We take a moment before each post to acknowledge that the land we learn from, responsibly take from, and generously give back to, is the traditional and contemporary homeland of the Anishinaabe peoples, specifically the Council of Three Fires (the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations), among others.
We pay respect to their ancient stewardship, ecological wisdom, and continued presence here in the Great Lakes region, committing ourselves to learning and practicing the ethics of stewardship and harvesting that they pioneered.
Land is not property, land is a relation.
Foraging in the wintertime in Michigan isn’t easy.
You can forget looking for any greens.
The greenest thing you’re going to be looking for are pine needles.
The rest are going to be hearty berries, hearty fungi, and maybe some roots if you can legally dig on the land.
I would argue that it’s easier to hunt in the wintertime than forage.
Animal droppings are easier to spot, so are the foot prints.
But this isn’t a blog about hunting in Michigan, mostly because I don’t hunt.
I see the importance of it from an ecological standpoint, but for mental health reasons I don’t own guns and I can’t bring myself to kill an animal anyways.
(I’m an HSP. I cry when I kill a moth.)
But I still love the outdoors and the stillness of the woods under fallen snow.
That’s why foraging is such a treat for me.
I get to be outdoors on a treasure hunt and no one gets killed.
It also helps to be overly cautious so I don’t go missing and become food for wildlife.
Essential Safety Clothing when Foraging in Michigan in the Winter
Making sure you don’t become food for wildlife during the winter starts with what you’re wearing.
The Three-Layer System: Managing Moisture and Heat
Believe it or not, the concern isn’t freezing to death, it’s getting so hot and sweaty under clothes your body can’t breathe in that you take them off and then die from being frozen to death.
When you exert yourself by foraging through snow and uneven terrain, or digging for roots on your hands and knees, your body generates heat and moisture;
If that moisture stays against your skin, it conducts heat away from your body rapidly once you stop moving, leading to a dangerous chilling effect.
And then we all become Jack Nicholson in a hedge maze.
To prevent this, we’re going to utilize the Three-Layer System, which functions as moisture-transportation and thermal-regulation.
The first layer
This layer is going to be a “wicking fabric” or something that pulls moisture (sweat) away from your body.
Think Merino wool, silk, and synthetics. Avoid cotton by any means because it retains moisture.
When cotton gets wet, it loses its insulation value and holds moisture against your skin, which dramatically increases the rate of heat loss.
Don’t forget that your bra must also be non-cotton, or the system will fail at the core.
This layer should be snug yet stretchy to maintain contact with your skin for an efficient moisture-pulling effect (without restricting circulation if it’s too tight).
You don’t want the first layer to be too loose or too tight, you want a happy “snug” middle-ground.
OSHA explicitly warns against wearing “tight fitting clothing” because it “reduces blood circulation to the extremities,” which significantly accelerates the risk of cold injuries like frostbite.
If the layer restricts blood flow, no amount of insulation will keep you warm because your body cannot cycle warm blood to your skin.
The second layer
This is going to be another layer of wool, or perhaps a synthetic-down, or even fleece.
This is going to be your fleece or puffy jacket.
Its job is to actually hold onto the heat your body creates.
It catches warm air in the fibers, but you aren’t actually warming the jacket; you are warming the air inside the jacket (science is cool).
This first has to be loose so that there are sufficient air pockets that can trap the heat.
If it’s too tight, you squash all the air pockets, and it can’t hold any heat.
This is why you can’t combine the base and mid-layers (although very tempting)—one needs to be skin-tight to move sweat or melted snow, and the other needs to be loose to hold hot air.
For Michigan foraging, where conditions can be damp while you’re going to experience high-exertion, synthetic insulation (like PrimaLoft or Coreloft) is often safer than goose down.
Down loses its ability to loft and trap heat when it gets wet, whereas synthetic fibers maintain their structure and warmth even if you sweat through your base layer or get rained on.
The third layer
This is that top layer to protect you from the wind or rain you will inevitably encounter.
Its job is to protect the other two layers.
Even a great puffy jacket is full of holes (by design, to hold air).
If the wind hits it, it blows all your warm air away.
This outer layer blocks the wind and keeps the snow from soaking your insulation.
If it is completely sealed (like a rubber raincoat), your sweat will condense inside, soaking your first two layers.
Look for shells with “pit zips” (armpit vents) or adjustable cuffs that allow you to dump heat quickly during periods of high exertion, such as breaking frozen ground with a digging tool.
You’re going to want to actively manage this layer.
If you start to sweat while digging, you should open vents or remove the outer layer entirely before your base layer gets saturated.
