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GREEN DEANE’S BLOG: Tools of The Trail

Tue, 23 May 2023 12:10:51 -0400

1 Jan 2009: Tools of the Trail

Over the years I have added a few items to my back pack that can make foraging more easier. You might want to add one or two of these items.

The handiest thing I take foraging with me is an ultra fine point permanent marker. It will write on anything. If I need to make a note I just grab a good leaf and write on it. Why carry paper? I also can pick leaves I'm interested in, date and place them as well as identify them if I know.

Recently I decided to make a video of a plant I came across while out hiking. I had my little video camera with me. I don't need a script per se but I did write down the items I wanted to cover on the back of a leaf. And I carry two cameras, a digital still and a digital video camera, plus batteries. Neither are expensive and are among the simplest of designs... less to go wrong.

I also carry an excellent pair of waterproof binoculars, and I usually wear them around my neck for three reasons. First, no one is afraid of anyone wearing binoculars, from hikers to the police. (You would be surprised how many times I've been looking at plants around a mall only to be approached by the police. As soon as they see the binoculars I am dismissed as some bird lover. If an officer does inquire further I tell him looking at the flora is a hobby and that usually convinces him I'm a harmless tree hugger.)

With the binoculars I can look at a lot of leaves a long ways away or up, which is often quite handy. And quite a few conversations have started over the binoculars. It usually begins with "out bird watching, eh?" Answered by, "no, leaf watching..." And truth be known I do look at a bird or two now and then, and other fauna.

The next items of importance are a few baggies and plastic bags. I am always finding something I want to take home to eat or investigate. Plus the baggies can be used to protect the cameras should I get caught in the rain.

In my pocket are always three things. A 10-powered loop, very handy for some identification issues, a pocket knife, and a fire steel. The latter just in case I get stranded and need to spend the night in the woods. Might as well be comfortable.

Many years ago I also bought a six-inch trowel, heat bent the end two inches to a 45 degree angle. It makes a fine digging tool, light but strong. If I know I am going to do a lot of digging I also take along a digging/walking stick made from an ash shovel handle.

Last on my must-carry list is part of a bar of Fels Naptha soap. It can be found in most grocery stores in the laundry section near the floor. It’s inexpensive and can stop such things as poison ivy if washed off in a few minutes.

The grand dame of toxic and edible plants, Dr. Julia Morton, said she would have gotten a lot less calls on topical irritations if folks carried a few latex gloves with them when handling plants they didn't know. I carry them, they weight nothing and take no space, but I rarely use them. The soap I do use because one forgets about the latex gloves but remembers one should have but didn't. The soap saves the day.

25 Dec 2008: The First Place Cops Will Stop

There are really seven types of plants, and it has little to do with family, genus or species.

The first type are those that went from being wild long ago into cultivation. Aside from allergies, they are usually safe to eat.

The next type of plants are wild plants that are edible, tasty and not toxic. My foraging friend Dick Deuerling said he only ate tasty wild edibles. Then there are non-tasty wild edibles, famine food like the Caesar Weed. They are edible but not preferred. There are also plants that are not edible or toxic. Many grasses fall into that class.

Then there are toxic plants that are tasty, and toxic plants that taste awful. The nuts of the yew tree are said to be very delicious, and deadly. Eating the roots of a wild taro in Florida will bring instant pain the mouth.

Lastly, there is also a smattering of plants that may or may not be toxic, or are toxic in one state or stage or not in another. The American Nightshade stands as a classic example, as does tapioca and poke weed.

The point I am belatedly getting to is you should know the toxic plants in your area as well as the edibles, if not even better than the edibles. I am always asked to show people what wild plants are edible. I am never asked by a student what deadly plants to avoid. I tell them anyway.

It is safe to assume all plants are toxic until proven otherwise. And I am sure I do not know all of the toxic plants in my area. But I certainly know the most deadly. That raises the question that if one is only going to concentrate on edibles why bother with the deadly? There are two answers.

One is that the edibles sometimes have toxic look alikes. You must be able to tell a young iris and a young cattail apart. The other is if some child or adult (or pet) eats the wrong plant. If so you will know immediately what to do. One green bitter gourd will kill a dog, one chewed rosary pea seed will kill an adult, and a few holly berries will kill a child (and yet that's a common landscape plant around elementary schools. Dumb, dumber and dumbest....)

Statistically, most plant poisonings are kids eating landscape plants in their own yard. The second most common poisoning is kids eating landscape plants in a neighbor's yard. If you are a parent you should know what can kill your kids around your house and your neighbors' houses. Your kids just may see you eat an edible weed and imitating picking the wrong plant to try. Adults, other than foragers learning on their own, rarely get sick from wild plants because they know not to eat them. Other than intentional suicides the last accidental death of an adult eating a plant unknown was in 1975. It was water hemlock -- one small leaf -- and he was dead in less than two hours. That same year a boy who made a whistle out of the water hemlock also died.

My friends joke that if any of my friends ever appear to die from plant poisoning I am the first place the cops will stop. Of that there is no doubt. Plants are chemical factories and they can make you ill, kill you or maim you for life... and don't get me started on mushrooms...

Mushrooms are in ways worse that toxic plants. Most plants will let you know within an hour that you have eaten something bad, usually in even less time. Mushrooms can wait for days and announce the mistake only after it is fatally too late.

Foraging can be very safe. But while you are at it, learn the unsafe side, just to be safe.

15 Dec 2008: One Year Later

2,000, and 5,000

Two thousand is how many of you who visit this site per month. Five thousand is how many of you watch the videos every month on You Tube. For a website and videos that did not exist a year ago, that is amazing, and thank you. More so, the numbers keep rising. I almost have 1,000 subscribers. For a speciality topic that is outstanding numbers, growth and interest.

In this past year I have written about some 170 edible plants (though I will admit I this writer always needs an editor.) I've made some 60 videos, 57 of them posted, three more to come this year. I am please the videos have improved with quality as I got used to the software and found a presentation style that fits the topic.

Plans for this coming year when spring arrives around Valentines Day are to redo some of the older videos (Crepis has been done already) and continue to do new ones. There are at least another 100 edibles locally and more than 4,000 in North America, so there’s a lot of fun ahead.

The only unanswered question is why the growing interest? Viewer statistics show strong trends but they don’t appear to be related to the environmental movement. Perhaps it is the uncertain times and people what to feel and be in more control of their lives. If you know your local edibles you won’t starve. Where ever you are there is always a meal because edible plants are remarkably consistent around the world. There are also some researched-backed pharmaceuticals out there as well. And more than that wild areas are not estranged threatening places but old friends full of resources.

Another possible answer about the growing popularity could be low cost and variety. There are about 135,000 edible species. One percent of those are under cultivation and in most places only 30 make it to market. Most families only put about six species on the dinner table. Foragers are always eating something that cannot be bought. These wild foods costs very little, essentially time and transportation, which if done by bicycle adds exercise to the mix. Here in the mild South I look forward to a different foragable nearly every month: Wild mustard greens, wild lettuce, smilax tips, chickasaw plums, elderberries, spiderwort, ground nuts, crowfoot grass flour, spurge nettle roots... the list could go on. Every side dish and main meal saves you money and adds more flavors to your life.

So thank you for the great year. I hope you learned at lot. I have, and thank you for the various suggestions. I incorporated many. Green Deane

7 Dec 2008: Practicing Homelessness
There are less Christmas parties this year than in the past, with economic fears reducing the usual yuletide cheer. Still, there are some traditions. Former and current employees of a company I used to work for meet annually for a seasonal get-together. It's a time to catch up and promise to keep in touch.

I was chatting with eligible Hillary, who, if I were half my age, would not be safe. As usual the topic came around to plants and my website.

"What you're doing," she said, "is practicing to be homeless."

Her comment took me by surprise and intrigued me. While not true in reality -- a least not yet -- it was an astute observation. But on reflection, the answer is both yes and no. If I were homeless now I think I could find tastier and better food in the evening dumpster behind a restaurant than in the woods across the road. So there are two kinds of homelessness to consider, being homeless while society is functioning, and while it is not functioning.

If Hillary was thinking about no society then she was quite right. Without intending so I am practicing to be homeless, but not foodless. There is no doubt I -- or you -- could live off wild foods, especially if we toss in a fish, bird or rat fairly often, though I suspect cat and dog would be the more common white meat. It would not be a diet of choice, and would only vary by the season rather than by the meal. If you dig up a 20 pound yam it has to be eaten or preserved.

On more reflection, foraging food is a matter of degrees. A depression could reduce the number of restaurants with food to throw a way, and the competition for any scraps that made it to the dumpster could be intense. So perhaps foraging is a spectrum, the restaurant dumpster on one end and the woods on the other.

More to the point: If Hillary as made her comment five years ago, it would have sounded silly. Today we know it isn’t.

