Harvesting ornamental & wild plants for food and other uses
Been doing some reading on the internet the past few days about learning to identify wild plants that are edible. Finding it to be quite interesting as it may be a good hobby and a way to streatch the food dollar plus be a potential food source during a disaster. There's an abandoned railroad grade just a short walk from where i live and if I follow it in one direction, I'll go thru woods and down to the bank of the river. If I go the other way, I'll walk thru more woods, open field and swampy areas. A variety of plant habitat which ought to make finding useful plants rather easy.
It is my intent to edit this OP considerably later with more detail and links to informative web sites but below are just a few examples of plants that I've seen written about:
The common daylily
The dandelion
Pine trees
Red and white clover
Cattails-many parts are edible and the mature leaves can be used to make baskets and mats.
Fiddleheads-what the unfurled young sprouts of ferns are called.
Most every site I looked at stressed the importance of correctly identifying plants because eating the wrong ones can make you very sick, clean out your bowels much more then needed, or kill you. In the case of the daylily, eating too much of the leaves can get you high. Which may be a plus for some. Some people won't eat the fiddlehead of the very common Bracken fern while others say it's fine in moderation and if prepared properly.
Here is a site that has a database of over 7000 useful plants:
http://www.pfaf.org/user/default.aspx
= new reply since forum marked as read
There's the pine nuts from the cones, and tea from the needles (leaves) is supposed to be a source of vitamin C. Not sure the rest of it would be very appetizing... 
PS also, chewing gum from hardened spruce tree sap is supposed to be good for dental health.
http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2010/05/lets-eat-adirondack-spruce-gum.html
Gum collectors scored spruce trees with an ax. The tree filled the wound with sap, which weathered and hardened over the summer and into winter. In early spring, Adirondackers used an ax or a picker make from a tin can with a sharp edge or scraper attached on the end of a long pole. Boiled and processed, the gum was broken into bite-sized chunks. Still brittle, it took a few seconds to soften in the mouth, and retained a distinctively “sprucy” taste.
Enterprising men and women could collect hundreds, even thousands of pounds each year, to sell to manufacturers or process at home. In good years, one could sell the collected gum for as much as a dollar a pound. In 1881, the Pulaski Democrat announced, “A gentleman was in Lowville the other day, buying all the spruce gum that could be found in the market… The gum is shipped to Lowell, Mass., where it finds ready sale.” In 1916, John Kelly of Croghan collected and sold more than 3,000 pounds, “quite an achievement when taken into consideration that Mr. Kelly is well up into the sixties and did the work alone.”
In 1870, Thomas Adams of Staten Island, NY, developed chewing gum made from the sap of the Mexican Chiclezapote tree, and invented the Chiclet. Softer and sweeter, the new gum gradually outpaced the demand for brittle, unsweetened spruce gum.
I haven't prepared anything from either the wild or from flowers but earlier this evening I watched a couple of youtube videos talking about how to identify both and how to use them.
I'd really like to learn, we just are too damn busy right now.
Regardless of whether or not you actually consume much (or any) of what you find, it will be really fun to learn... 
