Search: smilax vine

Smilex looks like the “walking stick” insect

For The Edible Love of Krokus and Smilax

No, that is not a “Walking stick” insect. It is the growing end of a Smilax, a choice wild food.

The Walking Stick insect

There used to be a field in Sanford, Florida, near Lake Monroe, that was nearly overrun with growing Smilax every spring. I could get a couple of quarts of tender tips daily over a few weeks, enough for many meals. Cooked like asparagus or green beans, they are excellent, and also edible raw in small quantities.

The tip grows from the end of the vine and gets tougher as one goes back along the vine. Technically that is called

Bull Briar leaves, edible when young

the meristem stage, that is, the growing part is almost always the most tender because the cells haven’t decided what it is they’re supposed to do, such as get tough and hold up the plant or create an odor or the like. The way to harvest smilax is to go back a foot or so from the end of the vine (more if it is a very large vine, less if small) and see if the vine snaps, breaks clean between your fingers. If not, move closer towards the growing end of the vine and try it again. Where the vine snaps and breaks is the part you can take and eat. Well-watered bull briers (Smilax bona-nox, SMEYE-laks BON-uh-knocks, that’s SM plus EYE) in a field or on a sunny tree can produce edible shoots a foot long and third of an inch through. Smilax is from the Greek smilakos, meaning twining but there is more to that story.  Bona-nox means “good night” and usually refers to plants that bloom at night.) The Spanish called them Zarza parilla, (brier small grape vine) which in English became sarsaparilla, and indeed sarsaparilla used to come from a Smilax.

Large roots are fiberous

Often called cat briar because of its thorns, or prickles, Smilax climbs by means of tendrils coming out of the leaf axils. Again, technically, it is not a vine but a “climbing shrub.” No, I have no idea why someone thinks that’s important or how they can tell the difference. My guess is a vine has one stem and a shrub has several.) I am filing it under “vine.” Smilax are usually found in a clump on the ground or in a tree. They provide protection and food for over forty different species of birds

Young roots can be boiled or roasted

and are an important part of the diet for deer, and black bears. Rabbits eat the evergreen leaves and vines, leaving a telltale (tell tail?) 45 degree cut. Beavers eat the roots. Smilax also has a long history with man, most famous perhaps for providing sarsaparilla. The roots (actually rhizomes) of several native species can also be processed (requiring more energy than obtained) to produce a dry red powder that can be used as a thickener or to make a juice. Young roots — finger size or smaller — can also be cooked and eaten. While the tips and shoots can be eaten raw a lot of raw ones give me a stomach ache.

Fruits are edible when old

Medically, the root powder has been used to treat gout. A Jamaican species contains at least four progesterone class phytosterols. Some herbalists recommend that species for premenstrual issues. In 2001, a U.S. patent application said Smilax steroids had the ability to treat senile dementia, cognitive dysfunction and Alzheimer’s. A U.S. patent awarded in 2003 described Smilax flavonoids as effective in treating autoimmune diseases and inflammatory reactions. Note: These are patents claims in anticipation of clinical trials some distant day proving said claims by further research. So don’t start digging up Smilax roots for self-medication.  A 29 Feb 2008 study suggest Smilax root has antiviral action and a 2006 study suggest it is good for liver cancer.

It should be mentioned that early American settlers made a real root beer from the smilax. They would mix root pulp with molasses and parched corn then allowed it to ferment. One variation is to add sassafras root chips, which gives it more of the soft drink root beer flavor. Francis Peyre Porcher wrote during the Civil War in the 1860’s  “The root is mixed with molasses and water in an open tub, a few seeds of parched corn or rice are added, and after a slight fermentation it is seasoned with sassafras.”

Francis Peyer Porcher, professor of medicine

Can I take an aside here? Francis Peyer Porcher, 1824-1895, was a doctor, professor of medicine, and a botanist. Through his mother’s side, he was a descendant of the botanist Thomas Walter, author of Flora Caroliniana, the first catalog of the flowering plants of South Carolina, published in 1788. Peyer, as he liked to be called, was, as they used to say, well-to-do. He was professionally active in both fields — medicine and botany — when the American Civil War began. Because of the blockade of medical supplies he was ordered to write a field manual for doctors to help them find and make the drugs they needed in the

Dr. Porcher circa U.S. Civil War

absence of supplies. His work, Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests, is still a reference and I have an ebook copy of it. It was so popular in his day that newspapers carried excepts of it. His effort was credited with helping the South prolong the war. We are fortunate to have two photographs of him, one presumably around war time and the other when he was again a professor and active in medical circles.

There are about 300 or more species in the genus Smilax and are found in the Eastern half of the United States and Canada, basically east of the Rockies.  Fourteen species are found in the southern United States. Smilax gets its name from the Greek myth of Krokus and the nymph Smilax. The story is varied. Here’s one version: Their love affair was tragic and unfulfilled because mortals and nymph weren’t allowed to love each other. For that indiscretion, the man, Krokus, was turned into the saffron crocus by the goddess Artemis (because she, too, was having an affair with Krokus but as a goddess that was okay.) Smilax, actually woodland nymph, was so heartbroken over Krokus’ reduction down to a flower that Artemis took godly pity on her and turned Smilax into a brambly vine so she and Krokus could forever entwine themselves. There are far less poetic and less sanitized versions. Seems it was a popular story thousands of years ago with many variation and interpretations.

Oh, about that field in Sanford: A century ago it was a truck farm producing celery and other vegetables. Then it fell fallow growing Smilax. Now it’s an apartment complex. One last thing: Dried Smilax root can make a good pipe bowl, which is why the pipe bowl is called a “brier,”

Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant Profile

Smilax tips ready for butter and seasoning

IDENTIFICATION: A climbing shrub with tuberous roots, knobby white roots tinged with pink, bamboo like stems, more or less thorny, leaves varying with species and on the bush, tiny flowers, five slim petals, fruit round, green turning to black, one small brown seed.  Some species have red fruit, edibility of red fruit unreported.

TIME OF YEAR: Starts putting on shoots in February in Florida, later in the season as one moves north. Seeds germinate best after a freeze.

ENVIRONMENT:  It grows best in moist woodlands, but can tolerate a lot of dry and is often seen climbing trees. Left on its own with nothing to climb it sometimes creates and brambly shrub. Thicket provides protection for birds.

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Beside making sarsaparilla, the roots can be used in soups or stews, young shoots eaten cooked or in small quantities raw,  berries can be eaten both raw and cooked, usually are chewed like gum (avoid the large seed.) Pounds of roots to pounds of flour is a 10 to one ratio.

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Wild Pineapple is very showy when in blossom. Photo by Green Deane

Cut the fruit off with a pair of nippers. Photo by Green Deane

Wild Pineapple has a beautiful blossom around April, depending upon the seasonal conditions. Six or seven months later you can harvest the lemon-yellow fruit. Both the blossom and the fruit can be exceptionally attractive. Its blossoms were one reason why Wild Pineapple was used in landscaping a century ago. You can often find it where spas, inns and hotels were established near railroad stops (along with bamboo and cultivated grapes. Also look for chunks of coquina rock.)

 I wish I could eat Wild Pineapple. Well, I can but I pay a price for it. I get a “scruffy” tongue. The fruit looks good and tastes good. But, within a few minutes of eating I can’t taste anything and that lasts for a few hours. Some folks are like me and lose their sense of taste while others have no problem. They eat them without issue. The only possible variable I can think of that I have not tried tasting them when extremely ripe. It might be sub-acid then. Most of the plant, however, is edible when young and cooked (but avoid the stinging hairs on the flowers.) Also note the leaves have recurved spines that go in both directions so once it grabs you getting free is tough. You can read about Wild Pineapple here.

The Sarsaparilla Vine has pointed red berries.

This past weekend my foraging class spotted Smilax pumila. It’s a red-berried Smilax and one of two locally with red fruit. The other, S. walteri, is not rare but I don’t see it too often, about once a decade. The quick way to tell them apart is S. walteri berries are round on the end and S. pumila are pointed. Also called the Sarsaparilla Vine it’s people friendly and one of the few Smilaxes without prickles. We know the root of S. pumila is edible because it has been used to flavor root beer and other beverages include an alcoholic beer. And while the young tips and leaves are edible I don’t know if the berries are. Most smilax berries never reach the point of a taste worth foraging for. At best when they are old and look like fresh raisins they are tolerable. I haven’t eaten any red berries off any Smilax just out of form (they are red for a reason which could range from attracting birds to being toxic. I just don’t know.) Most Smilax berries are dark purple or black so I view Smilax red berries with suspicion. However, Smilex aspera in Greece has red berries and the fruit is edible. So maybe I am being over cautious. Then again I note S. apera berries while edible are not bright red when ripe but a dark red towards purple black. While “Smilax” refers to a nymph in Greek mythology the word itself comes from a Greek word that means “poison.” It was believed if you rubbed a baby with the Smilax vine you protected it from poisoning. You can read about Smilax here.

Keynote Speakers at the Florida Herbal Conference Linda and Luke Black Elk.

It’s time to be thinking about two conferences in February, Earthskills in Hawthorn, and the Florida Herbal Conference near Lake Wales. I lead plant walks at both events. Earthskills is Feb 7-11 and the Florida Herbal Conference is Feb 23-25. While the former organizes later in the year the Florida Herbal Conference is already accepting registrations. It is usually sold out so register early. Because you read this EatTheWeeds newsletter you get a discount for the Florida Herbal Conference. If you register between now and January 31 using the code FHC2018_GREENDEANE you can get a 30% discount. Keynote speakers this year at the Florida Herbal Conference are Linda and Luke Black Elk from the Standing Rock Reservation. Linda (of the Catawba Nation) is an ethnobotanist specializing in teaching about culturally important plants and their uses as food and medicine. She is a lecturer at Sitting Bull College in Fort Yates, North Dakota. Luke Black Elk (Thítȟuŋwaŋ Lakota) is a storyteller, grassroots activist, and traditional spiritualist. He has conducted research in water restoration, sustainable building design, and food sovereignty, and hopes to use these techniques to encourage a more traditional way of life among his people. Luke has lived on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation his entire life, becoming deeply involved in cultural and community activities. For more information about the Florida Herbal Conference go here.

Bottle Brush Tree blossoms and leaves can be used for tea. Photo by Green Deane

The Greeks were perhaps the first people to call things what they were such as “yoke mate” for spouse or “shiny leather” for the Reishi mushroom.  Then along came Latin that liked to be soft and flowery. English, conversely, is punchy and muscular. It gets to the point quickly. When you have a choice while writing always opt for English-based words over Latin-based ones. Extinguish The Conflagration doesn’t say it as well as Put Out The Fire!  So when it came to a tree in which the leaves were used for tea it became the Tea Tree. And its oil became Tea Tree Oil with most folks forgetting the leaves can also be used for tea. The same down-to-earth approach was used with a very close relative to the Tea Tree, the Callistemon, or the Bottle Brush Tree. You can use the blossoms of the Bottle Brush Tree for tea or the leaves. The blossom tea tastes better. Or, you can combine them.  You can also use white Bottle Brush Tree blossoms for tea. By the way Latin was used for scientific names because it is a dead language that doesn’t change. To read about the Bottle Brush Tree go here. 

