Search: watercress

As the European Plantago major invaded North American Plantago virginica is invading Asia.

Plantago lanceolata

While Plantagos are clearly seasonal in colder climates our native North American plantain, Plantago virginica, surprisingly has seasonal preferences here in Florida. We are about mid-season for the species that only vaguely resembles its more famous European relative, Plantago major. I have not seen any natives this season reach seeding stage but they will in a few weeks.  The majors are seeding or already have. Plantago virginica is now small to mid-side, or raw to pot-herb size if one thinks food. Older they are like other Plantagos, the more bitter and astringent they become. We have eight species of Plantagos locally if one counts native and non-natives together. A particulary distinctive one is the Strap or English Plantain, Plantago lanceolata. Though P. virginica has a hairy texture raw it yields readily when cooked and is a soft pleasant green. To read more about the Plantagos go here.

Some more changes are in the works for the newsletter. Recently reworked was the subscription policy. The next major step is below, adding articles from writers in other areas of the country and the world covering their edible wild plants. While that means less writing and more editing for me I think the change will help a greater readership of foragers. In keeping with that change the following article was written by Heather Pier who lives in California but also has foraging knowledge about such areas as Montana… not a small place. Next week will be the first part of an article by Dewayne Allday on getting up the courage to forage particularly for mushrooms.

Chickweed, by Heather Pier

Heather Pier

After spending so many years living in Montana, becoming a semi-exile in California has been painful in many ways.  The traffic, the crime, the air quality, combined with the lack of a white Christmas, has me thinking that shoveling a bit of snow wasn’t so bad.  ??OK, let’s not take this bit of homesickness too far.

One of the things that I have become quite fond of in California is the opportunity to gather spring greens almost year round here. While many in my family who are still stuck in the snowy mountains of Montana are eating canned vegetables, I’m out picking wild green things.  Granted, home-canned veggies are no comparison to those cans you get at the grocery store … but still, they’re just not fresh.  They don’t have the same texture, the same smell and certainly not the same taste.

Chickweed’s blossoms have five petals but they look like ten. Photo By Heather Pier

Today, I had a bit of cabin fever and was rattling about in the woods that are just outside my door.  I came across a beautiful chickweed bed (Stellaria media), soft and bright green, inviting me to sit for a while. It’s not blooming quite yet, but the growth was luxuriant and perfect for greens. ?It also makes a lovely spring tonic, a fabulous treatment for conjunctivitis (although I still prefer chamomile) and has a number of anti-inflammatory properties. Some folks say it makes a good bug repellent, but I’ve not had much success with that.  Oh, and my chickens love it.  ??I am not partial to any sort of ‘boiled green’.  I think it’s a texture thing.  So I’ll almost always use greens raw.  Another option for me is to disguise cooked greens in something else,  to hide the soft texture.

Chickweed has a line of hair on the stem that switches sides at nodes. Photo by Heather Pier

Chickweed is a powerhouse of vitamins but the levels (and flavor) drop drastically when dried.  Chickweed is one of those herbs to use and enjoy fresh.?? I also use chickweed in several salves.  Two of the compounds found in it are Genistein and Gamma-linolenic-acid.  Genistein works as an antioxident to help counteract the effects of free radicals in tissues. It also protects against pro-inflammatory factor-induced vascular endothelial barrier dysfunction and inhibits leukocyte-endothelium interaction, thereby modulating vascular inflammation.  GLA is also has anti-inflammatory properties lacking some of the common side of other anti-inflammatories.  Are your eyes glazed over yet?  Just remember that it’s a cooling, soothing herb, good for sore muscles and itchy skin.? Many of my friends are hesitant to try wild foods.  The trick to start using chickweed is to substitute the leaves into dishes that call for domestic greens, such as spinach.  After you get a feel for the flavor and how it behaves in recipes, you can branch out. The recipes that I’ve included here usually surprise wild food virgins.

??Chickweed Pesto??

In a blender or food processor, blend to a smooth paste: 2 cloves of garlic, 1/2 cup of pine nuts, walnuts  or whatever nut you like, 2 packed cups fresh chickweed, 1 cup basil (optional) 1/2 cup parsley, 1/2 cup olive oil, 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese and salt to taste. Serve over hot pasta or your favorite startchy ‘stuff.’