3 Dec 2008 Mead Gardens
Not far from here botanist William Bartram, a friend of Thomas Jefferson, wandered through Florida some two and half centuries ago. The Indians found his interest in plant amusing and called him "Puc-puggee," or "the flower hunter." Near that trail is Mead Gardens. It was started as a private garden some 80 years ago then became public but went down hill. Now it is on the repair. Unlike the very coiffured Leu Gardens less than a mile away, Mead is informal and still on the wild side. In the 55 acres I have so far identified 86 different edible species. I expect as the summer season comes that will approach 100. Twenty four of those edibles species are imports.

That is one of two significant challenges to foraging in warm climates: There are a huge amount of ornamentals to deal with. The other is geography. Because of soil that drains easily but also seasonal torrents one can find dry plants in swamps and wet plants in sand pits, all of them usually stressed out of recognition by heat as well. Foraging here is a challenge. It is such a botanical vacation to head a thousand miles north and look at plants that really like like they are supposed to look. How different the flora must look from when Bartram came through. Not one citrus was to be seen, nor the huge camphor trees, none of which are more than 140 years old or so. There are very few landscape plants he would recognize.

Bartram had no problem during his trip living off the land, and the natives were friendly. Now days living off the land would a a challenge and the natives aren’t so friendly. There are also several million more of them, usually owning patches of decapitated grass and toxic ornamentals. Perhaps it is best that Bartram came though when he did.

22 Nov 2008: Foraging After dark

I took a residential walk this evening to identify trees after dark. Yes, after dark. Now why do a silly thing like that?

I know someone who has his foraging students draw the plants they are studying, even if they can't draw. The purpose is to accentuate the important elements of identification. Wandering around trees after dark is much the same thing.

Pines are fairly easy to identify after dark in a residential setting, meaning a few street lights now and then. There are seven species that grow locally, Slash Pine being the most common. The foliage, needles, is a good giveaway, and the pine aroma. But more than that pines grow tall, which is their downfall. They don't have roots that spread out like the oak. They send down a tap root so the pine stands like a brittle spear in the ground. When tropical force or hurricane winds blow the pine shatters.

Then there was the loquat, an import from Asia. There are two varieties, each with long rough wrinkled leaf, with many herbal uses. Some of them blossom in the fall, some blossom in the spring, who knows why. But the leaf and fragrant blossom gives it away to the touch and nose.

The nose is the detective after dark. I found far more Laurel Cherries than I thought, many of them quite large. How can you identify them after dark? Break a leaf and smell it. If you smell almond you have the laurel cherry, except it is not almonds you smell but cyanide. Can that leaf kill you? Not one, but several can.

Live oaks are everywhere locally but I found a Black Jack Oak. How can I tell? I held the leaf up to the street light. It was shaped like Casper The Ghost holding, his arms out tapering at the ankles. The Water Oak is similar except Casper is not holding his arms out.

An odd leaf shape also helped identify the Tulip Tree, which has nothing to to with tulips. It is also called a yellow poplar but it is not a poplar. It has a large leaf with two short arms and a square end, slightly indented. The Sweet Gum was the only star leaf of the evening.

There was an Arbor Vite, a cedar masquerading as a lawn tree. The vertical branch growth and aroma gives it away. Aroma also gave away the many camphor trees. It is hard to believe no camphor tree here more than 135 years old, which is how long ago they were introduced locally.

The crape myrtles are naked smooth so they are easy to identify, as are the well trimmed viburnums, trees that require a lot of attention but produce nothing but green leaves. The square hedges are Japanese yew. The seed is toxic but the aril might be edible.

In the dark the Norfolk Pine, which isn't a pine, and the Monkey Puzzle tree look similar. One careful touch, however, is all you need. The Norfolk Pine is, comparatively, soft and the Monkey Puzzle Tree well-armed with sharp leaves.

The conundrum of the evening was a holly. That it is a holly is not the issue, but which holly. Is it the American Holly, which can be made into a caffeinated tea, or the English Holly, which I know nothing about. Best guess, the American Holly, roundish leaves not bent and distorted as English Holly can be.

Oddly, I see few palms, which are easy to identify in the dark. They are also more grass than tree. One would think in a Central Florida neighborhood palms would be accented. I actually see more segos than palms. Segos are deadly and cockroach high rises, but they look nice in the daylight. And that is what one does not see after dark, all the imported ornamentals that are usually quite poisonous.

Florida's natural landscape is a resource. Coiffured lawns are usually toxic plant sites. Most plant poisonings occur in your own yard, followed by your neighbor's yard. It is rather bizarre that when we left behind farming we surrounded our homes with poisonous plants. Most ornamentals are colorful. After dark they are but shadows among the real plants.

Dec 2008: Foraging Before There Was Botany

Foraging before there was botany had to be a lot easier than after botany. Someone showed you what was edible and that was that. Of course somewhere back along the line a few thousands years there was some experimentation but for most of human history it foraging was a case of eat like mom ate.

I grew up in an area where fiddlehead ferns were a Rite of Spring, if not one of the endearing hold overs from the past. When I moved to Florida I didn't leave that behind but there are less fiddleheads here and harder to find. Also, where it is green most of the year spring greenery just isn't as significant as it is in the gray north.

The other displeasure was personal: My yard in Florida was filled with a non-edible fern that took over everywhere there was some shade. And as much as I could tell it never produced a single fiddlehead either. I knew the fern well because I was always digging it and its tubers up, moving them or tossing a few. In eight years it has survived one hard freeze and cover virtually half my open space, the reducing mowing. The fern was also the only fern on the exotic pest list of the state of Florida. That alone should have been a clue.

My fern is Nephrolepis cordifolia, a non-native "Boston" fern that showed up in Florida from somewhere in the 1930s. It caused quite a stink in that it was, and is, often sold in place of the native fern Nephrolepis exaltata, the Sword Fern. But of the five Nephrolepis in Florida only the cordilfolia had tubers. That should have been the second clue.

I recently bought a Florida fern book because I simply wanted to know more about them. There's around 160 different ferns in Florida and they ain't easy to tell apart. Determined to expand the choice of fiddleheads, I was looking for edible ferns on the internet when I hit on one page that said the tubers of the N. cordifolia were edible.

Edible? None of my 40 books had said that but I did find a botanical study in Nepal on the nutritional elements of the same fern. It was also written up in a book but that particular page is not available on the internet. So I am left with the phrase the tubers of the N. cordifloia "are eaten fresh and roasted."

Now, I ain't about to pop one in and chew away. I shall approach this carefully and slowly. The last time I tried to expand the menu -- with all due diligence and experience -- I was ill for three weeks. It was a little flower from a good edible family -- sage --with no history of being other than edible, read no reports of toxicity or it causing anyone any trouble. One finger-nail size petal gave me three weeks of stomach aches. I am very glad I did not eat the entire blossom.

So I will look into it. All I have is a couple of fellows on the other side of the earth saying they studied the same plant on the other side of the earth and the tubers are edible there. We’ll see about here. Who knows, I just might have found another weed the state hates but fills my yard with food.

15 Nov. 2008: Non-Green Environmentalism

Early on I developed two hobbies. One was foraging for wild plants. It assured me food where ever I went. The other was watching clouds, one of the few hobbies you can do on your back....and in public On a 24-hour basis you can predict the weather just as well as the weather bureau, just by lying in a hammock and studying the sky. Those two hobbies enjoy the company of each other here in Florida.

Central Florida is the lightening capital of the United States and second in the world after Rwanda in Central Africa, which bests Florida by 2.5 times more strikes. Still, thunderstorms grow in a very predictable way here and one can watch their growth and their life cycle. Plants are the same way. When you are in your hammock all you have to do is look a little to the left or right to see a plant to study should the clouds blow away. But clouds and plants have one other thing in common: People ignore them.

As little as 70 years ago, or if you like round numbers, 100 years ago, most humans on the earth watched the sky and plants intensely for survival, food, shelter, advanced warning and contentment.

Until about World War II most people still lived an agrarian life. In the second half of the 1900s most people left the farm. And by 2000 most people had left the earth for the internet. Like books, radio and television before it, the internet has removed us even more from the world around us.

On one of my plant videos a fellow left a comment that seemed obtuse so I looked at his YouTube profile. In 15 months he had watched 19,400 videos. That's an average of 46 videos a day. Even if that were the only internet access he had that is an amazing amount of time on the internet.... and if he owned a television.... well, you see my point.

Last year I had to do some research and among the findings was those under 25 or so view the internet as reality and life off the net as not reality. In a century we have gone from very attuned to the world around us to viewing it as not real. When one considers it is the world around us that keeps us alive it is quite a thing to ignore. Which brings me to the environmental movement. I'm not sure the environmental movement is ... well... interested in the environment.

