HAIKU, Maui » Sunny Savage is guiding a group of eight eager followers on an outing to forage for edible plants in the green, tangled wilds of Haiku, Maui. She wears a tailored, khaki safari jacket with an assortment of pockets into which she tucks her pickings as she makes her way to the far reaches of … her driveway.

That’s as far as anyone needs to go to find food plants, she says. Cat’s ear, spiny amaranth, purslane, sheep sorrel, sow thistle, Spanish needles, honohono grass and more of what most anyone would consider weeds, really. But they are all edible and can easily be added to your dinner plate, according to Savage, whose mantra is “one wild food every day.”

“There’s this complex, rich gift of wild food that’s free and extraordinarily nutritious, and it is not things you can buy in a store,” she says. “And then there’s everything that goes along with harvesting them: the smells, sounds and sights, and the stories that come with it.

“For me, eating even a small amount of wild food adds biodiversity to my life.”

The 38-year-old mother of two holds a master’s degree in nutrition education, focusing on the antioxidants found in wild greens. Her new book, “Wild Food Plants of Hawai‘i,” is a gentle manifesto urging us to expand our definition of food and pursue an “earth-centered way of life.”

Savage will be on Oahu starting Saturday to conduct urban foraging walks and book signings, and will provide some of the ingredients for a pop-up dinner at chef Ed Kenney’s Kaimuki Superette on Tuesday.

A slender, self-assured woman with long, sun-streaked hair, Savage embodies her name. She is unfailingly convivial while explaining the characteristics of freely growing edible plants, and her bold surname is apt for someone with an adventurous spirit who grew up “off the grid” in northern Minnesota and worked in the kitchen at a research station in Antarctica.

She explains that the act of foraging provides more than dietary sustenance. It can be a shared social experience as well as a source of outdoor fun and a means to learn plant identification and perpetuate the traditional practice.

While paying tribute to native peoples who have been foraging for millennia, Savage’s feral-food obsession isn’t about learning to survive in the wild. Instead, she prods urban dwellers to re-examine their environs, to stop and smell — and eat — the flowers. (These include, by the way, yellow and white ginger blossoms, which can be consumed raw in salads; hibiscus, whose delicate petals Savage uses in rice paper rolls; and nasturtium, good in sauces and cocktails.)

“It’s like exercise: You don’t have to run a marathon; you can (reap the benefits) if you do just a little bit every day,” she says. “Eating one wild food every day is more manageable, and it establishes a relationship with these plants. If I see oxalis and bend over and pick one tiny, little leaflet and eat it, that may seem insignificant, but after doing that every day for five years, I’ve established a relationship with that plant.”

“Wild Food Plants of Hawai‘i” provides vivid photos and preparation ideas for wild greens, herbs and vegetables. Many of these are bitter, a taste most of us have lost appreciation for thanks to a diet heavy in processed food, Savage says. She suggests these plants be used in flavored vinegar, added to kim chee and other fermented dishes, or dried and ground into powder.

Milder greens such as Oriental hawksbeard can be tossed into salads or sauteed. Sour-tasting oxalis, which resembles clover, can be pressed into goat cheese for a decorative touch or blended into a concentrate that can substitute for lemon juice.

A chapter on fruit spotlights obvious examples such as bananas, guava, poha berries and lilikoi, but also sea grapes, elderflower and java plums, those olive-size fruits that can stain your parked car but can also be added to smoothies or made into syrup or chutney.

And the oval seed pods with frayed edges that you find at the beach? Edible but hard-to-crack beach almonds. Who knew?

So even if you’re cynical about such things, or just scared you might pick the wrong plant and poison yourself, once you’ve digested Savage’s message, you won’t be able to stroll down the street without looking for edible plants — even in the sidewalk cracks.

“Wild Food Plants of Hawai‘i” by Sunny Savage is $29.95 at sunnysavage.com and amazon.com and $9.99 on iBooks. Email her at sunnysavage@gmail.com.