Once you stop moving, put the shell back on immediately to retain heat.
Pants
Like your upper body, your legs should also be layered.
As a matter of fact, because winter foraging often involves fully kneeling in snow to harvest fungi or roots, your pants are your primary defense against conductive heat loss to the frozen ground.
Most importantly, no jeans.
Jeans are denim and denim is cotton.
When it gets wet from snow or kneeling, it loses its insulating value and holds freezing water against your skin.
This rapid cooling increases the risk of hypothermia and will make your foraging experience the absolute worst.
I would argue that, when it comes to winter foraging in Michigan and kneeling on the ground, what you wear on your legs in the cold is almost more important than what you wear above your legs.
Unless you’re wanting to make snow angels or something.
Or hug a tree.
Rain pants or snow pants that fit over your mid-layers are a good choice.
Like fleece or a puffy jacket, this outer layer creates a barrier against the wet snow while trapping the warm air generated by your movement.
For underwear, wicking long johns are a fun little choice.
As long as they’re not… say it with me… cotton.
Hats
(Don’t wear a ski mask unless you want the cops called on you.)
Because your body naturally constricts blood flow to your hands and feet to protect your core during cold stress, these areas are the most vulnerable to frostbite.
You lose a lot of heat through your head, so a hat functions like a lid on a chimney; without it, your whole-body heat dissipation accelerates.
Just like your base layer, your hat must be made of wool or synthetic fibers to allow sweat from your scalp to wick away and evaporate.
A hat is your thermostat, so if you start to overheat while out foraging, taking off your hat is one of the fastest ways to vent excess heat without removing your main jacket.
It’s critical that your headwear cover your ears.
Frostbite often attacks the ears first because they are composed of cartilage with limited blood flow.
Ear muffs are a good option here too as long as they’re not cotton-based.
Gloves
Foraging requires fine motor skills like using a knife, plucking mushrooms, or digging roots, all of which create a conflict between dexterity (gloves) and warmth (mittens).
So carry a pair of each.
Gloves invariably get wet from handling snow-covered wood, digging in frozen soil, or sweating.
Once the insulation is wet, it loses its ability to retain heat and can freeze, turning the glove into an ice block against your skin.
I recommend using a thin wicking liner glove inside a heavy waterproof mitten.
When you need to harvest, remove the mitten, perform the task quickly with the liner glove (so your skin never touches freezing metal tools or snow), and then immediately return your hand to the mitten.
For situations where you’re handling rough materials like frozen bark, prickly berry brambles, or digging tools, a nice pair of canvas gloves are recommended to prevent scrapes or punctures.
You can use leather gloves too if you wish, although if you’re anything like me, you wouldn’t dare.
As a final warning when it comes to your hands, you should never touch cold metal tools (like the Hori-Hori knife or shovel) with bare skin in freezing temperatures, as this can cause immediate cold contact injuries.
Shoes
For Michigan winter conditions, I better not catch you wearing sneakers or other low top shoes.
You must wear boots that are specifically rated as “insulated and waterproof”.
You must verify the label says “waterproof,” not just “water resistant”.
Foraging often involves standing in snow or mud for extended periods, which will penetrate resistant fabrics.
Your boots must have plenty of room for your toes when you wiggle them.
If your boots are tight (often because you are wearing extra thick socks, go figure), they will restrict blood circulation.
Just like tight clothing on your body, tight boots reduce the flow of warm blood to your toes, increasing the risk of frostbite.
You need enough room to wiggle your toes freely to generate heat.
To prevent falls while scanning trees or ground for edibles, your footwear must also have slip-resistant soles with good rubber treads.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services advises adopting a “penguin walk”, or walking slowly with short steps and keeping your feet shoulder-width apart—to maintain stability on ice.
For socks, it’s recommended that you do the same thing for the feet that you do for your upper body (those first two layers with the boots themselves acting as the outer layer).
Remember, no cotton, so don’t wear socks made of them.
Essential Safety Gear when Foraging in Michigan in the Winter
Sunglasses are often forgotten
The visual cues you rely on in summer are hidden, everything monochromatic, dangerously gorgeous with blinding white.
The first piece of safety gear outside of clothing that I recommend are sunglasses, which are going to help you tremendously when the sun is closer to the horizon at all times, and when the bright white snow overwhelms the cones of your eyes.
Snow blindness, or photokeratitis, is essentially a sunburn of the cornea caused by overexposure to UV rays.
In our winter environment, snow is going to reflect up to 80% of UV radiation, hitting your eyes from above and below.