Foraging classes are held rain or shine. Photo by Nermina Krenata

Foraging Classes: The winter season does not slow us down with a lot of cooler weather plants coming up. There is one class this weekend, Sunday in Orlando, because of the holiday. 

Sunday, November 26th,  Blanchard Park, 10501 Jay Blanchard Trail, Orlando, FL 32817. 9 a.m. Meet by the tennis courts near the WMCA building.

Saturday, December 2nd, Red Bug Slough Preserve, 5200 Beneva Road, Sarasota, FL, 34233. 9 a.m.

Sunday, December 3rd, Dreher Park, 1200 Southern Blvd., West Palm Beach, 33405, 9 a.m. We meet just north of the science center.

Sunday, December 10th, Bayshore Live Oak Park, Bayshore Drive. Port Charlotte. Meet at the parking lot at the intersection of Bayshore Road and Ganyard Street. 9 a.m.

Saturday, December 16th,  Blanchard Park, 10501 Jay Blanchard Trail, Orlando, FL 32817. 9 a.m. Meet by the tennis courts near the WMCA building.

To learn more about the classes go here. 

Green Deane DVD Set

All of Green Deane’s videos available for free on You Tube. They do have ads on them so every time you watch a Green Deane video I get a quarter of one cent. Four views, one cent. Not exactly a large money-maker but it helps pays for this newsletter. If you want to see the videos without ads and some in slightly better quality you can order the DVD set. It is nine DVDs with 15 videos on each for a total of 135 videos.  Many people want their own copy of the videos or they have a slow service and its easier to order then to watch them on-line. The DVDs make a good gift for that forager you know especially on long, cold winter months. Individual DVDs can also be ordered or you can pick and choose. You can order them by clicking on the button on the top right hand side of this page (if your window is open wide enough.)  Or you can go here.

Green Deane Forum

Want to identify a plant? Looking for a foraging reference? Do you have a UFO, an Unidentified Flowering Object you want identified? On the Green Deane Forum we chat about foraging all year. And it’s not just about warm-weather plants or just North American flora. Many nations around the world share common weeds so there’s a lot to talk about. There’s also more than weeds. The reference section has information for foraging around the world. There are also articles on food preservation, and forgotten skills from making bows to fermenting food. One special section is “From the Frightening Mail Bag” where we learn from people who eat first then ask questions later. You can join the forum by clicking on “forum” in the menu.

Bee In Flight

It’s an old story, been around some 80 years: Scientists say bumblebees can’t fly. However man-made dragonflies can. Before we get to the dragonflies what about the aerodynamically-challenged bumblebee? The it-can’t-fly story has two sources: A dinner conversation in Germany or a book in French about insects. The problem in each case the engineers who did the calculating viewed the bee as a fixed-wing object which would indeed make them flightless. However, their wings are more like helicopter blades, to be more precise, reverse-pitch semirotary blades. A moving wing generates a lot more lift than a stationary one thus bumblebees do indeed fly. That’s also how artificial dragonflies fly.

A Dragonfly that obeys you.

The Techjet Dragonfly is an “unmanned autonomous vehicle” (UAV) that flies, hovers and can collect data with its onboard sensors. The Dragonfly was developed at Georgia Tech with a million dollars from the Air Force. The design has four wings and is a little larger than a real dragonfly, measuring six inches long and weighing 25 grams, which is just shy of an ounce. Power is supplied by a 250 mAh lithium polymer battery providing hover times of 8 to 10 minutes and a combined hover/flight time of 25 to 30 minutes. They also have up to 20 environmental sensors and cameras as well as GPS capabilities. The drone Dragonfly can provide live and mobile feed for photography, security, gaming, spying and swarm robotics. They designed four models: Alpha ($250) is the basic model. Delta is faster and will cost $500. Gamma has more programmable features and a price tag of $750. The Omega model is the fully-loaded dreadnaut dragonfly going for $1,499.  What I want to know is will birds leave them alone, or, will we need mechanical birds to keep those robotic swarms in check?

Will swarms of bots replace bees?

“Swarm Robotics” is fairly clear in concept but fuzzy in application. It’s a lot of simple, cheap little machines, doing something better than a large, expensive one. Got it. Applications are more jargon than practical at the moment. However, I can think of one: If honeybees do indeed die off we will need something to pollinate plants, and make honey. More importantly will you be bothered at some future picnic by a mechanical bee trying to steal some jelly? You could swat it but Big Brother Beekeeper has a video of you and knows exactly where you are. Time to arm the deadly nerve gas stinger…

This is issue 279. The main portion of the website is now functional though small bugs persist.  We are working on them. Thanks for you patience. 

If you would like to donate to Eat The Weeds please click here.

 

 

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Grassleaf Lettuce at an abandoned golf course. Note the very skinny leaves. Photo By Green Deane

Golf Courses Revisited: In last week’s newsletter we reported finding a local golf course abandoned and carpeted with weeds. It was a nine-hole course and driving range that’s been unkept for at least a year though judging by the weeds more like two years. The question was raised immediately if it was safe to harvest weeds in such a place. The argument was golf courses are highly treated with this or that chemical to keep weeds at bay. Indeed, one of the few good and inexpensive books with good information about lawn weeds in Florida was written for golf course operators.  On the Green Deane Forum, where we chat about foraging 366 days a year, the conversations suggested that old golf courses, those that have been around for decades, might be poor places to harvest edible weeds. Much the same warning is given for railroad tracks. Both were using harsh, long-lasting chemicals before most environmental regulation was created. But modern golf courses have to use more environmentally friendly means and chemicals. Thus a recently created and abandoned golf course would most likely be a safe place to harvest, more so as time passes (though it would also be good to know what the course was before it was a course.) This particular lay of links was just a few years old when it failed. And it was also mentioned that the “rough” is probably never treated with anything. My rule of thumb has been if I see weeds growing anything that might had been put there to stop the weeds is no longer working. It’s weedless lawns that are the most fumigated and… herbigated…

Pluteus cervinus, the edbile Dear Mushroom.

Pluteus cervinus, the edbile Deer Mushroom.

Here comes the rain! The front that’s sweeping over the South and aiming to wet the northeast might bring the first flush of mushrooms this spring. Morels are already being harvested in Georgia with the Carolinas waiting in anticipation. Locally we just finished perhaps our last cold snap of the season with a full moon Sunday (in the spring here cold weather tends to show up the same time as a full moon which means one more cool spell in April.) So this week starts off wet and warm. That makes mushrooms happy. I’ll start serious hunting by mid-week. Time for me to file old samples and dust off the microscope. This year I am determined to find more edible Boletes and get a solid familiarity with Pluteus cervinus, the edible “deer” mushrooms. This is a good time to remind you I also have two popular mushroom pages on facebook: Southeastern US Mushroom Identification, and, Florida Mushroom Identification Forum. Visit and seen how the experts (not me!) sort out the fungi.  

This excellent picture of a Smilax tip is from The Dewberry Blog.

This excellent picture of a Smilax tip is from The Dewberry Blog.

Spring is a busy time of year for Mother Nature with almost too many edible species to describe. Classes on the west coast of the state produced dozens of species to talk about. There were some highlights. Our Wild Cucumber  is not only blossoming but fruiting as well. We found several in Sarasoata. Ground Cherries are also blossoming though their fruit won’t be edible for months to come. Ripe for the taking now are the blossoms of the Coral Bean. While the seeds are toxic the tubular flowers cooked are a traditional food from Florida to Mexico and points south. And one can’t mention foraging this time of year without including Smilax vines. They were producing heavily this past weekend and will do so for the next couple of months. Some consider them the best green of spring. There is no excuse to be hungry this time of the year.

Should you have an article about a wild edible plant or related topic you want considered for the newsletter, please send an inquiry via the newsletter’s email address. Incidentally my email program had a stroke so if you sent me an email about private classes or the like please send them again. Thanks.

Green Deane starting a 7 a.m. class at the 2014 Florida Herbal Conference. Photo by Susan Marynoski, another teacher at the conference.

Green Deane starting a 7 a.m. class at the 2014 Florida Herbal Conference. Photo by Sondra Hamilton.

I am on the road again this weekend with classes in West Palm Beach on Saturday and Port Charlotte on Sunday, a three-day loop around the southern end of the state. Even though I teach each day they are like mini-vacations.

Saturday, March 22nd, Dreher Park, 1200 Southern Blvd.,  West Palm Beach, FL.,  33405. 9 a.m.

Sunday March 23rd, Bayshore Live Oak Park, 23000 Bayshore Rd., Port Charlotte, FL 33980, 9 a.m.

Saturday, March 29th, Haulover Canal, Merritt Island National Refuge, 9 a.m. See details on the “classes” page.

Sunday, March 30th Mead Garden,  1500 S. Denning Dr., Winter Park, FL 32789, 9 a.m.

Saturday, April 5th, Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge, 2045 Mud Lake Road,  DeLeon Springs, FL 9 a.m.

Below is this week’s, What Do You See #07. There’s a lot to be seen, which can happen in the spring. There are six or seven, maybe more edible species in the picture.

What Do You See 07. Photo by Green Deane

What Do You See 07. Photo by Green Deane

Below are the answers to What Do You See 06.

Answers to What Do You See #06. Photo by Green Deane

Answers to What Do You See #06. Photo by Green Deane

WDYS#06 skirts edibility. Number one is Poor Man’s Pepper Grass. The leaves and roots have a wasabi-like flavor (mustardy.) It also has comes close relative that are also edible.  Number two relies much on opinion. Some love it, I can barely stand the smell of it. It is Epazote, a spice, a pot herb, and source of a worming oil which in high concentrations can be deadly. It has also had several botanical names so one finds it under various genera. Three is Horseweed, which is used as a spice. Its dry, mature stem also makes a good drill for making fire by hand. And for added education is number 4, a non-edible cudweed which is a Pseudognaphalium and extremely common this time of year. Number 5 is not the beginning leaves of a Dandelion but the basal rosette of our local Evening Primrose, usually an Oenothera laciniata with yellow blossoms or O. speciosa with pink blossoms. To be honest I don’t know their edibility. Dick Deuerling told me decades ago O. laciniata was not edible but knowing Dick that could have meant not edible or edible but didn’t taste good. Dick was fond of saying “I only eat the good stuff.”

https://www.eattheweeds.com/peppergrass-potent-pipsqueak/

https://www.eattheweeds.com/epazote-smelly-food-of-the-gods/

https://www.eattheweeds.com/conyza-canadensis-herb-fire-food-2/

EatTheWeedsOnDVD-FullSet-small

Eat The Weeds DVDs are now available.

Though your foraging may drop off during the winter it’s a great time to study wild edibles with my nine DVD set. Each DVD has 15 videos for 135 in all. They make a great gift. Order today. Some of these videos are of better quality than my free ones on the Internet. They are the same videos but many people like to have their own copy. I burn and compile the sets myself so if you have any issues I handle them personally. There are no middle foragers. And I’m working on adding a tenth DVD.  To learn more about the DVDs or to order them click here.