I started my videos because my environmentalist friends could barely tell apples from oranges, especially if the packaging was the same. Environmentalism has taken on a lot of politics and even militancy, such as burning down company facilities. To me environmentalism is walking along a bike trail and seeing a 20-foot wide brown swarth on each side, sprayed with an herbicide to keep the plants away from the trail. That's quite brilliant: Build a trail though nature then kill nature around the trail.

To me environmentalism is personal not political. Can I eat that sow thistle or has the railroad company sprayed along here? (Active railways are, by the way, among the most toxic places to forage because most intentionally use extremely potent herbicides.) The environmentalism movement is very concerned about greenhouse gasses which may or may not be significant yet the greatest threat lies at our feet, the pollution of soil and water. Just as humans have drifted away from being attuned to the earth environmentalism has drifted away from the environment. Environmentalists tend to ignore the environment like police ignore traffic laws. I think we need to get back to the roots of things, pay more attention to the earth, and the sky. Air pollution and cloud watching don't mix.

02 Nov. 2008: Birthdays and Videos

When you are between the ages of five and six you proudly announce you are “five and a half.” That half year is important. Likewise my 84-year-old mother does the same thing announcing she is “ eighty-four and a half.” Those of us in between like to ignore the in between designations.

My subscribers will note I have been adding more videos than usual. That is because I have a birthday coming up and I will be out of town for a while. I also wanted to get 50 videos done this year. Actually, my first one was January 15th and I have #50 and #51 done so that will be more than one a week for ten months. Almost time for a winter vacation. If the weather holds I might get #52 done on creeping cucumber and maybe #53 as a non-plant follow up to video #9 about making cider. People don’t follow my exact recipe and then wonder why it didn’t work. It’s kind of following an exact bread recipe then using sawdust rather than flour and wondering why it didn’t come out right. (By the way that is not that far fetched. The sawdust of various trees have been used to extend flour.)

Not all of those videos are what they could be and in the spring I will redo many of them as I seemed to have found a style over the year that works well. And as I say in video 51 there are over 4,000 edible species in North America so I am not going to run out any too soon.

29 Oct. 2008: Apios and Bridge Diving

For the second time recently I was reminded of development. My favorite field of lamb's quarters is now an upscale gated community. And where I used to forage for Apios americana, the groundnut, is million-dollar houses on a brooklet ... it doesn't take much water to increase real estate values.

For tens of thousands of years, perhaps hundreds of thousands, groundnuts grew along this little stream (less than a foot deep, often jumpable.) But houses were squeezed in between it and the road. You know the kind: 4,000 square feet home for a divorced overachiever with 1.4 kids and a .6 girlfriend. And gone were the ground nuts, or at least access to them. I could trespass a business to the south then walk/kayak down stream a mile and float through the gated community, stopping to steal a few but ... I understand property rights but we are talking about people who's view of greenery is golf lawns. I'll gladly take the groundnuts off their property so they can have more decapitated grass..

There is a growing problem of people controlling access to land they have complete disdain for. This bladder stream is called the Little Wekiva. It joins the Wekiva River. That river flows some 16 miles to the north to the St. Johns River. I know of no public access to the Wekiva River. There are three places that charge a fee, and of course, there are numerous home owners along the way, the majority of whom can't tell an orange tree from poison ivy. Access from one bridge to the river was closed after a dunk underage teenager dove in and died. The logic escapes me: Responsible citizens are banned from the river because an unsupervised idiot dove in head first from a 20 foot bridge into four feet of water. I call that a self-correcting problem and no reason to ban adults from a natural resource owned by all.

18 Oct. 2008: Pick Up Lines

As a seasoned life-long bachelor I had my pickup line all crafted and rehearsed, so I could say it naturally at the right moment when my Dream Lady came near. It was:

"Have you seen any Usnea?

Now I am sure you will all agree with me that is a great pick up line sure to set many a heart afluttering. The problem is I never found anyone to use it on today... or yesterday... or the day before. And perhaps that‘s the problem: Great pickup lines are pickupless unless there is someone around to sound.

Let's face it, as pick up lines go there are few better. It’s understandable but unknowable so there is no short answer or dismissing. She has to stop and ponder what I said... and in that moment I explain.

"It's a hairy lichen that grows around here. It tastes good, highly nutritious, and is a great antibiotic for battle wounds....or cat scratches" .... well... I suppose I could leave out the battle wound part if I ever get a chance.

Perhaps I’m missing something but women exercise to feel better and look better and from what I hear, meet people. Yet on the exercise/bike/nature trail only twice in the last decade have I ever had a conversation with a woman. One asked me what the name was of the tree I was looking at (Black Cherry: Prunus serotina) and another was carrying a bromeliad and I knew exactly where she got it off the trail. It was a great conversation.

She was the right age, nice personality, and I found her quite attractive... and we talked plants for a couple of miles. I gave her a card to this site and she told me her name... I recognized it as an old cartoon character... definitely lost that one. I went and collected some Usnea for the wound.

18 Oct. 2008: Binomial Nomenclature

Most of us go by two names. So do plants. That’s Binomial Nomenclature. That is both good and bad. It’s good in that two people on different sides of the earth can be sure they are talking about the same plant. It’s bad in that there is a HUGE resistance among beginners to learn the terms. Any suggestion they do is with met with an attitude on par with “you don’t love me” and “I’m going to take my toys and go home.” Some reluctance is understandable: We all have ancestors who foraged for wild plants and they didn’t learn binomial nomenclature, nor did they need to.

When learning to forage was something passed down from generation to generation all you needed to know was to identify the plant and what your group called it. Even now learning wild edibles with someone is much faster than from a book. Like our ancestors, when studying with someone you really don’t need to know the scientific name, or the tribal one for that matter.... until you need to communicate with someone. Then the name becomes important.

There are some 18 plants in the United States called “pig weed.” Some are edible, some can kill you. That can make knowing which one is being discussed rather important. I had a friend and his family get quite ill because in discussions it was not understood two different pig weeds were being talked about. One you could just sweat the leaves and eat. The others had to be boiled in changes of water. It was not a fatal mistake but it could have been.

The first name of a plant is the genus it is in (much like an extended family.) The second name is the plant itself. Here in Florida, for example, there are several different yams, in the genus Dioscorea. D. Bulbifera, D. Alata, and D. Oppositifolia. One can kill you, one you have to boil once, one you can eat raw. Saying there are edible yams in Florida will not do. Having the right name can mean you are here tomorrow to read more blogs.

Now that we have established the value of Binomial Nomenclature, there is a dark side. What a plant is called is a matter of opinion. That opinion is based on details and sometimes a huge scoop of ego. Plant names can change. Sometimes it is because someone makes a very good observation and the plant should be rename, or even put into a different genus. That has happened with Paper Mulberries and Mexican Tea. Other times the difference can be minute, literally one gene different which to people who find that significant it is... significant. Personally, I am not that detailed of a person, which is why I forage plants not mushrooms. However. my argument is you should learn the scientific names of the plants you are interested in because it can save you life, or that of a loved one.

15 Oct. 2008: Landmarks
Landmarks -- accomplishments -- are like a melody. Regardless of your taste in music, music is more than organized sound. Music firmly places you in time. When a melody starts, that is now. After a note or two you have a now and a past. And when you anticipate where the melody is going, you have a past, a present and a future. A melody fixes you in time. So do landmarks.
Your first day in school is like the beginning of a melody, each passing year gives you a present and a past and the next grade a future. It’s the same thing with traveling. You leave to visit a country, travel there, visit and know you will come home. It is also the same with building a website.
Not quite a year go I started writing articles about wild plants on a MAC blog format, which explains some of strange ways I have things organized here. I need to change it to a proper site. Last January I started making related videos and posting them on You Tube. In 10 months I’ve managed to write about more than 100 plants, and in nine months make 46 videos, which isn’t far from 50 in a year, if the weather holds and the plants are available. That was another challenge: It’s hard to take pictures of out -of-season plants, or do videos on them.
The landmarks are more than 50 videos made or 100 plants covered. Its learning the video software, adding titles, finding a format and sticking to it. That certainly takes care of the past and the present. What I can do between now and Florida’s winter is the future. And then next year with the foundation laid, more interesting plants and videos. Perhaps a book or DVD. There are some 4,000 edible species of plants in North America. I will be busy. The melody has started, and its playing along. The only questions are where it will go and when will it end.

