Today we explore America's most famous hiking trail, which runs for hundreds of miles from Maine to Georgia. Our stretch, running through Pawling, NY, is loaded with the season's first wild foods.

This tour is preceeded by a free 60-minute wild foods talk and presentation at Native Landscapes, 991 Route 22, Pawling, NY, which is adjacent to the trail.

As soon as we head off from the nursery, we'll find the huge leaves of burdock, with an edible root that tastes like artichokes and potatoes. Nearby, we'll find loads of wild parsnips, garden escapees that taste even better than their commercial forerunners, plus tons of flavorful wild carrots, a.k.a. Queen Anne's Lace.

Other common herbs and greens we can expect include water mint, wild mint, garlic mustard, field garlic, hairy bittercress, violets, chickweed, mullein, lamb's-quarters, yarrow, purslane, sheep sorrel, wood sorrel, poor man's pepper, sassafras, and black birch.

We'll also find lots of jewelweed, a major medicinal herb with juice that relieves a variety of skin irritations, from insect bites to preventing poison ivy rash. In addition to the common species, spotted jewelweed, which has an orange flower, this is one of the few tours where we'll also find pale jewelweed, with a yellow flower.