Birmingham Botanical Garden 2014 Plant Sale

Birmingham Botanical Garden 2014 Plant Sale

And for you folks near Birmingham, Alabama, who like to shop around for plants, The Birmingham Botanical Gardens’ annual plant sale is a month from now. There will be more than 100,000 plants on sale. Something for everyone. Some of the regular post contributors on the Green Deane Forum will be there. I’ll have to get an update on what one can expect about edibles. Here’s the link. 

Book Review: Foraging & Feasting, A Field Guide and Wild Food Cookbook,  by Diane Falconi, illustrated by Wendy Hollender, Botanical Arts Press, Accord NY. ISBN 978-0-9893433-0-5

The answer to the question of what makes a good field guide is directly related to how the owner will use it. Usefulness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, or in this case the user. What do you expect from a field guide? How will you use it? What features are important to you? Good pictures? Great recipes? Valuable insight from an expert’s experience? Do you want to carry it in your pocket or leave it on a living room coffee table?

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Foraging & Feasting

At nearly 12 by 9 inches Foraging & Feasting will not fit in most pockets. But it will fit in a backpack and is definitely backyard friendly, where I expect it will most probably be used. There is a huge misnomer among people who don’t forage. They think wild food is found in far flung places such as a state park a few hours’ drive away. Foraging reality is typically just the opposite: There’s usually a greater variety of wild edibles to be found in suburbia than in a state park. Weeds have their ways. This means your neighborhood and your yard, even one that is burdened with a lawn, is a great place to find wild food. I see this book being used on the domestic front by the whole family rather than on a remote mountain top by a lone holdout.

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Seasonal Foraging Chart

Foraging & Feasting is a book you can leave on the coffee table, or open to a recipe on the kitchen counter, or hold in one hand while on the ground in your yard trying to identify a plant. Unlike some older fields guides, this one is full of recipes including versatile “master” recipes. Often a guide will say something like “use like a potato” leaving you wondering just what to do. Not so here. The recipes in the second half of the book track the plants described in the first half. That’s important relevancy.   Foraging & Feasting also has desserts and many herbal uses, the latter reflecting the several decades experience of the author. There is a great difference between foraging and herbalism but the reader will benefit from the author who has experience with both.

A sample of the watercolor illustrations.

A sample of the watercolor illustrations.

One of the more significant decisions a wild food publication has to make is to use photographs or drawings. Just as the general public tends to misjudge where the best foraging is they also get wrong what a good illustration is. They favor photos which is not always the best choice. Plants can vary greatly season to season and region to region. I have more than one foraging book with a photograph of a plant in it that does not look anything like my local plant though it is the same species. That can be extremely irritating to the professional and very confusing for the student. Photographs can also be cluttered with a lot of imagery and information you don’t need, stuff that just gets in the way making the learning more difficult. I will admit I think botanical drawings serve the student better. They emphasize what the student really needs to focus on for identification. I am often asked if a particular edible plant has any toxic look alikes. I say no two plants look alike if you look closely enough. Foraging & Feasting has opted for the best of both illustrative approaches with well-rendered watercolors that add significantly to the publication’s character. Often the illustrator is given second-shift to the content but Foraging & Feasting has a first-class illustrator in Wendy Hollender. Ms. Hollender is the modern, color version of the exacting work by scientific illustrator Regina Hughes. That is a compliment to both of them. 

Copyrighted recently, Foraging & Feasting has seasonal harvesting charts, habitat preferences, and culinary uses including smoothies. Be sure to check out the Green Goddess Dressing. It’s a foraging book I am pleased to have in my collection. 

 

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Smilax is a “climbing shrub” not a vine. Photo by Green Deane.

We’ve slipped into Smilax season. It’s easy to collect a handful of them now. This past week we saw them in warm Port Charlotte and in chilly Melbourne. More to the point young shoots are at their best this time of year. When we turn permanently warm  (summer) the shoots tend to be bitter and peppery, which goes away with cooking. Now is raw smilax time.

Smilax is considered by many the best springtime green. Photo by Green Deane

In Europe, where there is less resistance to eating wild food, we have the nutritional content of S.aspera leaves and shoots.  A hundred grams of them have 100 calories, 3.5 grams of protein, 0.95 grams of fat, 9.92 grams of carbohydrates, and 18.8 grams of fiber. Vitamin E is particularly high, 29.1 mg which is nearly 200% of your daily need. It also has 4.5 mg of beta-tocopherol. The mineral line up is: Calcium 353 mg, potassium 180 mg, magnesium 61.2 mg, zinc 213 mg, iron 1.66 mg, and manganese 0.551 mg. Several species tested negative for vitamin C. While we don’t often eat the berries they are edible when they look like raisins (of if you dehydrate plump black ones into raisins-like fruit.) Per 100 grams the fruit of S. herbacea have 8.3 grams of protein, 4 grams of fat and 6.4 grams of fiber.

The red berries of Smilax walteri. Photo by Green Deane

To my knowledge all smilax tips, berries and roots are edible. I eat the ripe berries of all the local species except one, S. walteri. I avoid S. walteri berries because they are red. I avoid them out of an abundance of caution, not on any evidence. There is a red-berried Smilax on Crete whose berries are eaten. Expert comments on respected sites say no smilax is toxic. My thinking is S. Walteri has red berries for some reason (which could be to attract specific seed eaters.) There are about 300 or more species in the genus Smilax and are found in the Eastern half of the United States and Canada, basically east of the Rockies. Fourteen species are found in the southern United States. It should be mentioned that early American settlers made a real root beer from the smilax. They would mix root pulp with molasses and parched corn then allowed it to ferment. One variation is to add sassafras root chips, which gives it more of the soft drink root beer flavor. Dr. Francis Porcher wrote during the Civil War in the 1860’s “The root is mixed with molasses and water in an open tub, a few seeds of parched corn or rice are added, and after a slight fermentation it is seasoned with sassafras.”

Loquats actually have a small amount of arsenic in them. Photo by Green Deane

While driving around have you seen a tree with large, dark green leaves and yellow fruit? It’s probably a Loquat which ripening fruit now. This past Week I picked 10 pounds of Loquats in less than an hour. That’s calorie positive. Rather than eating them outright I deseeded then dehydrated them. As plums change to prunes the dried Loquate change character but it is still tasty. I have also learned over the years that adding sulfur before drying does not stop the fruit from browning. You can dehydrate tart and sweet Loquats but you should avoid all green Loquats. Unripe fruit can be toxic especially for children. As long as the fruit is yellow to gold they are good. If you can detect any green hues the fruit is not ripe.

Two -year-old loquat wine. Photo by Green Deane

Loquats are not native but they have naturalized themselves and can be found throughout the region. How you eat the ripe fruit is something of a debate. I just break off the stem that holds them to the tree then eat, spitting out the seeds. You should try to not eat any seeds. An occasional seed is of no great harm but they generally are not considered edible though I have heard of folks roasting them then eating them. I do not recommend that. Some people also peel the fruit but I don’t. To dry them all I do is cut around the equator of a each fruit, take out the seeds (used later to make into Loquat Grappa.) Then dehydrate the fruit at about 130 F.  I also made loquat wine two years ago during COVID. It tastes similar to a dry semi-sweet sherry. You can read more about Loquats here.

 

My step-father, me and our dog “sister” 1958. Photo by Mae Lydia Putney

My step-father built the house we lived in and the horse and hay barns next door. As the building season is short in Maine this took several years. Thus the front yard was totally ignored until my mother demanded one spring that something intentional grow there. She had grass in mind. So my step-father took several wheelbarrows of chaff from the bottom of the hay barn and spread it on what would be the lawn. Within a few weeks it grew a huge crop of Wild Mustard. The second flush was Lamb’s Quarters, also called Fat Hen.

Which of a dozen Pig Weeds is it? Lambs quarters. Photo by Green Deane

One day not long after that a neighbor was visiting, a chicken farmer named William Gowen. As he left to walk home he ask my father if he could have a few Lamb’s Quarters. My step-father said he could. Mr. Gowen pulled up about eight five-foot high plants, hefted them over a shoulder, and happily carried them home to eat. Until then I had no idea they were edible. As Mr. Gowen was also a good gardener I am sure any Lamb’s Quarter that dared to grow in his garden also became dinner. I was reminded of him while on the way to my foraging class Sunday. Along the way I saw a lot of Lambs Quarters in several citrus groves. The name Lamb’s Quarters has nothing to do with lambs. It was a leafy green eaten some 1300 years ago on Lammas Quarter day (August 1st) in England (some say Scotland.) Lammas came from Loaf Mass, as the day was of religious significance. A loaf from newly harvested grain was made and taken to church and blessed. It is called Fat Hen because it supposedly was good to fatten hens. “Pigweed” is a common name for many different plants.

Foraging classes are held rain or shine, heat or cold. Photo by Nermina Krenata

Foraging Classes: No horrible weather in the forecast for the next two weeks.

Saturday, February 24th, Mead Garden: 1500 S. Denning Dr., Winter Park, FL 32789. 9 a.m. to noon.  Meet at the bathrooms.

Sunday, February 25th, Eagle Park Lake, 1800 Keene Road, Largo, FL 33771. Meet at the pavilion near the dog park. 9 a.m. to noon.

Saturday, March 2nd, George LeStrange Preserve, 4911 Ralls Road, Fort Pierce, FL, 34981, 9 a.m. to noon

Sunday, March 3rd, Red Bug Slough 5200 S. Beneva Road, Sarasota. 9 a.m. to noon. Construction is over at the park. Meet at the main entrance on Beneva.

To read more about the classes, to pre-pay or sign up, go here. 

You get the USB, not the key.

172-video USB would be a good end of spring present and is now $99. My nine-DVD set of 135 videos has been phased out. The USB videos are the same videos I have on You Tube. Some people like to have their own copy.  Most of the 172 USB videos have to be copied to your computer to play. If you want to order the USB go to the DVD/USB order button on the top right of this page. That will take you to an order form. 

Green Deane Forum

Want to identify a plant? Perhaps you’re looking for a foraging reference? You might have a UFO, an Unidentified Flowering Object, you want identified. On the Green Deane Forum we — including Green Deane and others from around the world — chat about foraging all year. And it’s not just about warm-weather plants or just North American flora. Many nations share common weeds so there’s a lot to talk. There’s also more than weeds. The reference section has information for foraging around the world. There are also articles on food preservation, and forgotten skills from making bows to fermenting food.

Finally, a physical copy of the book.

Now in print is EatTheWeeds, the book. It has 275 plants, 367 pages, index, nutrition charts and color photos. It’s available in many locations including Amazon.  Most of the entries include a nutritional profile.  It can also be ordered through AdventureKeen Publishing. To date it has sold about 8,000 copies.

This is weekly newsletter #589. If you want to subscribe to this free newsletter you can find the sign-up form in the menu at the top of the page.

To donate to the Green Deane Newsletter click here.