10 Oct. 2008: Root Beer Rat Killer.
It's not smart or nice to lie about plants. It can get someone hurt. But the truth can sometimes be elusive, even with plants.
This week's featured video is about the sassafras. And of course when you mention the sassafras as among the edibles there is always someone who hopes to throw a bucket of informed reality on that notion by saying it will cause cancer. Oh really? The sassafras is a prime example that the truth can often be an excuse to do something else.
The oil in sassafras in high amounts can induce abortions. The oil in sassafras can be used to make a popular illegal drug. Now, could those be reasons to ban sassafras oil? Certainly, but those truths were not useable in the '50s and '60s. Abortion and dangerous drugs weren't talked about much. So the powers that be fell back on the old stand by: Cancer. They fed rats sassafras oil that was like us drinking water from a blasting fire hose. And guess what? The lab rats -- who have to be the most cancer susceptible creatures alive -- got liver cancer. The next step was easy: Assume people can get liver cancer from drinking root beer (If you drank some 9,000 gallons of it in a year.) The sassafras oil had to go.
The truth is the sassafras oil in the original root beer was 1/13 as cancer causing as the alcohol in a can of regular beer. One thirteenth. That's not too life threatening... not exactly a significant carcinogen. Alcohol-filled chocolate cherries are more dangerous than that, but they ain't banned. Heck, the sugar in the root beer is more life threatening than the sassafras oil. However taken to its extreme limits sassafras oil might cause cancer in humans. That skinny truth was the excuse to get it banned. It was also the sole source of the cancer scare over sassafras.
That distortion has become medical dogma and most now sites sternly warn you to avoid "cancer-causing" sassafras. I'm sure that's good news for the Sassafras but it shouldn't dissuade us foragers now and then from enjoying one of the tasty trees of the forest.

5 Oct. 2008: Living off the Land
Can you live off the land? Can anyone these days? I suppose the answer depends on what land, what you know, and whose else is also trying to live off it.
Every time I go hiking or biking I make note of the edible plants I see along the way and whether they could have sustained me that day if I had to live off them. When foraging is a hobby, the issue of calories in or out takes second place to the fun and the learning. But in a survival situation the caloric compensation has to be taken into consideration. Too much out and not enough in means illness and starvation. I took a five mile walk today in upland scrub (read no ponds) to see how I would do, food wise.
Two choice finds would have left me in good stead for the day, or more. First I found a patch of winged yams. While under cultivation they can grow to well over 100 pounds, locally in the wild they range from a half a pound to eight pounds, still that's a lot of potato-like starch and food for more than one meal and one day. It requires cooking so I'd also have to have a camp fire and boiling is the preferred method of preparation, though they can also be carefully roasted.
My second good find was an acorn-dropping oak tree. Better still, it was a Live Oak and one with sweet acorns. I could nibble some on the spot. They barely need leaching, so not too many calories will be involved in bringing that food to the table. And a good thing: Acorns are high in carbs and fats, two things you need to keep going. Still, they require some wholesome water for leaching but there was one brook along the trail. I didn't venture off to see what I could find there.
I also saw numerous "ear trees" and they are included here as an edible, but that is debatable. They are a famine food and their seeds very hard to prepare by hand for roasting. I would have taken them only if I missed the yam and the acorns. Calories in calories out. I also saw a pecan tree, but its nuts are not ready yet.
As for fruits there were two, beauty berries and persimmons, the former about to go out of season and the latter not quite in season, but I managed to find a lot of beauty berries and a few sweet persimmons. There were also some elder blows and arils of the ripe bitter gourd.
In terms of greenery, there was a lot of choice... some wood sorrel, smilax, pennnywort, young maple leaves, and young summer grape leaves. On the "edible but..." side were caesar weed and Bidens alba. Other items included saw palmetto berries, nutritious but extremely intense in taste, green bitter gourds and leaves, lichen, and panic grass seeds.
For tea I had the choice of sumac berries, blackberry leaves, pine needles, spotted bee balm or the elder blows. The persimmon seeds can be used to make a black coffee-like drink as can blackened acorns. Spice were bay leafs, wax myrtle leaves, smart grass and possibly Hercules Club seeds ground as pepper... sparingly... ditto some Brazilian Pepper seeds.
Normally on such forays I see a land turtle, which of course, is a huge boon of protein in one spot for several meals. Today I did not see one. However, I did run into a two-foot copperhead right in the middle of the trail. If it had been more aggressive and I more hungry it, too, would have been dinner. (Peel the skin back like a sock, clean, then fill will wild greens, roll the skin back, and roast by the fire.) If I had a .22 with me and was living off the land at least one of the squirrels would not have gotten away. They are far more tasty than the copperhead. In fact, authentic Brunswick Stew is made with squirrel.
All in all.... I would have had to have cooked somethings twice to make them palatable, but on the second boil it would have been quite a soup/stew. The only problem is unless you go to a different terrain your next meal is going to taste the same, and the meal after that as well. Variety in the wild is seasonal. Here in Florida the Indians used to winter in the middle of the state and summer on the shore. No doubt there were climatic and insect reasons for that. But another is, a welcome change of diet, so welcome they left behind sea shell piles over 50 feet high.
Bushcrafter Ray Mears ( www.raymears.com ) summarized it best when he said that survival includes taking advantage of every food opportunity, no matter how meager. He is absolutely right. Not one can be passed up. Fortunately we're just having a good time outside. But, it is good to train your eye to find the food should you need to. And sometimes, like the copperhead, the food finds you.

2 Oct 2008: Foraging Ethics

What is foraging?
It seems like an easy question but until you answer it, one can't ponder a debate I've been following on the ethics of foraging.

The first definition the dictionary gives is "to strip of provisions." Armies of old were foraging when they took grain or hay from the locals. The second definition is closer to what we do, "to wander in search of food." The third and fourth definitions, are more in line with the first and boarder on plunder except it is either food for you or your animals.

"Foraging" could certainly include stealing so clearly stealing has to be removed from our code of foraging. And wandering could include trespass, so we have make sure trespassing is removed from any code of foraging. As for endangered species, that's rather easy: Obey the law. And of course we should include don't be a hog.

And..... Well.... what foraging ethics really comes down to is act like an adult. One would not think that controversial. Yet I've watched a near nasty debate over what should be the ethics of foraging... arguers not being adults.... hmmmmm... maybe they do need a list of rules after all.

Green Deane
World Weed Eater

25 Sept 2008: Going Nuts Over Acorns
It seem like a little thing that grew into a big problem, just like the edible I was writing about.

I had several requests to do something about acorns. Though a well-covered edible on the Internet and in nearly every foraging book most people think they are poisonous, a rather surprising idea. They are not, unless you’re a horse. After writing my article I had a quandary: Do I index it under oak or acorns? It would seem oaks and acorns are in rare company, a nut that is not the same name as the tree.

Cashews come from a ....cashew tree. Pecans from a pecan tree. Walnuts from a walnut tree. Acorns from an Acorn Tree...wrong...

I started a list in my mind... apples, apple tree; oranges, orange tree; mulberries, mulberry tree... persimmons, almonds, cherries, plums, loquats, grapes..well, grape vine. but still grape. One even gets ‘ears” from the Ear Tree, but acorns....

Now hazelnuts do come from the Hazelnut tree, but so do “filberts” because the hazelnut ripens around St. Filbert’s day....Aug. 20...no, I really didn’t know there was a St. Philibert ...built a lot of churches in the early 800’s, one with his name still standing....so we get both filberts and hazelnuts from the hazelnut tree. I could try to add that whiffles come from the whiffle tree but they come from the Ash tree, and they aren’t even edible (it’s a part of carriage or cart that transfers the pulling of the horse to the vehicle.)

So I decided to index acorns under acorn, not oak. No one goes looking for an oak recipe, and acorn looks good at the top of an edible index. And I think I’ll start calling oaks “acorn trees.”

15 Sept 2008: I Yam what I Yam

Now I know how a cold case detective feels. One little mis-fact and you can be thrown way off the trail. It happened to me with yams. Not the sweet potatoes kind, the real yams, dioscorea. It threw me off a dozen years. I’ll spare you most of the detains.

It is not an exaggeration to say parts of Florida are blanketed by a wild yam, the Dioscorea bulbifera. I was told way back in the mid-90s they had a very big root -- up to 150 pounds -- and that the roots were edible. I went around pulling up bulbiferas. Never found a root bigger than a pencil. I gave up. Then by a series of events you can read about in the entry on yams, I discovered I had been told one thing when reality was another. The dioscorea with the big root was the Dioscorea alata, not the Dioscorea bulbifera. Suddenly I was looking for a different plant, similar looking, but different. I found some almost immediately. Then I found my first big root, not 150 pounds but 8.2, still bigger than a pencil. All it took was one wrong word of the plant’s name to stop the progress for 12 years. Yes, I could have done some digging but I didn’t know there was a problem. You can’t solve a problem you don’t you have, kind of like life. It just might be that finding problems, not avoiding them, is the key to success.

1 Sept 2008: Surviving Survivalists

I am not a survivalist, though every day I do break my personal best record of consecutive days alive.

That said, I know many survivalists and they talk a lot about society falling apart and having to live some kind of Davy Crocket /Rambo lifestyle. Inevitably the issue of edible wild plants come up. I have a lot of folks who say they plan to come to my place should there ever be a shortage of food. I think, however, there are some misnomers about living off the foraged land.

