Most of what I forage shuts down for the year around the same time the maple leaves come down. Licorice fern doesn’t. This is the plant I send people to when they tell me winter foraging sounds like a contradiction \u2014 a green, sweet-rooted fern that’s often at its best from November through February, hanging off the mossy trunks and branches of big-leaf maples while everything around it goes bare and brown. I’ve been digging it every winter for close to twenty years, and it’s still one of the few things that makes a gray January walk in the woods feel like it has a purpose.<\/p>\n
Polypodium glycyrrhiza<\/em> \u2014 the species name tells you what you need to know, since glycyrrhiza<\/em> is the same root word behind “glycyrrhizin,” the sweet compound in true licorice. The rhizome has a genuinely sweet, mildly spicy flavor when you chew a fresh piece, nothing like the fern fronds themselves. That sweetness is the whole reason it’s worth the climb.<\/p>\n