 
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Carissa macrocarpa, a fruiting ornamental hedge, photo by Green Deane

Although it fruits all year, the Natal plum is busily ripening now. Salt, drought and wind tolerant the species is often used in coastal landscaping. You can find it from hurricane-strafed Miami Beach to the dry hills of San Diego. A commercial fruit elsewhere it’s never caught on in the United States despite the effort of several exotic fruit groups. Only the ripe fruit is edible. The rest of the plant is toxic. You can read more about it here. 

Eat tallow plums in moderation. Photo by Green Deane

Also fruiting well now is the Tallow plum, another native more appreciated in other countries as a commercial crop. A few hundred feet from where I live deer are raiding the Tallow Plums, it attracts does and fawns enough so moms will leave their fawns alone in the open to browse on the shrub. The fruit sweetens as it ripens from green to yellow. You can read more about it here. 

Edible Sea Oats are protected but their edible relative Wood Oats are not. Photo by Green Deane

Also reaching maturity is the protected sea oat. It is protected not because it is scarce but it is one of the species that helps to hold dunes in place, the same reason why the prolific sea grape is protected. One solution is to take sea oat seeds home and plant them so you can have your own far from beach dunes. Or you can look for them in the forest where they are called wood oats (a different species but they look and taste the same.) To use the wild oats as food they have to be thrashed, the seed beaten from the hull around it. The grain then can be boiled or ground into oat flour. It is lower in protein than cultivated oats. 

Podocarpus is setting. Photo by Green Deane

Starting to ripen are Podocarpus arils, in fact we found some last week in Sarasota. The Podocarpus is a very common hedge plant which if ignored will grow into a pine-sized tree. The seeds are mildly toxic (and on the end) but the ripe arils are very grape-like and can be used like grapes, eaten off the bush or made into jelly and wine et cetera. The seeds are listed as toxic but I know of an adult who ate two at one time and had no issue. That said, don’t eat the seeds. When the Podocarpus fruits ripen can be something of a guess. Locally I look for them in August but you can find them in June sometimes (or often soon after transplanted into landscape.)  The fruit can last several weeks and are edible even when they begin to dry and resemble raisins.  Oddly, in in downtown Winter Park, a few Podocarpus have escaped trimming and have grown into moderate-size trees. I have seen those fruit in December. You can read more about Podocarpus here.

Ripe Pandanus is easy to spot.

The question every time you see one of these is which species is it? There are some 600 of them in the genus and several are edible one way or another. The one we see regularly in Dreher Park has a little bit of calcium oxalate in the fruit and sometimes doesn’t. So one has to taste it carefully. What you do is take a section, which is a cluster of smaller parts, and chew it. The goal is to get the juice out of it more than anything else though some pulp is edible. Last year this particular growth lightly burned my lips enough to notice but not bothersome. Three species are commonly known as edible: Pandamus amaryllifolius, which it probably was not, Pandanus fascicularis, a good possibility as is Pandanus tectorius. The latter is the most consumed of all and it would be a good find. One of the more interesting things about the Pandanus is how it burns when lit. A dried Pandanus stalk can smolder for days like a baseball bat-sized cigarette. It was how some of the Aboriginals of Australia carried fire from one place to another.  Among other sighting in the park are Coco-plums and Simpson Stoppers both should be starting their seasonal run. The Sea-grapes are still green. They ripen around the first of September.   Mahoes were not yet in blossom though we did find one last time there. They are unusual in that their blossom is yellow in the morning then turn red in the afternoon. Botanist tell us that is to attract different pollinators. The blossoms also have more antioxidants in the afternoon.  

Foraging classes are held rain or shine, heat or cold. Photo by Nermina Krenata

Just one foraging class this weekend, trying to dodge tropical systems and 90-degree weather.

July  1st, Eagle Park Lake, 1800 Keene Road, Largo, FL 33771. Meet at the pavilion near the dog park. 9 a.m.

Bring cash on the day of class or  click here to pay for your class

You want pink and green strawberry guava. Photo by Green Deane

Also just beginning to fruit is a species that is very invasive in some areas, Hawaii for example: The Strawberry Guava. I had one in my yard for about 15 years. Not only are the fruit edible but the dried leaves can be made into a passable tea that also has medicinal qualities. One does, however, need to know some   about the species to make the most of the fruit. It’s a little smaller than a ping-pong ball, has tough seeds, and starts out green and hard. As it ripens and softens it will get shades of pink, yellow and red and eventually become dark red and soft, hence the name “Strawberry Guava.” The fruit is tart and sweet, more tart when young, more sweet when older. Despite the name I never tasted a strawberry flavor in any of the fruit. The problem is unless you spray the tree with insecticides the ripe fruit will be full of fly larvae (which you can also view as free protein.) When the fruit is just starting to turn from green to red the rind is too hard for the flies to lay eggs through. But by the time the skin is soft and ripe they are prime breeding ground. Thus you have a choice, slightly ripe and tart but bug free, or, very ripe and sweet and squirming. To read more about the Strawberry Guava go here.

The red berries of Smilax walteri. Photo by Green Deane

Smilax has moved into its lesser time of year. Considered by many to be one of the best spring time greens the tips this time of year can be bitter and or peppery. Cooking moderates that. Interestingly Smilax is not a vine, at least not botanically. It is considered a climbing shrub. There are two groups with that classification in Florida, the Smilax and the Nickerbean. Apparently they have multiple trunks and grow about 12 feet long. This qualifies them as a shrub by some thinking. The ripe berries are marginally edible and I have not heard of any non-edible Smilax. That said I don’t eat red-berried Smilax because they are rather singular locally (and it has to have red berries for a reason even if I don’t know it.) I just don’t see Smilax walteri too often so I tend to let it be. There is a different red-berried Smilax species on Crete — S. aspera — and those berries are eaten.  S. aspera also has male and female plants. To read more about Smilax go here

Green Deane videos are now available on a USB.

150-video USB would be a good end of spring present and is now $99. My nine-DVD set of 135 videos has been phased out. The USB videos are the same videos I have on You Tube. Some people like to have their own copy.  The USB videos have to be copied to your computer to play. If you want to order the USB go to the DVD/USB order button on the top right of this page. That will take you to an order form. I’d like to thank all of you who ordered the DVD set over the years which required me to burn over 5,000 DVDs individually. 

Green Deane Forum

Want to identify a plant? Perhaps you’re looking for a foraging reference? You might have a UFO, an Unidentified Flowering Object, you want identified. On the Green Deane Forum we — including Green Deane and others from around the world — chat about foraging all year. And it’s not just about warm-weather plants or just North American flora. Many nations share common weeds so there’s a lot to talk. There’s also more than weeds. The reference section has information for foraging around the world. There are also articles on food preservation, and forgotten skills from making bows to fermenting food.

This is weekly newsletter #564. If you want to subscribe to this free newsletter you can find the sign-up form in the menu at the top of the page.

 To donate to the Green Deane Newsletter click here.

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Pawpaws are blossoming. Photo by Green Deane

It’s a good time to identify Pawpaw by its blossoms. I see them regularly while driving local roads. Look for pastures along the byways, nice high and dry pastures. Pawpaws are one to two yard high with large cream-colored blossoms. Pastured livestock generally avoid the species. Finding the shrub is not the real challenge. Woodland creatures like the tasty ripe fruit so one has to find AND watch pawpaw to get some to eat.

Wild Garlic will be cloving soon. Photo by Green Deane.

Getting ready to “fruit” is our wild garlic, Allium canadense. The plant is easy to find now in damp sunny areas and by next month will be putting garlic cloves on the top. Remember: if it looks like a garlic and smells like a garlic it is edible. The same holds true for onion, if it looks like an onion and smells like an onion it is edible. We dug some up during our foraging class in Gainesville last week. Their onion roots are small now as the energy in the root is being used to grow the plant and make cloves. What’s more important than their size is that you can transplant them and have a source of onions and garlic for flavoring without having to be reliant on stores. They often grow in profusion, becoming the dominant grass-like plant in a given area. The ornamental “Society Garlic” Tulbaghia violacea, is an edible distant relative of garlic. One can eat the leaves and blossoms, it rarely has a root worth preparing. 

Oenothera laciniata, cutleaf evening primrose

There are two blossoms you might be seeing now. One is the non-edible vine Carolina jassamine (Gelsemium Sempervirens.) You will see it draping over fences and bushes. The other in the southern version of the Evening Primrose, generally considered not edible (but I haven’t proven that to myself.) The northern version of the Evening Primrose, Oenothera biennis, is called a “lost vegetable.” It was cultivated in Europe for about a century. There is a debate whether it is native to Europe or North America. Our Evening Primrose is O. laciniata, or the Cutleaf Evening-primrose. Unlike its northern sibling our local Evening Primrose does not grow tall, is a ground hugger, and is not considered edible. I have been meaning to try a little part of the blossom. A quarter of a century ago Forager Emeritus Dick Deuerling told me it was not edible. That said, Dick had texture sensitivities and said he only ate the “good stuff.” So he could have been saying he didn’t eat it. It’s a plant I’ve been meaning to explore. The natives ate several other Evening Primroses including O. albicaulis, O. biennis, O elata ssp. hookeri, and O. triloba. Another evening Primrose you might find in the northern part of the state is O. fruticosa. It’s not considered edible, either. 

The Toxic Atamasco Lily

What are they? The first answer is they are NOT edible. The second is they are a threatened species. And the third answer is the toxic Atamasco lily, or Zephranthes atamasca . For a threatened species they are seen in a lot of lawns this time of year prompting many emails asking for an identification. These natives like wetlands though a well-watered lawn after seasonal rains will do nicely. The problem with the Atamasco/Rain Lily is that it resembles wild garlic before it blossoms (and even has a bulb!) However, it does not have the telltale garlic or onion aroma. Remember if it smells like a garlic and looks like a garlic you can use it like a garlic. The Atamasco does not have any garlic aroma. It is not edible. All parts are poisonous. And while these in the picture have a pink tinge there are also all-white blossoms.

Two leghorns and a silver lace wyandotte.

Chicklettes: Unfortunately one died soon after relocation, the other three are doing well, having tried this week, chickweed, cucumber weed, purslane and apple. My home made incubator might add more babes this week. Chickweed, from the front yard, was quite popular (and why it was named that. Chicken, even baby ones, like it.) The apple core also received constant attention. These chicks are the leghorns, quite vocal and flighty, will lay white eggs. The deceased chick was replace with a very loud Silver Lace Wyandotte, not a breed I’m familiar with, lays brown eggs. My 15-year-old cat, Couscous, finds them … interesting.

Cherokee rose is not native. Photo by Green Deane

An Asian species sighted this weekend is one that was once considered native, the Cherokee Rose, which is actually an invasive. Botanically Rosa laevigata (Rosa is from the Greek ῥόδον (rhódon) meaning rose and laevitata or (Levis) which is Dead Latin for  smooth or polished. It’s a “climbing shrub” as is Smilax and Nicker Bean. Cherokee Rose is a large nearly odorless white bloomer from the low mountains of China and Vietnam. It was carried to the Americas in 1780 and was reportedly cultivated by the Cherokee thus the name. In 1916 at the urging of womens’ clubs it was made the state flower of Georgia and still is. It  produces huge rose hips to two-inches long though you have to burn bristles off to use them. And as one might presume the rugged vining shrub is covered with mean prickles. Handle carefully. Sugar from the plant has been used to make wine.