Often I walk 15 miles or leisurely bike 30 or so. And when I do I take note of the edible plants I see along the trip and what kind of meal or meals I could make by day’s end. Doing that inventory often makes three things apparent. One is that every single opportunity for food would have to be exploited, no matter how meager. Two, it would take most of ones time to collected and prepare the food. And, lastly, that capturing some creatures makes the entire adventure far more nutritious.

Let's take those backwards. Usually every time I am out walking or biking this time of year I see a tortoise. In real hard times that would be dinner, and perhaps breakfast as well. More so, it is easy to get -- pick it up -- and a huge concentrations of food stuff my body wants and needs. All life lives off the living, even vegetarians (who seem to discriminate against vegetables by eating only them.) That tortoise I see every time would keep me living for another day or two.

Next is time. It would take a lot of time to find enough food to survive each day. Occasionally there would be a bonanza of something, like a grape harvest, but most of the time it would take a lot of time to find enough to live off. And then one has to collect the fire wood, find clean water, then prepare the food and cook it.

Then there is the variety, or lack there of. Here in Florida I can always count on some Biden Pilosa leaves to eat, some acorns that need leaching, cattails, lichen, spurge nettle roots, seasonal fruits, seasonal leaves, and seasonal nuts. Sustainable, perhaps, but there are going to be lean days, weeks, months and seasons.

Compare that to someone who knows how to fish. One medium size fish and you won't starve that day. While it takes some skill to fish it is not difficult to learn. (Personally, I have five cast nets and never come home with an empty creel.) The hunter, more controversial, gets even more food than the fisherman, but that requires far more skill, and of course, a weapon, which is much harder to come by than making a pole, line and hooks. (Though trapping can also be included in hunting, but that too takes more skill than fishing, and takes longer to learn.)

And then there is foraging, what we started out with. While foraging is near and dear to my stomach it is the skill that takes the longest to learn and produces the least amount of calories. It also takes up the most time. That would all seem to argue, especially to my survival friends, that learning fish would be a priority, hunt next and down the road foraging. Yet oddly, foraging may still have greater value than fishing or hunting.

If we were ever in a true survival mode where we had to gather our food (by hand, hook or Colt 45) fish would be the first depleted food. Animals next. Plants last, and by that time there just might be less people around. So even to the survivalist foraging can value, at least for those Rambos who survive. Survivalists, who like to think they are a breed apart, share this in common with most people: They don’t know much about plants, and like many folks, just ignore them.

I like to forage because it makes me part of the world I am in, whether society is together or falling apart. I will forage for fun and flavor whether society is together or falling apart. And while I do not expect society to fall apart, I like the idea that I can always find something to eat nearly everywhere.

1 Aug 2008: Great Grandmother Cat

One of the reasons why Eat The Weeds exists is to advocate eating the wild foods around you but also to be another voice in the growing chorus that is suggesting the way we eat nowadays is not healthy. That would include being critical of a lot of doctors who are wrong about nutrition.

This author follows two mottos: One is eat like your great grandmother ate, that is, if your great grandmother would not recognize it as food, don't eat it (this would apply to most of the chemicals on the ingredient list after salt and sugar.) The other motto is trust the cow, not the chemist. It is this writer's studied view that much of the heart disease, diabetes and certain cancers are a directly linked to the chemist being invited into the industrial kitchen. So I eat cheese not processed cheese food, a balanced wholesome meal, not a Lean Cuisine (not to pick on anyone in particular.)

This is not to say wild foods are entirely safe. There is usually a reason why a wild food is not main stream. Sometimes it is transportation and storage issues, as with loquats or pindo palm fruit. Other times, it is legally just too risky. Poke weed is an example of a fantastic food that several states and private concerns have tried to make mainstream and on your grocer's produce shelves. But, that little bit about ending up in the hospital if you cook it wrong is a set back, especially to anyone under 40, almost none of whom cook any more. I will admit the first time I collected poke weed on my own, cooked it and took a swallow, it was a brave step. Today's consumers won't go near that unless society breaks down completely and it's eat poke weed or starve.

So this writer thinks in alternative foods, and is not a fan of the food or medical community that takes poor studies for gospel and doesn't change their ways until long after bad advice becomes a health epidemic. But then there is my cat.

If you've wandered around the site you've seen Oliver Whitecat. He came into my life by accident at the age of six weeks and has turned into a cat-of-a-lifetime. He is bright, playful, loyal, sweet, sassy, and thinks. And like most cats, he has his dietary yea's and nay's. If it flies he likes it, raw or cooked. If it swims and is cooked he likes it. Sushi is not on his list of hit parade foods. Food with four feet is hit or miss. Pig yes, lamb no. Beef maybe. Squirrel yes, deer yes, goat maybe... depends on the sauce. But all of that got me to thinking....

Most of the foods Oliver likes he wouldn't have, despited his brilliance and resourcefulness, a chance in hell of catching. Deer is absolutely on the top of his list. When is a 12-pound cat ever going to catch a deer? Deer is not what HIS great grandmother ate. And cooked fish....can't see that turing up on any feral cat's menu either. Bird is a given, squirrel if he's lucky. But goat and beef? Cow and cat just ain't in the same league.

Then I look at his cat food, the kind he gets daily and now and then. It has nothing to do with him as a cat: Seafood platter, Turkey with giblet gravy, savory beef marinade. Heck, it makes me hungry but there is no way his great grandmother cat or 20th great grandmother cat ate cooked seafood, caught turkey with gravy or even dreamed of savory beef marinade.

On the other hand he is not a vegetarian. Rice and textured vegetable protein gravy does not a healthy cat make. I think we need a new line of cat food: Bird bisque, rodent roast, insect snacks... those are more in keeping with how his great grandmother cat ate.... So how can I justify him eating deer, something that clearly in not in his natural diet? Well, his larger relatives do.

We've all seen the scrub brush video of some wild cat running down some speedy prey only to be supper in the end. Oliver does that, with lizards and occasional cockroaches. They really don't stand a chance. I think he even enjoys the crunch. So I will continue to give my little lion what some of the big lions eat... and just be glad I'n not the size of a squirrel.

1 May 2008: A Nettling Question about Cnidoscolus

It's very tempting when you know a plant is edible to assume its close relative is edible, too. That how I found not all sages are edible. I had a stomach ache for three weeks that time. Now I wonder about the spurge nettle, or Cnidoscolus stimulosus.

Two things I know. The root of the Cnidoscolus stimulosus is edible. I have dug up many and buttered them down. And according to authorities, the seeds of the Cnidoscolus texansus are edible, if not esteemed. Here's the curious part: Those who write about the C. stimulosus never say if its seeds are edible, they only mention the root. And those who write about the C. texansus never say if the root is edible, they only mention the seeds. Now it just might be that only the root of one is edible and only the seeds of the other is edible. Or it just might be one of those overlooked things. The plants appear to be nearly identical, but that can be a deceiving as twins. I have found one website that says North Carolina Indians ate the seeds of the C. stimulosus, but no mention was made of the root which is a prime foraging food. That makes one suspicious of the veracity of that report.

It would seem there are two things to do. Keep looking for an authoritative reference that sorts it out and or later this year when the seeds are ripe, carefully try one... in stages, titrate it as it were. If this site disappears, you'll know why. I am not a huge fan of expanding known edible plants or parts thereof. My brush with sage cured me of that.... almost.

15 April 2008: New and improved

Have you ever wondered what the phrase "new and improved" means?

I imagine at one time it actually meant a better version of something. There were two construction sites here not long ago, one to enlarge a bridge over the interstate and another to modernize a railroad crossing. When they got done with the railroad grade it was rougher to cross than before. And when they got done with the bridge it could hold six lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic instead of four lanes. New and improved is also often a hint that your new software will be slower and more headaches than your current version. New and improved can also be a warning about plants.

While working on my daylily video I noticed my favorite patch of wild daylilies were now under a new and improved interchange. Also, if I wanted to use daylilies in my video I've have to use new and improved versions of the daylily. The problem is new and improved plants are not always good for you.

Now I am not going to rail about genetic engineering. We've been doing that for thousands of years with plants and animals, we are now just doing it with more sophistication. What I will caution about is the potential changes manipulating genes can do, no matter how they are manipulated.

As you can read in my blog on daylilies there used to be only one daylily in North America, essentially a clone of one brought over from Europe. It was edible, and still is. But in the 1930’s breeders (we might now call them genetic engineers) began to create new versions of daylilies. There are now some 60,000 of them. In the pursuit of color or petal shape or plant size toxicity can be accidentally created. That's because every living thing is a complex cascade of genes and when one diverts that cascade detrimental changes can be made downstream where no one is looking. So while that plain old daylily is a great springtime green for the kitchen, the new and improved version might put you in the hospital. I would not call that progress. Personally, I like my daylilies edible, my computer before it was upgraded, and bridges that hold less cars, not more.