The symptoms include a gritty, burning sensation, severe light sensitivity, and blurry vision, all of which often don’t appear until hours after the damage occurs, making prevention the only reliable defense.
You can take them off when you’re inspecting something, but put them back on when you aren’t.
Binoculars are an underrated foraging tool
Work smarter, not harder.
Don’t sleep on binoculars as they can be essential for scouting resources from afar.
They allow you to spot potential finds like Chaga on birch trees or remnant fruits high in the canopy, all without wasting energy foraging through deep snow to check every tree.
Pretty cool, right? Not just for bird watching.
Digital gear vs Analog gear
When it comes to whether you should be carrying digital gear vs analog gear, the answer is you’re going to want both.
Both can fail in different scenarios.
You cannot rely on a single method of navigation or communication in winter conditions.
You must use a tiered system to ensure you can find your way back to your vehicle or basecamp.
Unlike a map, a GPS navigation system is going to provide real-time data on location, speed, and surrounding features, which is critical when snow makes the terrain look confusingly uniform.
On the flip-side, electronic devices can fail due to cold or signal loss.
Traditional tools like maps and compasses are considered vital for fundamental navigation skills and provide an essential backup.
Just as in boating, where paper charts provide a reliable backup when electronics lose power, a physical topographic map ensures you are never truly lost.
Other stuff
Field guides are important if you like living.
Emergency whistles are great.
If you’ve seen Titanic, you know what I’m talking about.
A dedicated walking stick can be great too, so if you’re unsure about the next literal step you want to take, you can poke your walking stick through the snow and feel around for what’s there.
A magnifying glass would be helpful too in identifying mushrooms, something like a loupe.
A handy field notebook would allow you to record location data and morphological details that cameras might miss, though a smart phone could do the same.
Speaking of smart phones, make sure yours is fully-charged and wearing a durable phone case.
Bring along a fully-charged external battery pack too.
I could go into farro rods and firestarters, water purification and stuff, but I don’t want to go super off topic.
A final recommendation for other gear you might want to bring are some protein bars.
I’m type 2 diabetic, so I know all about carrying protein bars for low blood sugar.
One place I definitely wouldn’t want to be without them is in the woods, in winter, hoping to find edibles.
What to look for when foraging in the winter in Michigan
I’m going to assume you can legally be on the land you want to forage on.
You’ve spoken to the owners, you’ve let them know where exactly you’ll be (you’ve let others know too, right?)
If you’re on public land, skip any roots entirely. There’s no digging allowed (doesn’t mean there’s nothing worth look for!)
East White Pine and Friends
The Eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus; our state tree) is considered the best and safest conifer for foraging needles in Michigan.
It’s a survival staple and the premier choice for needle foraging due to its flavor profile and nutritional density.
When brewed, the needles create a refreshing, citrus-like tea that is less resinous or bitter than other species.
They can also be used to make a Sprite-like carbonated beverage.
The needles are rich in Vitamin C (containing several times more by weight than an orange) and Vitamin A.
You can identify the Eastern White Pine by its needle clusters; it is the only native conifer in the northeast with five needles per bundle.
5 needles in a cluster, 5 letters in the word “W-H-I-T-E”.
Only harvest fresh green needles from mature trees.
Avoid harvesting from trees near roadsides or golf courses to prevent ingesting chemical runoff or exhaust residues.
Other native pines in Michigan are also safe to utilize, though they may be more brittle or resinous.
Examples are the brittle Red Pine (Pinus resinosa; clusters of 2) and the Jack Pine (Pinus banksiana; also has two needles per bundle, but they are shorter and typically twisted or divergent).
The one and only conifer you should be actively avoiding is the Yew (Taxus spp.).
The Yew ain’t for You!
Unlike safe pines, the Yew has single, flat needles that are not bundled.
The Yew often produces red, berry-like fruits (arils) rather than woody cones.
All parts of this plant (except the flesh of the berry, but don’t risk it) are highly toxic and must never be ingested.
Staghorn Sumac
If you live in the LP, you know exactly what this is.
You’ve probably seen it a lot on freeway slopes that connect the surface street to the freeway.
The Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina) is a large shrub or small tree widely available in Michigan that serves as an excellent beginner foraging plant because of its distinct appearance and culinary uses.
In winter, Staghorn Sumac is one of the easiest plants to identify because its structure mimics the animal it is named after, the stag (deer, etc.).
The branches are stout, brown, and covered in a dense, velvety fuzz, resembling the antlers of a male deer in velvet (absolute nightmare fuel).