Foraging Classes: March is something of a transition month for foragers, it might be the only month of spring here in Central Florida. It is a good month to identify plants that usually fruit in April, often our most productive month.Classes span both coasts this weekend, with a Saturday in Melbourne and Sunday Port Charlotte.

Foraging classes are held rain, shine, hot or cold. Photo by Nermina Krenata

Saturday March 18th, Wickham Park: 2500 Parkway Drive, Melbourne, FL. Meet at the “dog park” inside the park 9 a.m.

Sunday March 19th, Bayshore Live Oak Park Park, Bayshore Drive, Port Charlotte, Meet at the parking lot at Bayshore and Ganyard Street. 9 a.m.

Saturday March 25th, Mead Garden, 1500 S. Denning Dr., Winter Park, FL 32789.  Meet at the bathrooms. 9 na.m.

Sunday March 26th, Eagle Lake Park, 1800 Keene Road, Largo, FL 33771. Meet at the pavilion near the dog park. 9 a.m.

Bring cash on the day of class or  click here to pay for your class

Deer Mushrooms like wood and cool weather. Photo by Green Deane

An edible mushroom that takes advantage of cool, rainy weather, such as this week, is the Deer Mushroom, in this case Pluteus petasatus. These are bunching mushrooms usually growing on old hardwood remains, either logs, stumps, roots or debris. As often is the case the botanical name is more confusing than enlightening. Pluteus  can mean shed or penthouse. Petasatus is Dead Latin for wearing a cap (meaning) ready for a journey. A relative is called P. cervinus the latter means deer or stag because of that species’ cap color. It is also sometimes called the Deer Mushroom or Fawn Mushroom. These two are edible but are viewed as marginal. One reason is the cap is mostly gills with little cap material. Sometimes it can have a radish flavor. Spore print is salmon to pink. 

My nine-DVD set of 135 videos has been phased out and replaced by 171-videos on a 128-GB USB, see right.  The USB videos are the same videos I have on You Tube. Some people like to have their own copy especially if social order falters.  The USB videos have to be copied to your computer to play. If you want to order the USB go to the DVD/USB order button on the top right of this page or click here. That will take you to an order form. Or you can make a $99 donation, which tells me it is for the USB (include a snail-mail address.)  I’d like to thank all of you who ordered the DVD set over the years which required me to burn over 5,000 DVDs individually. I had to stop making them as few programs now will read the ISO files to copy them. Burning a set also took about three hours. 

Green Deane Forum

Want to identify a plant?  Perhaps you’re looking for a foraging reference? You might have a UFO, an Unidentified Flowering Object, you want identified. On the Green Deane Forum we — including Green Deane and others from around the world — chat about foraging all year. And it’s not just about warm-weather plants or just North American flora. Many nations share common weeds so there’s a lot to talk about. There’s also more than weeds. The reference section has information for foraging around the world. There are also articles on food preservation, and forgotten skills from making bows to fermenting food. Recent topics include: Stale Bread and Cod Liver Oil, Killing Bugs with Tobacco Plugs, Eating weeds: Is it safe? Have they mutated? Not the Eastern Red Bug but the Pink Tabebuia, African Tulip Tree, Asparagus densiflorus, Green Deane’s Book… You can join the forum by clicking on the button on the upper right hand side of this page.

This is my weekly newsletter #549. If you want to subscribe to this free newsletter you can find the sign-up form in the menu at the top of the page. My website, EatTheWeeds.com, which is data secure, has over 1500 plants on it in some 428 articles. I wrote every one myself, no cut and paste. 

 To donate to the Green Deane Newsletter click here.

 

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Podocarpus arils are edible. The seeds are not.

Podocarpus arils can be used like grapes. Photo by Green Deane

Starting to ripen are Podocarpus arils, in fact we found some last week in Sarasota. The Podocarpus is a very common hedge plant which if ignored will grow into a pine-sized tree. The seeds are mildly toxic (and on the end) but the ripe arils are very grape-like and can be used like grapes, eaten off the bush or made into jelly and wine et cetera. The seeds are listed as toxic but I know of an adult who ate two at one time and had no issue. That said, don’t eat the seeds. When the Podocarpus fruits can be something of a guess. Locally I look for them in August but you can find them in July sometimes. The fruit can last several weeks and are edible even when they begin to dry and look like raisins.  Oddly, in a park in downtown Winter Park, a few Podocarpus have escaped trimming and have grown into moderate-size trees. I have seen those fruit in December. You can read more about Podocarpus here.

Ripe Pandanus is easy to spot.

The question every time you see one of these is which species is it? There are some 600 of them in the genus and several are edible one way or another. The one we see regularly in Dreher Park has a little bit of calcium oxalate in the fruit and sometimes doesn’t. So one has to taste it carefully. What you do is take a section, which is a cluster of smaller parts, and chew it. The goal is to get the juice out of it more than anything else though some pulp is edible. Last year this particular growth lightly burned my lips enough to notice but not bothersome. Three species are commonly known as edible: Pandamus amaryllifolius, which it probably was not, Pandanus fascicularis, a good possibility as is Pandanus tectorius. The latter is the most consumed of all and it would be a good find. One of the more interesting things about the Pandanus is how it burns when lit. A dried Pandanus stalk can smolder for days like a baseball bat-sized cigarette. It was how some of the Aboriginals of Australia carried fire from one place to another.  Among other sighting in the park are Coco-plums and Simpson Stoppers both should be starting their seasonal run. The Sea-grapes are still green. They ripen around the first of September.   Mahoes were not yet in blossom though we did find one last time there. They are unusual in that their blossom is yellow in the morning then turn red in the afternoon. Botanist tell us that is to attract different pollinators. The blossoms also have more antioxidants in the afternoon.  

The red berries of Smilax walteri. Photo by Green Deane

Smilax has moved into its lesser time of year. Considered by many to be one of the best spring time greens the tips this time of year can be bitter and or peppery. Cooking moderates that. Interestingly Smilax is not a vine, at least not botanically. It is considered a climbing shrub. There are two groups with that classification in Florida, the Smilax and the Nickerbean. Apparently they have multiple trunks and grow about 12 feet long. This qualifies them as a shrub by some botanical thinking. The ripe berries are marginally edible and I have not heard of any non-edible Smilax. That said I don’t eat red-berried Smilax because they are rather singular locally (and it has to have red berries for a reason even if I don’t know it.) I just don’t see Smilax walteri too often so I tend to let it be. There is a different red-berried Smilax species on Crete — S. aspera — and those berries are eaten.  S. aspera also has male and female plants. To read more about Smilax go here.

Foraging Classes: My move from Altamonte Springs to Lithia is almost done, three more trrips or five traffic jam, depending on how one counts. Classes in June were irregular and my answers sporadic as internet service was not disconnected and connected as promised or as fast as promised. As a result Sprctrum lost a customer. Let’s try two classes this weekend. Mead Garden Saturday, Port Charlotte Sunday.

Saturday, July 9th Mead Garden: 1500 S. Denning Dr., Winter Park, FL 32789.  9 a.m. Meet at the bathrooms.

Saturday, July 10th Bayshore Live Oak Park, Bayshore Drive at Ganyard St.  Port Charlotte. 9 a.m. 

Saturday, July 16th, Wickham Park: 2500 Parkway Drive, Melbourne, FL 32935-2335. 9 a.m. Meet at the “dog park” inside the park 

Saturday, July 17th  Colby-Alderman Park: 1099 Massachusetts Street, Cassadaga. 9 a.m.. Meet at the bathrooms.

For more information, the pre-pay for a class, or sign up go here. 

Japanese Knotweed. Photo by Green Deane

I am not sure it was with interest or amusement when I read about the Olympic Knotweed Working Group in Port Hadlock, Washington state. They have a knotweed problem that requires organization to combat it. That reminded me of the the Olympic stadium virtually half way around the world in London. It was a site of knotweed infestation and under British law the soil had to be removed and dealt with severely. That added 70 million pounds to the cost of building that stadium. That’s way in excess of  $100 million dollars. Knotweed can break up concrete so it really had to be removed completely where the stadium was built.  In Washington state there’s was an on-going study of how various herbicides and their application can kill of this edible weed.  It’s fairly common in cooler climates and I’ve see a lot of it in the Carolinas. If I remember correctly it is also a commercial source of the anti-oxidant resveratrol. If you want to know more about knotweed click here.

Driveway loving Pineapple Weed

I was given cause recently to reminisce about Pineapple Weed. The first thing is what did they call it before everyone knew what pineapples smelled like? (Pineapples, by the way, are native to South America, not Hawaii.) Pineapple Weed was once called “Disc Mayweed” but that appears to be of botanical extraction. “Wild Chamomile” is another name and more accurate but at one time all Chamomile was wild. “Rayless Chamomile” was also used though I’m sure the locals called it something else. And the botanists are still in flux with some calling it Marticaria discodea instead of Matricaria matricarioides. Personally I would go with M. discodea than M. matricatioides because the latter  is not at all descriptive, inventive nor imaginative. In fact it is rather lazy. It’s Dead Latin that means it looks like itself.  It would be as if my official botanical name was Green Deane Who Looks Like Green Deane. At any rate Pineapple Weed should be sprouting up in all of North America except for four states, Texas, Georgia, Alabama and Florida. I personally know this tea-making plant will not grow in Florida. I have smuggled it in from Maine and tried to keep a pot of it growing, much to the horror of Native Plant Society folks. Have no fear: It did not escape. It died from the heat.  Back home it struggled every year to grow in our glacial dirt driveway. Tenacious, tough, small and yes smelling of pineapples. It will be growing near you. Look around foot paths, driveway, and bare ground. To read more about the Pineapple Weed go here.

Toe Biter and a 2.5 inch car key. Photo By Green Deane

You couldn’t tell by its drying body on the sidewalk that it is a delicacy in Thailand. In fact that’s what confusing. Toe Biters are an aquatic insect and this not only was on dry land (so to speak) but had wings… When you eat them in a Thai snack shop they come all cooked and one doesn’t notice much about their anatomy except they are insects. So I sent a photo of the deceased to an entomologist friend who confirmed it is what locals call a Toe Biter (so called because they sometimes nip at the toes of bathers.)  She wrote: “You are exactly right, it is a Belostomatid.  They fly well, so you can find them in dry areas. They breath air even if they are aquatic bugs.  They have the means to bite (piercing style) since they are totally carnivorous.  They may eat other insects but can go for vertebrates as well such as fish and tadpoles.” Seems to me eating a Toe Biter is the best revenge … on par with eating sand spurs. If you want to read more about edible insects including the Toe Biter click here.

You get the USB, not the key.