Chickweed Dip

1 large clove garlic, ?1/2 cup chopped green onions, ?1 cup blanched chickweed, ?1 cup sour cream, ?1/2 mayonnaise, ?1/2 teaspoon dried thyme leaves,  ?1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce , ?1 dash hot pepper sauce or more to taste,  ?salt and pepper to taste, ?paprika. ??Directions: ??Finely mince the garlic and scallions. Combine the remaining ingredients, except the paprika.  (A food processor is great for this.)  Refrigerate for 12 hours to let flavors blend.   Before sprinkle with paprika. Serve with bread, crackers or chips. Easy-peasey.

The red or blue arils are edible but the green seeds (here with a white bloom) are not edible.

Botany Builder #33: This issue’s word is “aril” (less often arillus) which is an appendage to a seed, often pulpy, brightly colored, and edible. Stickly speaking there are three kinds of arils (said AIR-rils or AIR-ree-uls.) One is an outgrowth of the seed, another the fruit wall. A third is from the pedicel, which is the stem attached to the seed. The edible aril of the Podocarpus macrophyllus is a pedicel aril.  Colorful arils attact wildlife which then disperse the seeds. It’s their reward for spreading the seeds around.

Mace and Nutmeg come from the same tree.

Perhaps the most commonly used aril is mace, which is made from the nutmeg aril. The word itself is from the Dead Latin. Armilla or armillatus means an ornamental bracelet. It lends itself to a local mushroom called Armillaria tabescens, or Ringless Honey Mushroom, which doesn’t look anything like a bracelet at all. But it does grow in a tight cluster which could be thought of as ornate. The most commonly eaten aril is from the cashew which can also be made into a juice. It does not travel well so is rarely seen outside of where it grows. Also note the cashew’s shell is toxic and related to poison ivy.

Some edibles fight back.

How safe is foraging? Excluding mushroom hunters, plant foragers have a good track record of staying alive. Plant foragers have about one accidental death every 20 years, and usually that’s from eating some member of the poison hemlock crowd.  That should be a word to the wise. Locally, the family representataive is the water hemlock and it grows exactly where watercress grows. When I collect watercress I look at every piece before I take it or cook it, every single piece.  Actually, there are several deadly local plants: Water hemlock, the Yew, Oleander, Castor Beans, and the Rosary Pea, the most toxic seed on earth. I have been asked to do a video on toxic plants but I am afraid some less-than-attentive person will not understand what the video is about and eat the wrong plant.

Most plant poisonings involve toddlers eating from the landscaping around their home, with the next highest incidence is toddlers eating the landscaping from their neighbor’s yard. Why we fill our yards with toxic plants rather than edible landscaping is beyond me. Excluding suicides, adult poisonings are extremely rare. So, don’t be afraid of foraging. Just be careful. Study. Take lessons. Go with a friend.  ITEMize! Identification, Time of Year, Environment, Method of Preparation.

Joanna Helms

A reminder the Florida Herbal Conference 2014 will be in Deland next month. Joanna Helms, RH (AHG), a sixth generation Floridian, will be among the teachers. She has been in clinical herbal practice for 16 years and is the founder of Mama Jo’s Sunshine Herbals in Indian Harbour Beach, Florida. It’s a family run herbal store. And for the third year in a row I will be leading weed walks at the herbal conference, a challenge in winter on dry ground. The walks are usually first thing in the morning when the air is cool, camp fires warm, and the herbal tea hot. Although it is the Florida Herbal Conference it draws teachers and students from all over North America.

Goat Foraging in Crete

To Find a Foraging Instructor near you all you have to do is look on my foraging instructor page. Over 100 teachers are listed there. I think it is the most comprehensive list in the world and is updated regularly. Twice a year I also write to everyone on the list asking if there are any updates. It’s one of my January chores. If there isn’t a foraging teacher near you write to the ones nearest you and ask them if they know of any teachers near you.

That’s me sitting amongst poppies near the Acropolis in Athens.

Though your foraging may drop off during the winter it’s a great time to study wild edibles with my nine DVD set. Each  DVDs 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.