Look for dense, upright, cone-shaped clusters of dark red, fuzzy berries (drupes) at the tips of branches.
These clusters persist through the winter, providing a critical food source for birds and a visual marker for foragers.
It thrives in dry soils, colony-forming thickets, roadsides, and forest edges.
While the berries are edible and high in Vitamin C, soaking the berries in cold water will make sumac lemonade.
Using hot water destroys the Vitamin C and extracts bitter tannins from the seeds and stems, making the drink astringent and unpleasant.
Slightly crush the berries and soak them overnight or for several hours.
Afterwards, strain the liquid through a coffee filter or cheesecloth to remove the fine hairs and debris before drinking.
Dried berries can also be ground into a tart, lemony powder often used in Middle Eastern cuisine (like hummus or fattoush).
Yeah, it’s a lot of people’s favorite spices for a reason.
You might have heard about Poison Sumac (Toxicodendron vernix), but they look nothing alike (red vs the poisonous white).
Poison Sumac is found in swamps and wetlands, where Staghorn Sumac is found in dry uplands.
Poison sumac also has smooth leaf edges, while edible sumac leaves are serrated (toothed), although that won’t be something you’ll see in the wintertime.
By the way, super important: Staghorn Sumac is in the Anacardiaceae family, which also includes cashews and mangoes.
If you have severe allergies to these foods, you should avoid consuming sumac (consumacking).
Rose Hips
Rose Hips (Rosa spp.) are the fruit of the rose plant and are considered one of the best for winter foragers because they hang onto the canes long after the leaves have dropped.
Avoid Cotoneaster berries (Cotoneaster spp.), which are toxic and look similar to rose hips.
Both are red, but rose hips have a distinct hairy crown at the bottom whereas Cotoneaster berries are smooth on the bottom and grow in tighter clusters.
You cannot simply pop a whole rose hip into your mouth and chew it up like a blueberry either.
Inside the flesh, the hip contains seeds and a mass of tiny, hair-like bristles.
These internal hairs are highly irritating to the throat and digestive tract.
Either manually scoop out all the seeds and hairs before eating the flesh, or if making a tea, syrup, or puree, boil the whole hips and then strain the mixture through a fine cheesecloth or coffee filter, catching the irritating hairs before consuming the liquid.
Rose hips are prized by survivalists and foragers because they are a powerhouse of Vitamin C.
They contain a significantly higher concentration of Vitamin C by weight than oranges, which historically made them vital for preventing scurvy during long winters.
Like many other wild fruits, rose hips become sweeter after they have been exposed to frost.
The cold helps break down cell walls and concentrate sugars, making them more palatable than they are in late summer.
Oaks and Acorns
There’s this botanical phenomenon called “Marcescence” where plant parts (dead leaves in the case of Oaks) stay attached to the plant well past the typical autumn leaf drop, often throughout the entire winter, only falling off when new growth begins in the spring.
This would normally make identifying the tree in the wintertime easier.
The problem is, this only happens with young oaks.
Young oaks can produce acorns, but they usually don’t start until they are mature enough to reliably invest that much energy into reproduction.
Acorns are so incredibly important when it comes to foraging.
Not only can you harvest an insane amount of them during a “mast” year (a year with peak nut production), but red oaks are heavy in fat while the white oaks are heavy in carbs.
Both fat and carbs are valuable energy sources that are rare to find in such quantities in the wild.
After checking for weevil and moth larvae, you leach out the tannins.
“Leaching” is a water-based extraction process used to remove tannic acid from plant matter, like acorns.
You use cold water for anything in the White Oak group because while white oaks don’t have super high tannin levels like the Red Oak group.
You use hot water for the red oaks because of how high the tannin numbers are, but doing so will also deplete more of the nutrients.
The only way to confirm the leaching process is finished is through taste.
You’re looking for a bland, starchy, or slightly sweet (and definitely not bitter or astringent) taste.
The acorn meat has to be dried, usually through a dehydrator or oven before it can be ground into flour (if that’s your end goal).
It’s an excellent gluten-free alternative that can be used for baking bread, pancakes, cookies, and thickeners, providing a unique, earthy flavor.
You could also press a bunch to get out acorn oil, which is flavorful and very expensive if you tried to buy it at a store (if you can even find it).
Another fun option is to roast acorns as a coffee substitute, a traditional practice that was revived during various scarcity periods (like the American Civil War or the Great Depression) when commercial coffee beans were expensive or unavailable.
The idea with roasting them for pseudo-coffee is that you bypass the intensive leaching process, roasting the acorns until they are so dark that the bitter, astringent tannins are transformed into the complex, dark flavor notes (like chicory or dark roast coffee) that we desire in a hot beverage.