Changing foraging videos: As my WordPress pages are being updated the video set will go away. My nine-DVD set of 135 videos has been selling for seven years. They are the same videos I have on You Tube. Some people like to have a separate copy. The DVD format, however, is becoming outdated. Those 135 videos plus 15 more are now available on a 16-gig USB drive. While the videos can be run from the DVDs the videos on the USB have to be copied to your computer to play. They are MP4 files. The150-video USB is $99 and the 135-video DVD set is now $99. The DVDs will be sold until they run out then will be exclusively replaced by the USB. This is a change I’ve been trying to make for several years. So if you have been wanting the 135-video DVD set order it now as the price is reduced and the supply limited. Or you can order the USB. My headache is getting my WordPress Order page changed to reflect these changes. We’ve been working on it for over three weeks. However, if you want to order now either the USB or the DVD set make a $99 “donation” using the link at the bottom of this page or here.  That order form provides me with your address, the amount — $99 — tells me it is not a donation and in the note say if you want the DVD set or the USB. 

Green Deane Forum

Want to identify a plant? Perhaps you’re looking for a foraging reference? You might have a UFO, an Unidentified Flowering Object, you want identified. On the Green Deane Forum we — including Green Deane and others from around the world — chat about foraging all year. And it’s not just about warm-weather plants or just North American flora. Many nations share common weeds so there’s a lot to talk. There’s also more than weeds. The reference section has information for foraging around the world. There are also articles on food preservation, and forgotten skills from making bows to fermenting food.

This is weekly newsletter 514, If you want to subscribe to this free newsletter you can find the sign-up form in the menu at the top of the page.

 To donate to the Green Deane Newsletter click here.

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Nostoc… for when you are really hungry.

BC’s philosopher Wiley.

In the old cartoon series BC, Wiley, a peg-legged curmudgeon, was the strip’s philosopher. One day he opined: “The bravest man I ever saw was the first one who ate an oyster raw.” He could have easily penned “who ate nostoc raw.”  

Nostoc can resemble a pile of disintegrating dog scat. Not exactly appetizing. If you add that there are some 300 hard-to-identify species Nustoc barely creeps into the realm of edible. As one might presume in parts of the world where there are billions to feed they eat it… and other places, too.  Perhaps the easiest stop to find locally it is on the ground cover one walks on in nurseries. Apparently it is the cause of much slipping and falls. In the wild I see it now and then in high and dry ground with much water nearby and moisture in the air. It is particularly common near Haul Over Canal on the northwest scrubby side. 

Nostoc was a mystery for centuries as folks thought it was alien and was seen after a variety of celestial events. We now know it is an algae plumped up by passing rain. Some flies like to lay eggs in it, apparently with bad effects. An article in the 2008 Journal of Ethnopharmacology reported in the Peruvian highlands Nostoc commune when eaten as food can produce the neurotoxic amino acid BMMA. From the Abstract:

Is Nostoc a no-no? Photo by Green Deane

“In the mountains of Peru, globular colonies of Nostoc commune (Nostocales) are collected in the highland lakes by the indigenous people, who call them llullucha. They are consumed locally, traded for maize, or sold, eventually entering the folk markets of Cusco and other neighboring cities. Throughout highland Peru, Nostoc commune is highly salient as a seasonal dietary item, being eaten alone, or in picante — a local stew — and is said to be highly nutritious. Nostoc commune has been known to produce unusual amino acids, including those of the mycosporine group, which possibly function to prevent UV damage. We analyzed 21 different Nostoc commune spherical colonies from 7 different market collections in the Cusco area for the presence of beta-N-methylamino-L-alanine (BMAA), a neurotoxic amino acid produced by diverse taxa of cyanobacteria, using four different analytical techniques (HPLC-FD, UPLC-UV, UPLC/MS, LC/MS/MS). We found using all four techniques that BMAA was present in the samples purchased in the Peruvian markets. Since BMAA has been putatively linked to neurodegenerative illness, it would be of interest to know if the occurrence of ALS, Alzheimer’s, or Parkinson’s Disease is greater among individuals who consume llullucha in Peru.”  This was echoed in a Chinese study.

Some have argued this is also why you should also not eat Alfalfa or Black Medic because of BMAA. Other studies disagree, such as “Toxicity and bioaccumulation of two non-protein amino acids synthesised by cyanobacteria, β-N-Methylamino-L-alanine (BMAA) and 2,4-diaminobutyric acid (DAB), on a crop plant.” (Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, 15 January 2021.)  All that said there is a general rule about algae and that is never eat blue-green algae. Green yes, blue-green never. A nitrogen fixer, you can read more about  Nostoc here. 

Engarde! From my Sword Fern video.

This is my 500th newsletter. Some quick math suggests that’s about a decade of correspondence but it’s actually 16 years worth. The first newsletters were monthly. Back then I had to do the mailing as well. It was quite a chore. If one email address was wrong — or the mail box full –the entire mailing was aborted and there was no hint which address triggered the rejectiion. Now the mailing costs $40 a month (if I keep editing out folks who subscribe but never read the newsletter.)  

Topics covered in that first newsletter were: Water Vine, Smilax, Doesn’t Grow Here, Kudzu, Elderberry/Water Hemlock, Pomegranate Ponderings, the fact that elephants do not like chili and feeding cows curry reduces their methane production by 40%. The newsletter is published on Tuesdays because research 16 years ago said that was the day of the week an email was least likely to be deleted unread. It also gave me a one day break from teaching foraging classes on the weekend. I did not start the newsletter on a whim (or for advertising.) 

Green Deane in his journalism days four decades ago. Photo by Wang Su-mei

Some 40 years ago I was working journalist on daily newspapers. I covered law and crime and wrote features on the side. I also freelanced for national magazines and later ended up as an assignment editor for a TV station. I left that job because that was the beginning of “making” news rather than reporting news… The TV reporters, we called them “twinkies,”  were good-looking but more often than not empty headed and had to be told what questions to ask. Anyway, on one newspaper the reporters had to write a weekly column. It was actually the editor’s job to write one new column a day — a running feature, on the top of page three — but instead he farmed it out to seven writers. There were restrictions: It has to be about a local issue, it could not be an opinion piece, and had to be relevant to the coverage area. Those of us who had to write a weekly column came to loathe it. It was a re-occuring migraine and often one did not have anything to write about, and, unlike today, fiction and advocacy was not allowed. 

So I knew the newsletter pitfalls when I started this endeavor.  Fortunately there is always something to write about in the foraging world and the newsletter takes up only about one day per week, first word to mailing. I do not post newsletters on Facebook regularly because I deliberately chose not switch over to that medium. It’s too capricious and unreliable even if it would save some $500 a year. I also tend to end up in Facebook Jail regularly and always completely by surprise. The things that offend Facebook is ever-increasing. 

And of course a newsletter is pointless without readers. Thank you for tolerating all these years of repetition, typos and misspellings. The mistake are all my own. 

Possible Book Cover Photo

What of the book? Some seven years ago I proposed a book to some publishers: They collectively said no. Then one, in October 2020, said yes and could I deliver the book in 90 days to be printed in 2021? So I put my life on hold and wrote the book in 90 days turning it in on time (years of newspaper deadlines made that possible.) Then they said thanks but we won’t start it until 2022 and put it on sale in 2023. Bummer: Slow-forward: They are starting to put the book together. The good news is they are keeping most of the 430 articles I sent (covering more than 1500 species.) It is international in scope (European weeds went everywhere the Europeans went.) What makes this forth-coming book different, besides my endless ranting about dunk botanists and Dead Latin, is each entry — or almost every entry — includes nutritional information about the plant: Vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants et cetera. That comprised most of the research as I already had the bulk of material written for my website. And yes there are color pictures, most of which I took over the years. The biggest headache, of all things, was vitamin A. It is expressed in a variety of ways that don’t easily translate into one metric. I finally gave up and kept all the various metrics. I might have preprints by October, three years after the project started. Actually this is my third book. My first one was in 1990 called 1001 Facts Somebody Screwed Up, followed by 1001 More Facts Somebody Screwed Up. Neither had 1001 facts. They did together way back at the beginning before editors got their delete buttons on it. Anyway, that publisher went out of business and sold the right to publish those book to cover debts. So one can still buy them but I have not seen a royalty check from them since 2000. And that, “dear readers” as Dear Abby use to write, is the publishing world. I dive had some short fiction published along the way most notably in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. 

Smoking Salmon

Where I grew up the Alder was called a trash tree. Why? It took over freshwater wetlands and filled in ponds. Not a strong wood, long lived or large. Folks never mentioned it’s prime wood for smoking meat and other comestibles… such as cheese. Smoking can preserve and flavor.

Pairing the wood to the food to be smoked is perhaps more an art than a science, an exercise in personal taste. I am more inclined to use what I have on hand or tinker with it a little. I’ve been saving wood for particular applications. So far my stash includes maple, white oak, apple, mesquite, and avocado. Surprisingly citrus wood is difficult to come by. 

Camphor gets a bad rap on the internet. I used to burn camphor in my fireplace. The Chinese make a famous duck dish using camphor smoke for flavoring. American barbecue pages all scream Camphor wood is toxic… however one commercial smoke house in northwest Florida uses camphor wood particularly on fish. And many sites warn cherry is toxic though you can buy cherrywood expressly for smoking particularly seafood. (I think perhaps they are confusing different species.)  They also approve of a western juniper but condemn an eastern juniper and mistakenly call them cedars.  All condemned the sycamore…. which is used for skewers and wooden spoons and bowels et cetera. They say Sycamore has a resin. Sycamore is quite close to the maple. I’m collecting sycamore sap now for syrup. Maple sap is clear, like water. Sycamore sap is — collectively — dark orange. Maybe it does have a resin… I will have to burn some and report. 

Sycamores is a hardwood not used for smoking.

Meats, seafoods, and cheese are foods that are regularly smoked. (I wonder if hard-boiled eggs can be smoked?) Delicate smoke for mild foods, stronger flavored for red meats et ali. Getting general approval for smoking is Acacia, Alder, Almond (I’d question that as I do Prunus caroliniana. Perhaps they mean Sweet Almond.) Apricot, Ash, Aspen (well aged, it can be sappy unless quite dry) Australian Pine (which is not a pine but closer to the oaks than conifers. The wood and dampened needles are used) Beech, Birch, Blackberry Roots, Bottlebrush Tree, Bunya Bunya cone leftovers, Butternut, Carob, Carrotwood, Chestnut, Coconut Husks (be careful, they have flaming gas jets, I know that from personal experience.) Corn Cobs, Cottonwood, Dogwood, Fig (sparingly) Grape Vine, Gorse, Guava, Heather, Hickory, Honey Locus, Jabuticaba, Jackfruit, Kiawe, Lead Tree (Leucaena leucocephala)  Lilac, Lychee, Madrone, Magnolia (I presume M. virginiana which is also a good wood to grow oyster mushrooms on) Manzanita, Mulberry, Nectarine, Oak (white and red) Olive, Orange (the latter for pork, also grapefruit, lemon, lime) Osage Orange (blended with oak) Peach, Pear, Peat, Pecan, Persimmon, Pistachio Shells, Pimento, Plum, Red Mangrove (Rhizophora racemosa) Santol, Sassafras, Seaweed (washed) Starfruit, Straw, Sugarcane, Tamarind, Willow, and Walnut, Black and English. 

