Sam Peterson

Sam had been foraging recreationally for a few years before the saw palmetto situation stopped him cold. He was in the Ocala National Forest one afternoon, and someone in his group mentioned offhand that harvesting saw palmetto berries commercially was illegal. Sam looked it up that night and found that Florida Statute § 581.189 makes it a third-degree felony to harvest, possess, or sell saw palmetto berries without a landowner's written permission — not just commercial harvesting, but possession. The law exists because commercial poaching had depleted wild stands used by wildlife, but the statute's language is broad enough to catch casual foragers who have no idea it applies to them.

That discovery shifted how he approaches foraging research. He had assumed the legal risk was low unless you were obviously taking things in bulk. It turned out the risk is species-specific in ways that are genuinely hard to anticipate without reading the statutes directly.

He started building a reference for Florida first — what's regulated under state agricultural law, what falls under USFS harvest limits in the national forests, and which species have specific protections that override general foraging rules. Then he expanded to cover other states and federal land categories as he traveled.

His approach focuses on two levels: location rules (what does the managing agency allow on this specific piece of land?) and species rules (are there plant protection statutes that apply regardless of where you are?). Both matter, and most foraging guides cover only one or the other.

He verifies rules against the agency's current land-use orders and state agriculture department publications, not secondary sources.