1 April 2008: The Tyranny of Time

The plants don't do it, nor the animals. So I decided this year I wouldn't do it either: I stayed on standard time. It's a personal rebellion of one.

Staying on standard time has been remarkably easy and stress free. I haven’t reset the clocks in my house. I'm still eating at the same times I was a month ago. I'm still going to bed at the same time and getting up at the same time. When I wake up and look over, the clock and my body agree. I also wear a military 24-hour watch — it has a full 24 hours on the face instead of 12. That hasn't been reset either. I like using my watch to find astronomical north and that requires staying on standard time. Yes, I can change the time and still find north at 23 instead of 24 but there is symmetry having north at 24 and south at 12.... of course that sounds odd unless you know your watch, even a digital watch, can be used as a compass.

As for keeping up with the rest of the world, when someone says they want to meet at noon I know they really mean eleven. I accommodate their delusion but don't participate in it. I really know it’s eleven. I don't own a television so there are no scheduling issues to keep up with. My computers automatically switch back and forth and of course the one I'm currently using reads an hour ahead of my wrist watch but computers are dumb anyway.

For the majority of human existence we didn't have time change. Actually for the majority of human existence we didn't have clocks, nor calendars per se. People lived by the stars and the seasons. That rhythm is in our bodies whether we have clocks or not. The body knows what time it is even if the brain insists otherwise. Personally I think whoever came up with daylight saving time should have been locked away to never see the light of day again. Our ancestors lived quite well without the clock or calendar and had quaint ways to navigate through the day. If you make a fist and hold it on the horizon that represent about an hour of time. If the sun is sitting on your fist its about two hours before darkness. If the sun is on the western horizon you’ve got about an hour before dark. That the sun is an hour wide can’t be by chance. As for other means, there are some plants that don't open their leaves until mid-morning, or that close up in the afternoon or don't blossom until 4 o'clock. There are also plants that arrange their leaves north and south, or east and west. The majority of growth at the top of a tree will be on the southern side if you live north of the equator. After foraging on a cloudy day without a watch or compass you should still be able to orientate yourself and find your way back to your vehicle before dark. If not, you had better know how to light a fire without matches.

When I was a kid, back in the Dark Ages, the time change took place with little notice except one could play outside much longer in the summer. For a couple of weeks it wasn't dark until 9 o'clock. I can still remember marveling at that but when you're a kid you have all the time in the world. When you're an adult, time rules your life. Changing it twice is a year is tyranny. It's time for a revolution... one hour to be exact.

14 March 2008: Attitude Makes The Difference

Facts don’t disappear in life, but in the end attitude is their equal. Water hyacinths can demonstrate that. If you know much about the state of Florida it was over run not long ago by water hyacinths. The state botanists still call it the worse weed on earth. They say this for two reasons: It impacts tourism and also the water ecology of the state. It’s a billion dollar boondoggle. But then there is attitude and perception. While flustered Florida sputtered away calling it a weed Florida ignored the fact that in other parts of the world the water hyacinths is used for cattle fodder (a point you would think would not have been missed by the nation’s third largest producer of cattle.) With preparation people can eat water hyacinth, it makes a good fertilizer, has very useable fiber, can be used to make bio-fuel, and importantly it has the ability in water or on land to absorb pollutants. It’s a sponge that loves to grow and can double its population in just two weeks. Do you have a “love canal” that needs cleaning up, or is the price of gasoline getting too high? To the point: Is water hyacinth a weed or a bio-tool that can be used? Florida had to address the threat it posed. Protecting an economy is important because that in turn protects people. But maybe it is time for some attitude adjustment. Water hyacinth can be a “weed” with all the negative connotations that engenders or a valuable plant. The view determines ideas and how tax dollars are spent. Now billions are spent to either spray the plant with favored pollutants (called herbicides) or mechanically crush the plant and let it rot. Why not utilize the plant and at the same time reduce its population? The newsman Harry Reasoner once said he hated labels because once you labeled someone or something you stopped thinking about it. Calling a plant a weed does exactly that. You can spend billions killing something and throwing it away, or harvesting something that can help people and show a return. It’s a matter of attitude.

29 Feb 2008: The Grass and Tree War

Point of view, thinking differently... Consider: What if plants are more goal-orientated than we think them to be? After all, we put ourselves on the top of the list, whatever that list is and that placement, deserved or not, skews our view and thinking. What if trees and grass are in a war to dominate the earth? The trees for most of history were winning. But now grass has human help. For some grasses, the battle plan is to accept some losses (literally off the top) for domination. If you don’t mow a lawn, the trees win. Mow a lawn, grass dominates. Thus grass, so to speak, is using humans to fight trees. That’s rather curious because far more trees are beneficial in some way than grasses, and much more edible. Each lawn of decapitated grass is one little battle between grass and trees, and the non-edible grass is winning while consuming a lot of green to stay green. In one of the articles here, I mention that in Tasmania the wild blackberry is considered an extreme nuisance, and indeed it might be. But ponder that for a moment: A self-tending annual edible plant with delicious food and medicinal uses is a state-declared nuisance. Isn’t that more a problem of utility than definition? Most of the “noxious” weeds listed by most agricultural authorities are in fact edible. Let’s call them Forgotten Food. The problem is we don’t eat the weeds any more. We get our food pre-managed instead of really gathering it ourselves, or growing it. Setting aside for a moment my name, it’s not unreasonable to ask why is there so much lawn? Don’t misunderstand me, lawns can be nice. I’ve had some mighty good moments on lawns. Parks, golf courses, monuments and cemeteries can benefit from lawns. But do you realize lawn grass is the number one crop in America? It even exceeds marijuana, which is the largest cash crop of all. I am not sure humans should be helping lawn grass dominate the flora of the world nor should we be herbiciding edible weeds. Food is food. Only an obese nation values decapitated grass. There are no “noxious” edible weeds in Ethiopia. When I was last a visiting relatives in Greece, I saw perhaps a hundred square feet of lawn, total. Clearly nations can get by without lawns. What lawn I have is a greens keeper’s nightmare. I intentionally grow most of the weeds virtually hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on every year trying to keep out of lawns: Chickweed, pellitory, spiderwort, wild lettuce, sow thistle, dayflowers, dandelions, pennyworts, spanish needles, mustard, sorrel, hawksbeard and betony. Into salads and cooked greens they go, nutritious and no approve chemicals that might be recalled next week because they might make me glow in the dark a decade from now. For most of the year my little lawn, which is about 30 by 40 with over a dozen trees, provides me a with a steady supply of organic greens (and some roots.) I don’t have to do much for the bounty, except harvest and fend off local authorities. One year they said my weeds were over 18-inches high, thus violating the residential code ordinance. I agree you can’t have a “Good Neighbors” farm in a cul-du-sac neighborhood. But this was tended, not over grown, not wild nor abandoned.... a natural garden, food for my table, not “weeds.” I won my case by pointing out the ordinance said weeds that were “unintentionally” over 18 inches tall were in violation. I countered my weeds, which I could identify by their Latin names and cook for any inspector who wanted to dine with me, were intentionally over 18-inches high thus not in violation. The truth is only two or three of them can even reach 18-inches and I won on a technicality rather than convincing them of the wisdom of being green. There are, I think, three issues: First, a lot of jobs are involved with the maintenance of lawns and the death of edible weeds. What a resource that would be if put towards fostering Forgotten Foods rather than killing them. Next, a century ago lawns were an affectation, now they are standard. Some lawns in some places are fine, the national mall comes to mind and the veteran cemetery that will hold me one day. But it is time stop making them a standard residential feature. They need to be uncommon again, and thus I think, then more appreciated for what they are. And of course there are ordinances, which need to be eased a bit. Why, after all, is a seven-foot deadly oleander acceptable on a lawn but not an edible 20-inch Tradescantia? It is said politics make odd bedfellows. It seems to me the left and the right have a meeting point in the greenery arena. I put no pesticides or herbicides my lawn. That is certainly good in the long run for me, my neighbors and the aquifer. I am responsible for my lawn’s maintenance. I don’t hire illegals to decapitate it using Arab oil in a Japanese lawnmower brokered by someone in India imported on a Chinese ship. We need to start rethinking the idea of a lawn as lawn rather than a place for trees and edibles. And while we do need to be cognitive of residential values we need start changing ordinances that say yes to expensive grass and toxic ornamentals but no to food-producing landscapes and Forgotten Food. Edible landscaping can be just as attractive as poisonous landscaping. It costs less, is far safer, and provides a nutritious return. Lawns are winning in their war against trees. I think we need to change sides.

