is patthila thoran, a dish cooked commonly during the monsoons in Kerala. Patthila literally translates to ‘ten leaves’, and it uses different greens that are available. The walk will teach participants to not only identify the greens, but also explain how to recognise which plants are safe to eat and which are poisonous.