Chemistry is bananas.
Turkey Tail
Our first fungi on the list is Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor), one of the most reliable fungi to forage in Michigan’s winter because it is a persistent polypore, meaning it is tough enough to withstand freezing temperatures without turning into mush, unlike fleshy summer mushrooms.
Positive identification relies entirely on the underside.
The underside of the genuine Turkey Tail is white and covered in tiny, visible pores (like the texture of a sponge).
The False Turkey Tail or the Hairy Curtain Crust (Stereum hirsutum; not a venereal disease) is going to look nearly identical from the top but have a smooth underside with no visible pores.
Turkey Tail grows in large, overlapping shelf-like clusters on dead wood, such as fallen logs, stumps, or standing dead trees.
Turkey Tail is too tough and leathery to eat directly like Morels or Oysters.
Instead, it is harvested for its medicinal properties, particularly for immune support, dried and pulverized or simmered for long periods to create a tea, decoction, or tincture.
Collect choice Turkey Tails that are fresh and free of green algae.
Chaga
Chaga (Inonotus obliquus) is a medically valued fungus that persists year-round, making it a reliable staple for the Michigan winter forager when fleshy mushrooms are absent.
You can brew it into earthy, antioxidant-rich beverages like tea, lattes (with vanilla or chocolate.. I want to try this so bad), or adding its powder to smoothies, coffee, and even soups.
Unlike typical mushrooms, Chaga presents as a dense, irregular, black, charcoal-like mass (known as a “sclerotium”) that appears to burst through the bark of the host tree.
The most critical identification factor for Chaga is its extreme host specificity.
In Michigan, you should look for Chaga on Birch trees (specifically White or Yellow Birch).
The outer surface is black, heavily cracked, and resembles burnt charcoal.
To confirm the identification, you must check the interior flesh, which should be a distinct yellowish-brown or golden color.
Because Chaga is a dense, woody mass that often freezes solid in winter, a sturdy fixed-blade knife (like a Morakniv) or a small hatchet is recommended over a folding pocket knife, which may fail under the torque required to pry the fungus from the tree.
Chaga has an extremely slow growth rate, which makes it vulnerable to over-harvesting.
You must practice ethical stewardship by harvesting only small portions from large sclerotia; never remove the entire mass, as this ensures the long-term viability of both the fungus and the host tree.
Oyster Mushroom
The native Oyster mushroom is a persistent fungus that can withstand the cold, just not the dead of winter.
It’s one of the few fleshy mushrooms you can find in Michigan’s winter, specifically during warm periods when temperatures rise into the 40s or 50s°F.
These grow in shelf-like clusters on dead or dying hardwood trees (and occasionally conifers).
The key identifier is that they have “decurrent gills,” meaning the gills run down the stem rather than stopping at the cap.
A distinct identification feature for fresh native Oysters is their scent; they often smell faintly of anise (licorice).
If they smell “fishy,” they are likely too old to eat.
To distinguish them from any dangerous look-alikes, you can check for a light grey or lilac spore print.
They tend to taste how they smell, faintly of anise (always cook).
A simple pan-fry in butter is the preferred method, much like Morels.
Golden Oyster
Here in Michigan, we can’t talk about the Oyster Mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus) without talking about the invasive Golden Oyster (Pleurotus citrinopileatus).
Native to Asian and Russian hardwood forests, this species escaped from culinary grow kits around 2010 and is now rapidly displacing native fungi across the southern Lower Peninsula.
Studies indicate that logs colonized by Golden Oysters support only half the expected diversity of native fungal species, pushing out the decomposers that drive the forest food web.
They are unmistakable due to their bright yellow caps and funnel shape, with white gills running down a slightly curved stem. They often grow in large clusters on dead elm trees.
Eat freely of them. The rules of conservation do not apply.
Harvest the entire cluster to reduce their reproductive load, and never put uncooked scraps in your outdoor compost, as this spreads the invasion.
Michigan officials urge foragers to report sightings of this species on iNaturalist or to the DNR to help track its spread.
Their taste once cooked (they should always be cooked) is described as nutty.
Like the native oysters, a pan-fry in butter is the preferred method.
Final Thoughts
For sustainably foraging roots, check out my review on Hori-Hori and legal Fixed Blades.
Don’t crush what you forage and check out my reviews on wicker foraging baskets.
Check out my recommended field guides for Michigan foraging as well, both plants and fungi.
Get eaten by the wild things (but not literally),
Trevor.