Sourwood is chewed but not eaten.

Some woods are in …limbo… like the Sycamore and Sweet Gum (all the gum trees taste bad.) Another one is sourwood. Natives cooked meat on sourwood sticks so it can’t be all that bad. No reports on Southern Wax Myrtle, some report Crape Myrtles can be used. If the Bradford Pear could be used to smoke food it would help eliminate that non-productive, invasive ornamental species. As it is related to the apple perhaps it can. I’ve also got three gallons of dried Queen Palm kernels I’m going to try. They have a coconut-flavored. I wonder how they would smoke and taste… explode perhaps? You don’t use conifers for smoking (such as true pines, firs, hatmatacks, cypress et cetera.) They throw a foul flavor.

A loquats ripen the get sweeter.  Photo by Green Deane

Perhaps the next two species do not need repeating but I’ll assume you are a new reader. Loquats are in full fruit now particularly in the middle of the state. In south Florida they will be around for two or three more weeks. In north Florida they are just beginning to ripen. They’re usually fruit for six to eight weeks in each location. Like Star fruit they start out green turn light yellow and tart then slowly turn deep golden and very sweet. Unlike green star fruit green loquats are NOT edible. In fact there is one report in the literature in which a green loquat killed a child. Don’t eat the green fruit. They also naturally have a small amount of arsenic, enough to trigger tests for said. You can read about loquats here and a video here. 

Butterweed’s blossom does not resemble a mustard. Photo by Green Deane

This. too, has been mentioned earlier but bears repeating: Butterweed is toxic. The warning is prudent because the plant — before it blossoms — resembles a generic mustard. However, unlike all mustards, Butterweed has a mild flavor whereas all mustards have at least some pungency. If you mistakenly eat Butterweed raw or cooked it will damage your liver. Once the plant blossoms it does not resemble any mustard as the flowers are quite different. Mustards have four-petaled blossoms, Butterweed’s blossom looks like a yellow daisy. The plant likes to grow in damp places and gets to be about a yard high when at the blossoming stage. Unfortunately the leaves have a nice texture and a mild taste. That tells you immediately that it is not a mustard.

Foraging Classes as the cold moderates and the chance of rain increases. This weekend I am in Ft Pierce, at a rather strange preserve, and this Sunday at a familiar standby, Mead Garden in Winter Park.

Saturday March 26th,  George LeStrange Preserve, 4911 Ralls Road, Fort Pierce, FL, 34981. 9 a.m. to noon. This location does not have official bathrooms or water. 

Sunday March 27th, Mead Garden: 1500 S. Denning Dr., Winter Park, FL 32789.  Meet at the bathrooms. 9 a.m. to noon. 

Saturday April 2nd,  Dreher Park, West Palm Beach, 1200 Southern Blvd., West Palm Beach, 33405., 9 a.m. to noon. Meet just north of the science museum. 

Saturday/Sunday May 7th & 8th,  Honea Path, South Carolina, classes at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. each day. 

For more information, to pre-pay or sign up go here

My nine-DVD set of 135 videos has been phased out and replaced by 171-videos on a 128-GB USB, see left.  The USB videos are the same videos I have on You Tube. Some people like to have their own copy especially if social order falters.  The USB videos have to be copied to your computer to play. If you want to order the USB go to the DVD/USB order button on the top right of this page or click here. That will take you to an order form. Or you can make a $99 donation, which tells me it is for the USB (include a snail-mail address.)  I’d like to thank all of you who ordered the DVD set over the years which required me to burn over 5,000 DVDs individually. I had to stop making them as few programs now will read the ISO files to copy them. Burning a set also took about three hours. 

Green Deane Forum

Want to identify a plant?  Perhaps you’re looking for a foraging reference? You might have a UFO, an Unidentified Flowering Object, you want identified. On the Green Deane Forum we — including Green Deane and others from around the world — chat about foraging all year. And it’s not just about warm-weather plants or just North American flora. Many nations share common weeds so there’s a lot to talk about. There’s also more than weeds. The reference section has information for foraging around the world. There are also articles on food preservation, and forgotten skills from making bows to fermenting food. Recent topics include: Stale Bread and Cod Liver Oil, Killing Bugs with Tobacco Plugs, Eating weeds: Is it safe? Have they mutated? Not the Eastern Red Bug but the Pink Tabebuia, African Tulip Tree, Asparagus densiflorus, Green Deane’s Book… You can join the forum by clicking on the button on the upper right hand side of this page.

This is my weekly newsletter #500. If you want to subscribe to this free newsletter you can find the sign-up form in the menu at the top of the page. My website, EatTheWeeds.com, which is data secure, has over 1500 plants on it in some 428 articles. I wrote every one myself, no cut and paste. 

 To donate to the Green Deane Newsletter click here.

— The hunt for a place to move to continues. Looking for a fixer upper on agicultural land preferably on the southern half of the state. Quiet and the ability to raise ducks or a goat or two a priority. Internet not a necessity. Failing that perhaps rent a mother-in-law cottage. I grew up on a farm and can husband animals and raise a garden. If you know of anything please let me know. GreenDeane @gmail.com.  Failing that buying an RV and finding a place to park is plan C. 

 

 

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A sweet Goji berry and Ramalina, a lichen — also edible  — at Spruce Creek. Photo by Green Deane

Dandelions are edible but uncommon here. Photo by Green Deane

As you can see above there was one Goji berry still hanging on late Saturday. While called the Christmasberry it can be in fruit until April. We also saw drying fruit on a Foresteria and blueberries in blossom. They’ll ripen into berries about April. (April is the big month locally. Most the plants that fruit do so about April… the aforementioned and blackberries, cherries, wild onions, loquats et cetera.) Also worth mentioning were some plump Smilax berries we saw. They taste best when they look like raisins. I take black plump ones home then dehydrate them. At Eagle Lake Park in Largo the stinging nettles were more than a foot high, which is maximum height for our local variety, Urtica chamaedryoides. It has a horrible sting. The hollies are fruiting non-edibe berries and we saw a dandelion, rare for Florida. They like acidic soil and cool weather. Florida is a hot limestone plate. So we see them here and there mostly during the cooler months. 

Fumaria is not edible but is often found at the same time and place as Stork’s Bill and Cranesbill.

Also found this time of year are wild geraniums, usually Cranesbill or Stork’s Bill. (Why one is one word and the other two-words possessive is unknown.)  Botanically they are Geranium carolinianum and Erodium circutarium.  Neither is great foraging. In fact both are more medicinal than edible but they seem to get mention in a variety of foraging books. The problem is they can be extremely bitter. You might be able to toss a little bit of both in a salad or make a tea from the leaves but that’s about the extent of it. If you have what you think is a Cranesbill or a Stork’s Bill but it has more of a bottle brush blossom than five petal you might have the non-edible Fumaria, see photo left. It comes up this time of year and from a distance the leaves can remind one of the wild geraniums. They like to grow in the same location and have pink or white blossoms. I’ve never found a reference to this but some people have told me they also eat roots of the geraniums. To read more about the “bills”  go here. 

Brookweed in Spruce Creek Park.

You probably heard the old saying:  “A man with a hammer sees nails everywhere.” That is relevant to foraging. Once you learn what a particular plant looks like you will see it more often. That’s what’s happened with me and Samolus valerandi. Brookweed.  I first noticed in Jacksonville a couple of years ago. Then perhaps half a year later in Sarasota. A year after that I noticed it in Palm Harbor and Sunday in Port Orange. It likes to be near fresh water, can tolerate some brackish water and is a small plant with a naked flower/seed spike. Fortunately its flowering arrangement makes it easy to identify. Not much is written about the species, few published books cover it. Mild young leaves are edible raw and are high in vitamin C. That was important when scurvy was a common problem (which is making a comeback in some cities.) Persimmon leaves also have high amounts of vitamin C as dose Firebush berries.  Brookweed has a bit more history of use in Europe. Usually young and tender leaves are what’s eaten, older leaves turn bitter. You can read about Brookweed here. 

Classes are held rain or shine (but not during hurricanes.)

Foraging Classes: My out-of-town class this weekend is West Palm Beach, always an interesting sub-tropical walk. Looks like the weather will be good that class and for the Sunday’s class in east Orlando, 

Saturday February 19th,  Dreher Park, 1200 Southern Blvd., West Palm Beach, 33405. 9 a.m. to noon, meet just north of the science center. 

Sunday February 20th,  Blanchard Park, 10501 Jay Blanchard Trail, Orlando, FL 32817. 9 a.m. to noon. Meet at the pavilion next to (east of) the tennis courts.

Saturday February 26th, Tide Views Preserve, 1 Begonia Street, Atlantic Beach Fl 32233 (near Jacksonville Fl.) 9 a.m. to noon. Meet at the parking lot. 

Sunday February 27th, Mead Garden: 1500 S. Denning Dr., Winter Park, FL 32789.  Meet at the bathrooms. 9 a.m. to noon. 

Saturday March 5th,  John Chestnut County Park: 2200 East Lake Road, Palm Harbor, FL 34685. Meet at the trail head of the Peggy Park Nature Walk, pavilion 1 parking lot. 9 a.m. to noon. 

Sunday March 6th, Mead Garden: 1500 S. Denning Dr., Winter Park, FL 32789.  Meet at the bathrooms. 9 a.m. to noon. 

Saturday/Sunday May 7th & 8th,  Honea Path, South Carolina, classes at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. each day. 

For more information, to pre-pay or sign up go here

The Blewit’s violet color quickly fades. Photo by Green Deane

It was with great joy that I found this “choice” wild mushroom eight years ago at Boulware Springs. It’s a Blewit, or Lepista nuda. At first glance it looked like the plastic top of some discarded can under a vine but upon investigation it was a large, beautiful mushroom. At the time I took it to the EarthSkills gathering which then was in Hawthorn Florida, some 20 miles south of Gainesville. I taught on site the day before and there were several mushroom experts in attendance. That was my first mistake. I thought I was safe there. Was I wrong. Have you ever been mugged for a mushroom? There were many offers to take it off my hands but it went home with me and into me. After years of finding non- or barely-edible mushrooms it was my turn to discover a choice one. I revisit that location every year in mid-February, Blewit’s best season locally, and the coldest. Boulware Springs is also where I find Black Trumpet mushrooms beside trails under hickories when chanterelles are also out. 

Wild Garlic will be cloving soon.

In Largo Sunday we visited my favorite place for Wild Garlic. A native that is about nine inches high now but will be blossoming in a few weeks. What makes this Allium curious is that it puts a bulb on at the bottom end — like a pearl onion — and garlic cloves at the top end. This particular species is very pungent. It’s great for cooking or as a trailside nibble as long as you don’t mind strong garlic breath. Before it blossoms the entire plant can be used to make a very nice soup. Oddly there’s no extant record of southeastern natives using the plant and only three peoples had names for it, the Alabama, Chickasaw, and Muskogee. I call it good. I also spread the cloves around in damp spots. They start growing in late December or early January.