26 Feb 2008: Less Was Far More

West of New Smyrna Beach, Florida., today, I stopped and collected some thistle and took some pictures. More than 50 years ago I marveled at the same plant growing across the road from my home in Pownal, Maine. Back then the town had five one-room school houses with no running water. That meant an outhouse, drinking water collected from an oak-barrel spring, and an old stove in the middle of the room. It was an education system that had worked well for about a century, open classroom ahead of its time. Four of the schools had two grades each. One, in West Pownal, had all eight grades in one room. There was usually less than a couple of dozen kids in each school. Every spring, it seems, we’d bring in the closed tops of the thistle to school — no easy feat — and hang them in the windows, watching them turn over time into big puffs of cotton. Things were certainly different then. On May Day we’d hang a basket of candy on the teacher and disappear into the woods for the entire afternoon, sometimes getting as far as the top of Bradbury Mountain, the rocky knob of the local state park a mile away. Hanging a May basket and scattering had been happening on May Days for decades and no one thought a thing about it. Now days, two dozen kids running into the woods at noon to disappear for three or four hours would be cause for dragnets and law suits. Never was a child lost or hurt. It really makes you believe that less is indeed more. And let me tell you about Mrs. Arlene Tryon, the teacher: A hundred pounds wet and in her 70s more than able to put a teenage boy in his place. Of course, back then the teacher had rights and was right and when you got home dad took you down another notch for being a pain in the class to the teacher. There was a lot to be said for that one-room school... and yes, I did get to the top of Bradbury Mountain, three years in a row.

24 Feb 2008: Make My Day

It was one of those moments. I was biking along a rails to trails, stopping and taking pictures of this and that plant for past and future blogs. Better pictures are always good. I was taking a picture of a pin cherry blossom when a woman walking on the trail asked me what it was because she said she had never seen it blossoming. I told her then pointed out a few more plants and even got her to sample some Rumex hastatulus. I also showed her some Teloxys ambrosiodes, which we only smelled, having no tacos available. I handed her a “Green Deane, eattheweeds.com” card and she started walking. About a hundred feet away, she turned around and yelled “Deane!” I looked up and she said “you made my day.” ...and she made mine.

20 Feb 2008: Bee’s In Litigation

The last time I visited relatives in Greece, September 2006, I had “tea” with one of two then-living first cousins of my grandmother, both in their 90s, Maria and Alexandros Karantzalis. And while that might be relevant to write about here some day, it was the tea that was interesting. It was quite nice. My relatives sent me on my way with some. That tea, of course, was not oriental tea but resembled it. I learned in time it was an herbal mountain tea, Sideritis usually. Last week, a year and a half later, I wondered.... I know it likes to grow on cool mountains but ... I shook the package and got about 70 seeds. I put them in little peat pots. None have sprouted yet. No doubt I violated some law, which brings me to lawyers. Do you know real estate lawyers now advice against clover because it attracts bees and bees sting and stings can lead to law suits. I think we need more bees and less lawyers (and I say that as one accepted to law school.) Most of the folks elected to state legislatures are lawyers, and they spend their time making laws. That seems to me like an incestuous conflict of interest. Perhaps being a lawyer should automatically disqualify someone from holding public office... Bee keeping might be appropriate....

14 Feb 2008: Dandelion Wine

I am asked why I don’t write about dandelions. So I recently did. Unlike up north, in central Florida they are sporadic visitors. In fact, I’ve tried twice to introduce them to my “lawn” with no success. This year, however, they popped up on two neighbors’ lawns and I collected a few seed heads and distributed the seeds. Next year will tell. As the site introduction says, when I was a kid I was sent out to collect dandelions when they were in season. I never cared for the taste of them then but I did make dandelion wine when I was around 12. As was the custom a life time ago neighbors in the country helped neighbors. One evening our neighbor, Mr. William “Bill” Gowan came up and after some work we broke out the dandelion wine. He found it to his liking and what I remember of the evening — I was a kid after all — is he kept sipping and saying “this is pretty good.” Several bottles were sipped away that evening. Fortunately he only had a half-mile walk home. And you know, that’s how it used to be: You helped a neighbor, you enjoyed the evening, and your horse who knew the way home took you there if the wine was still glowing. Some times I think the Amish are better off.

8 Feb 2008: The Cider Barrel

My mother was a horrible cook. I used to joke she thought I was a Greek god: Every meal was either a burnt offering or a sacrifice. I learned to cook in self-defense. So I have only two or three favorite flavor memories from childhood: Wood-fired baked beans in the winter with homemade baked bread; my mother’s own concoction of Christmas pudding, her over-baked dry pumpkin pie, and something she had little to do with, hard cider. As I’ve mention in the write up about hard cider, what I remember most, besides the taste, was it was a simple, unadorned creation. Don’t misunderstand me, I like pub cider but it loses something from the tree to the pub. I will freely admit to being a critic of today’s sterile, packaged, commercialized society. No, I am not against capitalism or technology and I am green within reason, but when it comes to food and nutrition I think our ancestors got along better without nutritionists and doctors than we do with them. And the cider somewhat typifies that. You can make basic cider two ways, put it in a warm container in the corner and wait a while, or sterilize it, pamper it, chemical it, boil it and pump it up with artificial carbonation. That strikes me as too elaborate. I am not a Luddite, if I were I would be using a quill on parchment not a blog. But less is more, simpler is usually better. When the fall apples used to come in, that is ripen, the natural course for them was to ferment. No I am not alluding to a grand scheme of things or the Doctrine of Signatures. But what I am saying is I think nature got along fairly well without human sophistication. Cider, like wine, can be an elaborate affair, but it is not necessary. My simple cider is unadorned. It’s not complex. It’s natural and good. I find that not only appealing but comforting and delicious.

GREEN DEANE’S VIDEOS ON YOU TUBE

Wed, 20 May 2020 10:10:51 -0400

YOU CAN LEARN TO FORAGE FOR WILD EDIBLES

Sun, 19 May 2019 00:00:00 -0400

There is such a thing as a free lunch, or almost free: The edible wild plants around you.

With a little specialized knowledge and a “guidance” system you can learn to spot edible plants where you live, even in a city. You can do it on your own but it’s better to learn from someone showing you the way. I’m confident you can do it. You only need to learn about a few plants, not every plant you see. And I’ll also tell you where you can learn from a teacher, usually for free.

So let’s get started. You need to know something about foraging, and something about wild plants. Plants are really easy to tell apart. In this blog you'll read about how to think like a forager. Remember, you’re not trying to learn all of botany or name every plant you see, just the tasty edibles in your area. There are over 120,000 edible plants world wide. About one thousandth of those end up in markets. Of those, about 30 of those are used the most. You’ll be looking for a couple of dozen of edible in your area that are not in local markets, and they are easy to learn.

Let’s start with the main rule: Never, ever eat a wild plant without checking with a local expert. Where do you find a local expert, and is there a cost? You can locate a local expert through your local Native Plant Society on line or in the phone book. There are chapters in most major cities. You’ll find them throughout the United States and Canada. Plant people are always happy to share knowledge and its usually free. They’re passionate about plants, particularly native local ones. You can go on “field trips” and learn from someone who knows what they are talking about. It’s hard to build confidence unless you are studying with someone who is willing to eat the plant in front of you. It is not impossible to learn foraging from books and websites, but it is more difficult and more dangerous. If there isn’t a Native Plant Society near you ask your local librarian: They usually know the main plant person in your area.

The second rule is even after you have the right wild plant — the expert agrees —and it is edible and you have "itemized" it, only try a little. You may like it but it may not like you. Read my blog on Gallberry and Ilex Vomitoria. Yeah. vomitoria... means what you think it means. Most edible wild plants never made it into the mainstream vegetable market in the United States for a reason (though many of them may be common fare in other countries, purslane is a prime example.) You don’t know if you’ll have a reaction to a particular plant. I am definitely not a person who has allergies, but there are one or two wild plants that just don’t agree with me even though I like them. So, take it easy first.

In fact, it is good advice to never eat a wild plant in the first week you find it. Even among experienced forages there is a strong temptation to make the plant fit the description. I had a friend do that with illness consequences. It’s best to separate the identification and the consumption by a good amount of time. And of course, try only a little the first few times. And learn from an expert.

As for a system....

Everytime you or anyone is looking at a plant that might be edible, you need to "itemize" it, put it through four major steps (even the experienced should do it.) I use the word I.T.E.M. to remember what needs to be check out. It’s handy reference and is used in profiling most of the plants on this site.

So, let’s look at the word I.T.E.M.

First, it means (I)dentify the plant beyond doubt. Next, make sure it is growing or fruiting or otherwise available at the right (T)ime of year. Third is checking out the (E)nvironment. This involves two things. One is making sure it is growing in the right place. The other is making sure the plant is getting clean water and is not in polluted soil. And then, what is the proper (M)ethod of preparation. I’m sure you can do that. I.T.E.M. You can rearrange the letters to spell T.I.M.E. if you like as long as you always remember to apply the four steps.