Green Deane videos are now available on a USB.

My nine-DVD set of 135 videos has been phased out and replaced by a 171-video USB. The USB videos are the same videos I have on You Tube. Some people like to have their own copy.  The USB videos have to be copied to your computer to play. If you want to order the USB go to the DVD/USB order button on the top right of this page or click here. That will take you to an order form. Or you can make a $99 donation, which tells me it is for the USB (include a snail-mail address.)  I’d like to thank all of you who ordered the DVD set over the years which required me to burn over 5,000 DVDs individually. I had to stop making them as few programs now will read the ISO files to copy them. 

Green Deane Forum

Want to identify a plant?  Perhaps you’re looking for a foraging reference? You might have a UFO, an Unidentified Flowering Object, you want identified. On the Green Deane Forum we — including Green Deane and others from around the world — chat about foraging all year. And it’s not just about warm-weather plants or just North American flora. Many nations share common weeds so there’s a lot to talk about, such as the one to the left. There’s also more than weeds. The reference section has information for foraging around the world. There are also articles on food preservation, and forgotten skills from making bows to fermenting food. Recent topics include: California Wild Mushroom Parties, A Good Reason To Eat Wild Garlic, Black Walnuts and Amaranth, Sea Salt and Plastic, Wild Mustard? Heavy Metals. Oriental Persimmons. What is it? Pine Cough Drops and Needles, Skullcap, Malodorous Plant? Another NJ Tree, Maypop? Roadside Plant, Unknown in Sudan, Please Help Identify, and Preserving Prickly Pear Bounty. You can join the forum by clicking on the button on the upper right hand side of this page.

Spurge nettle root, photo by Green Deane

A young mother wrote to me asking how to get rid of the spurge nettle, Cnidoscolus stimulosus. She said she had a couple of acres and the plants were all over the place, bothering her children and her dog.  I wrote back saying “lucky you. The roots are quite delicious, eat them.” She wrote back saying that I did not understand her. She wasn’t interested in eating them: She wants to get rid of them. I replied that I had two good students living very near her who would love to visit her property on a regular basis and dig them up. I added that she could mow the area constantly and in a few years the roots will become exhausted and the plants will die off.

The exchange led me to wonder what was missing? Or better still, what is, as they used to say, the operant factor? That factor is for most people food comes from a quick stop shop or a grocery store. most people don’t cook any more let alone forage or raise food.  In that way of thinking food does not come out of the ground in your suburban back yard. Even gardeners are viewed as a throwback and a tad eccentric. Here is someone who has a replenishing pantry of a staple crop that must be gotten rid of. Those spurge nettle roots easily could represent hundreds of pounds of wholesome, tasty,  food most of the year that does not have to be purchased or stored. Perhaps it’s time to consider a different approach: Train the dog and kids to stay away from the plants,the stinging plant is doing its best but it’s not enough.  To read about the spurge nettle go here.

On a personal note: I am still trying to find a place to rent or buy in southwest Florida. I have a line on something in central Florida but I’d like to have an alternative. Can be a fixer-upper 50 miles from the coast as long as it is zoned agricultural. If you know of place or anyone please contact me: GreenDeane@gmail.com

This is my weekly newsletter #495. If you want to subscribe to this free newsletter you can find the sign-up form in the menu at the top of the page. My website, EatTheWeeds.com, which is data secure, has over 1500 plants on it in some 428 articles. I wrote every one myself, no cut and paste. 

 To donate to the Green Deane Newsletter click here.

 

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Blue Indigos and Milk Caps in Gainesville. We also saw Chanterelles and Jelly Fungus below. Photo by Green Deane

Jelly Fungus. Photo by Green Deane

In real estate it’s location, location, location. This can be also said of plants. Most of them have environmental preferences. Weather is also a factor. Mushrooms, perhaps, represent the extreme: Location, environment, and weather. Most of them need very specific “substrates” such as wood or turf. Every year we wait for the right amount of ground moisture and ground temperature to make them flush. Last year it was in early June, two years ago late July, this year they are only a month late. We saw some chanterelles in Gainesville last weekend along with Blue Indigos and some Jelly Fungus, the later is usually found on above-ground wood with the bark still attached. Hopefully this weekend after Else’s drenching, we will find more locally. 

You want pink and green strawberry guava. Photo by Green Deane

Also just beginning to fruit is a species that is very invasive in some areas: The Strawberry Guava. I had one in my yard for about 15 years. Not only are the fruit edible but the dried leaves can be made into a passable tea that also has medicinal qualities. One does, however, need to know a little about the species to make the most of the fruit. It’s a little smaller than a ping-pong ball, has tough seeds, and starts out green and hard. As it ripens and softens it will get shades of pink, yellow and red and eventually become dark red and soft, hence the name “Strawberry Guava.” The fruit is tart and sweet, more tart when young, more sweet when older. Despite the name I never tasted a strawberry flavor in any of the fruit. The problem is unless you spray the tree with insecticides the ripe fruit will be full of fly larvae (which you can also view as free protein.) When the fruit is just starting to turn from green to red the rind is too hard for the flies to lay eggs through. But by the time they are soft and ripe they are prime breeding ground. Thus you have a choice, slightly ripe and tart but grub free, or, very ripe and sweet and squirming. To read more about the Strawberry Guava go here.

Classes are held rain or shine or cold. (Hurricanes are an exception.) Photo by Kelly Fagan.

Foraging Classes this weekend include a rare visit to Ft. Desoto Park, south of St. Pete — there is a park entrance fee — and Mead Garden Sunday in Winter Park. The weekend after next I will be in South Carolina for four classes in Honea Path, see schedule below. That weekend will also a reunion of sorts of five or six first cousins who have never been in the same place, together, at the same time. (We thought we’d do it while we all still alive.)  

Saturday July 10th, Ft. Desoto Park, 3500 Pinellas Bayway S. St. Petersburg Fl 33715. There is an entrance fee to the park. Meet at the fishing pier parking lot (which is also where you take the ferry.)  It’s a large parking lot, meet near the bathrooms. 9 a.m. to noon. Lots of salt-tolerant species and poison ivy. 

Sunday July 11th, Mead Garden: 1500 S. Denning Dr., Winter Park, FL 32789.  Meet at the bathrooms. 9 a.m. to noon. Entrance to the bark is on Denning. Some GPS get it wrong. 

Saturday July 17th, Classes at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m at Putney Farm, 1624 Taylor Rd, Honea Path, SC 29654. To preregister email me at GreenDeane@gmail.com or putneyfarm@aol.com. Walk-ins welcomed

Sunday July  18th, Classes at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m at Putney Farm, 1624 Taylor Rd, Honea Path, SC 29654. To preregister email me at GreenDeane@gmail.com or putneyfarm@aol.com. Walk-ins welcomed.

For more information, to sign up or prepay, go here.  

Pandanus Fruit can be edible

The question every time you see one is which species is it? There are some 600 of them in the genus and several are edible one way or another. The ones we see in West Palm Beach sometimes have a little bit of calcium oxalate in the fruit and sometimes doesn’t. So one has to taste it carefully. What you do is take a section, which is a cluster of smaller parts, and chew it. The goal is to get the juice out of it more than anything else though some pulp is edible. Last year this particular growth lightly burned my lips enough to notice but not bothersome. Three species are commonly known as edible: Pandamus amaryllifolius, Pandanus fascicularis, and Pandanus tectorius. The latter is the most consumed of all and it would be a good find. One of the more interesting things about the Pandanus is how it burns when lit. A dried Pandanus stalk can smolder for days like a baseball bat-sized cigarette. It was how some of the Aboriginals of Australia carried fire from one place to another.  Among other sighting in the park were Coco-plums and Simpson Stoppers both just starting their seasonal run. The Sea-grapes were still green. They ripen around the first of September.  We’re also watching a Camachile tree. The Mahoes were not yet in blossom a lot though we did find a few. They are unusual in that their blossom is yellow in the morning then turn red in the afternoon. Botanist tell us that is to attract different pollinators. The blossoms also have more antioxidants in the afternoon.  

Smilax tips are great in spring. Photo by Green Deane

Smilax has moved into its lesser time of year. Considered by many to be one of the best spring time greens the tips this time of year can be bitter and or peppery. Cooking moderates that. Interestingly Smilax is not a vine, at least not botanically. It is considered a climbing shrub. There are two groups with that classification in Florida, the Smilax and the Nickerbean. Apparently they have multiple trunks and grow about 12 feet long. This qualifies them as a shrub by some thinking. The ripe berries are marginally edible and I have not heard of any non-edible Smilax. That said I don’t eat red-berried Smilax because they are rather singular locally (and it has to have red berries for a reason even if I don’t know it.) I just don’t see Smilax walteri too often so I tend to let it be. There is a different red-berried Smilax species on Crete — S. aspera — and those berries are eaten.  S. aspera also has male and female plants. To read more about Smilax go here Folks also think cactus, like palms, are warm weather residents. In fact, cactus are native to 46 of the 50 US states and naturalized in one of those four (Hawaii.) The only states they are not native in other than Hawaii are Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont — the farthest away from their origin in central America. That said, I knew where there were some surviving cactus behind an old homestead in Maine.  They looked quite ratty every spring but somehow managed to survive. Cactus have been naturalized in many parts of the world. Malta comes to mind where they are living fences and a “traditional” source of wine and spirits even though they are native to Mexico and south.

Green Deane videos are now available on a USB.

My nine-DVD set of 135 videos has been phased out and replaced by a 150-video USB. The USB videos are the same videos I have on You Tube. Some people like to have their own copy.  The USB videos have to be copied to your computer to play. If you want to order the USB go to the DVD/USB order button on the top right of this page. That will take you to an order form. I’d like to thank all of you who ordered the DVD set over the years which required me to burn over 5,000 DVDs individually. 

Green Deane Forum

Want to identify a plant? Perhaps you’re looking for a foraging reference? You might have a UFO, an Unidentified Flowering Object, you want identified. On the Green Deane Forum we — including Green Deane and others from around the world — chat about foraging all year. And it’s not just about warm-weather plants or just North American flora. Many nations share common weeds so there’s a lot to talk. There’s also more than weeds. The reference section has information for foraging around the world. There are also articles on food preservation, and forgotten skills from making bows to fermenting food.

Your donations to upgrade the EatTheWeeds website and fund a book were appreciated. A book manuscript has been turned it. It had 425 articles, 1326 plants and a third of a million words. What it will be when the publisher is done with it next year is unknown. It will be published in the spring of 2023. Writing it took a significant chunk of time out of my life from which I have still not recovered. (Many things got put off.) The next phase is to update all the content on the website between now and publication date. Also note as it states above the 135-video DVD set has been phased out for 150-video USB. Times and formats change. Which reminds me I need to revisit many plants and make some new videos.  This is weekly newsletter #464. If you want to subscribe to this free newsletter you can find the sign-up form in the menu at the top of the page.

To donate to the Green Deane Newsletter click here.

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