You'll learn more about I.T.E.M in a moment, but think of it as four obstacles you must eliminate. And you can't eat a plant until you have gotten rid of those four obstacles. If at any time one or more of them are in the way, that’s a warning sign. If you can’t resolve even one of the warning signs the plant is not eaten. A warning sign does not automatically mean the plant is unedible. But, it does mean you have to do more investigating and get rid of that obstacle before you can consider the plant consumable.

First is “I” identification.

You absolutely must identify the plant correctly, and that involves more than just comparing pictures. This site is NOT to be used for identification. This is site a guide to familiarize you with a particular plant. Identification is a botanical speciality and requires more specific information than appears in these pages. It is learning the physical characteristics of that plant. The best and quickest way is with a local expert and a good identification book used in tandem. There are several reasons for this.

Pictures often don’t tell the entire story, one reason why illustrations of key points are still used. Also, in some areas of the country a plant will look exactly like the picture or illustration in the guide book but in other areas it will not but some other plant might — a non-edible. It is one thing to know a plant in your area is edible. What’s more important is to know what it usually looks like in your area and to identify it absolutely.

I forage in Florida, Maine, and Greece, which are all very different climates. In temperate Maine, the plants are usually identification book perfect. Foraging where there is an actual winter is very easy because the plants consistently look the way they are suppose to look. The closer you get to the equator the more difficult it becomes. In Florida plants are often very different because the extreme environmental changes can make plants look far removed from their published examples. Periods of excess water and periods of excess heat change their shape and often where they grow. There can be a lot of subspecies. And in Greece the plants are just different altogether. They look familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

Often your local plant can be a bad brother of the one in the guide book, or a close cousin, so it may look only a little different or have different characteristics, such as not being edible. Each plant is a little chemical factory, and one tiny change can make a big difference in the chemicals it makes and effect its edibility. Getting the identification right is crucial. I had a friend, who did not study with me, who call one day about a plant he had been eating — identified via a picture. He wanted to know about its berries. The plant he named didn't have berries, and I knew immediately what he had done and which plants he had mixed up. He had misidentified a plant and was eating one that had some toxicity because he was not preparing it the right way. He had been wondering why his family had been experiencing bad headaches after eating the plant.

There is actually a little more to that incident. The plant he misidentified is one that experts are split on, some report it is edible if prepared correctly others saying it is not edible at all. On the other hand, I now know that plant can be prepared incorrectly, eaten and survived with just a headache. That suggests with proper preparation it is edible.

Identification is important when you know what you’re doing, and even more important when you don’t. That said, don’t be intimidated by the idea of identifying plants. Humans were passing along the knowledge of edible plants long before writing or botany were invented. You’ll come to recognize plants and trust your judgment.

Regardless of how you know a plant is edible you must know it with errorless certainty. That means you have found it many times, prepared it many times, eaten it many times and every time you see it anew you make sure it is the right plant. It is one thing to be wrong and endure all that entails by yourself, it is another to be wrong and have people get sick over it. It is wise alway to cross reference what you read. There is a plant in central Florida which only takes one pea-size seed to kill you, though it will take several painful days to do so and there is no antidote. Two reports, however, say that it is edible after cooking. That brings me to the advice of a fellow you will read about in these pages. His was a forager named Dick Deuerling. When told a plant he thought was not edible was edible he would say this: “Invite me over, let me watch you harvest it, let me watch you prepare it, let me watch you cook it and let me watch you eat it. I’ll come back the next day and if you’re still alive I might try it.” My point is you can’t be wrong, so work hard at making it right.

Next in the word in I.T.E.M is “T” time of year.

If your plant is supposed to be flowering in September and you see it flowering in June, you might have the wrong plant, and a good look alike. That of course depends upon where you live. Some plants that bloom or fruit once a year in a northern climate may do so twice in a warmer climate. As an example, my pyracantha fruits twice. Read the blog on Firethorn Jelly. If a plant is not doing what it is supposed to be doing at the right time of year, you need to answer why, which is another reasons to study with a local expert. And let me add that studying is fun. You usually just join in with a group of plant people as they visit a field or forest. Sometimes those field trips are only a few hundred feel long because there’s a world of plants to look at and the experts are more than happy to share what they know with you. They are pleasant people. The point is, if you ask around you will find someone who knows about wild edibles in your area who is willing to share. I’ve even been the botany lesson of the month for several home schoolers. With the help of local experts you can learn the local plants and how they (usually) differ from the text books.

The next step in the general approach has two parts: “E” Environment. The first part is to make sure the plant is growing in the right environment. If the plant likes its feet wet and it is growing in a sand trap you might have the wrong plant. Some plants can tolerate extreme changes in their environment but usually they have a significant preference. Another possible answer is the sand trap may flood often enough to have a bog plant growing there. Or, it might be an overwatered lawn. Here in Florida we have seasonal lakes with cactus. When the plant is in the wrong environment, you have to answer why. It could be you have the wrong plant, or a varying environmental condition. Again, learning from a local expert will get you that specialized knowledge because they have seen it before.

The second part of the environment is checking the area for pollution of the water, soil or air. You don't want to eat an aquatic plant in a pond that has parking lot run off — a very common issue here in Florida. You don’t want a plant that is growing in the cracked tar of a parking lot. Plants growing down hill from a major highway are suspect, or on a golf course where pesticides are used, or your neighbor’s lawn for that matter or an inner city park. It’s a matter of common sense, but in reality deciding whether a plant is in good soil and getting clean water it is the greatest challenge facing a forager especially in an urban area. Compared to that, identifying plants is relatively easy. (Incidentally, the most common accidental plant poisoning is kids eating landscape plants in your yard, next is eating landscape plants in your neighbor’s yard.)

The next word in the I.T.E.M. system is “M” Method of preparation. Many wild edible require particular methods of preparation to make them edible. Sometimes those methods kept that plant from entering the mainstream food supply. Pokeweed is a good example. It must be boiled at least twice, if not three times. If you boil it once like many other greens you might get ill from it. Despite several efforts in the United States to get that plant into the food supply the need to boil pokeweed more than once kept it out. Another plant may need to be soaked in salty water, or peeled. Some tubers have to be cooked twice. Method of preparation is important. Know it.

I.T.E.M. is the word to always keep in mind whenever you are foraging. You should use it always no matter how much you know about edible wild plants. It's a system to keep you healthy and happy as a forager. There six other little guidelines to help you later on but I’ll share them with you now and remind you later.

The first one is if it looks like a mint and smells like a mint it is a mint and is edible. But, it must do both. If it looks like a mint but does not smell like a mint, don't eat it. If it smells like a mint but does not look like one, don't eat it. What does a mint look like? You’ll learn that later.

This same rule applies to garlic and onions. If it looks like a garlic and smells like a garlic it is a garlic. If it looks like and onion and smells like an onion it is an onion. But both elements must be present. Here in Florida we have a plant which before blossoming looks just like a garlic, even has a bulb, but NO garlic odor. It can make you very sick if not kill you.

The fourth guideline you'll learn in this blog is that almost all plants with white sap are NOT edible. There are some exceptions and you will learn those along the way. White sap is a huge warning sign a plant is not edible. As for white berries, 99.9999 percent of those are indeed toxic. Don't eat them. I know of one exception and it is geographically very isolated.

The fifth rule is real short: All mustards are edible. Some taste better than others, or are more digestible than others, but all mustards are edible.

The sixth one is that all mallows are edible in some way except cotton (excluding refined cottonseed oil.) It will vary which part of the mallow is edible, but other than cotton, mallows are edible in some way.

In the various blogs you will learn about specific plants. The blogs on this site are not about plant identification but about the plant, its history, and uses. For exact identification you need a manual. The green and blue boxes on this site about plants are just general descriptions. You should have more exacting ones if you indeed intend to eat or use wild plants. Read the stories behind the edible plants on this site. You probably have the plants, or a local version near you including cactus. If you have any questions, email me.

You can easily and safely learn to forage, and there is a world of plants to explore and enjoy. Reading blogs like this, and identification books, and visiting other sites, is a way to get started. But the greatest peace of mind and the quickest success is to study with an expert. It is one thing to read a plant is edible. It is another to see the person in front of you identify it AND eat it. Watching someone put something in their mouth where their words were builds trust, trust and knowledge builds your personal confidence. It allows you to say with certainty that you know this plant IS edible and you don’t know if that one is. When foraging with others people will ask about this or that plant and if you don’t know, and most plants you won’t know, tell them so. If you’re honest with yourself regarding what you know and don’t know, you’ll be honest with them and mistakes can be avoided.

Lastly, on nearly every page you will find Green Deane’s “itemized” Plant Profile, as below. It is a general guide, especially regarding identification. For certain identification refer to publication that specialize in identification. There will also occasionally be a herb blurb, about reported herbal uses of the plant.