Upcoming classes:

Saturday, January 11th, Red Bug Slough Preserve, 5200 Beneva Road, Sarasota, FL, 34233, 9 a.m.

Sunday, January 12th, Bayshore Live Oak Park, 23000 Bayshore Rd., Port Charlotte, FL 33980, 9 a.m.

Saturday, January 18th, Mead Garden: 1500 S. Denning Dr., Winter Park, FL 32789, 9 a.m.

Sunday, January 19th, Florida State College,  south campus, 11901 Beach Blvd.,  Jacksonville, FL, 32246, 9 a.m..

Saturday, January 25th, Boulware Springs Park, 3420 SE 15th St. Gainesville, FL 32641, 9 a.m.

Sunday, January 26th, Jervey Gantt Recreation Complex, 2390 SE 36th Ave., Ocala, FL, 34471, 9 a.m.

A frozen cranberry, blueberry’s wet cousin, is still tart and tasty.

The thermometer was near zero one day when I was on ice skates collecting frozen cranberries.

Bonfires and hot beverage make skating fun

The cranberries were conveniently above the ice just waiting to be harvested. I was on the north end of “Gowen’s Pond” in Pownal, Maine. It was at that end where water seeped into the pond to make the couple of acres we skated on every winter. It was also there where I once went skating at 52 below zero… the things you do when you’re a kid and there’s a huge bonfire going. I got chilblained hands and feet that night. More than forty years later air conditioning still makes my hands and feet itch.  (Yes, I now live in Florida and no, I do not have air conditioning.)

The water on that end of the pond wasn’t deep but it was moving so the ice could be shallow. Locals told a story about the farm next door that lost a cow through that ice one winter. I never did ask why the cow was out on the ice to start with. Maybe hungry and looking for cranberries.

Many turtles stay active under the ice.

The pond had one little island. Very little. One person couldn’t stand on it… more like a stump. But it was always above the ice and had a bush on it. As I skated past it I saw a movement. It was a turtle swimming under the ice eating a little greenery from around the island. ‘Cranberries and turtle,’ I thought. Actually that turtle was spared but it did make me realize early on that one can forage in winter if you know where to look.

Of course, the real issue is what kind of winter? That can range from deep snow and rock-hard frozen ground to only occasional cool days. Finding wild food where there is no snow and little or no freezing is not difficult. It’s finding food in gawd-awful winters that is a challenge.

I am fond of saying food is where the water is. Whether you are referring to your yard, your county, state, region or country, the farther away from water you are the farther away from food you are. While that is true all year perhaps it is most critical in winter. Plants and creatures can be found near water in the winter.

Ice huts are portable man caves.

Everyone is familiar with or knows about ice fishing. In some northern areas it is not only a passion but a rite of passage. It can certainly put food on the table (as can hunting and trapping.)  But not everyone has an ice hut or other equipment to harvest food that can move. In that case look for shallow, open streams or with ice than can be easily broken They have fresh water clams in the shallows. They don’t move too fast. As a young man I fished the Royal River in southern Maine and was always bringing home the clams I found. They are a bit tougher than those from the bay and occasionally one would yield a black pearl. I usually had a well-deserving lass to give it to.

Freshwater clams are tougher than saltwater clams

Freshwater clams have to be handle carefully and cooked thoroughly but they are a good basis for a winter chowder. (The clams pick up parasites from land animal droppings requiring careful handling and cooking. Some clams are also federally protected so I’m sure you’ll check with local laws first.) Depending upon your stream or shallow pond you can also find crayfish and frogs (and turtles.) I should add that one of the advantage of aquatic turtles is that they do not eat toxic mushrooms. There is one instance where a person was sickened from eating a land turtle that had eaten mushrooms not toxic to it but toxic to humans.

Cattail shoots are edible raw or cooked.

Open streams  or those with little ice can also produce cattail shoots and roots in winter. The shoots look like large dog’s teeth coming off the main root (actually horizontal rhizomes.) You can snap them off  — and the end shoot — eating them raw or toss them into the clam chowder. The roots are also full of starch. Getting it out is labor intensive and I think overrated as a flour. However a more calorie positive way is just toss the roots on a fire. That burns off the covering and the muck they’re usually in. That also cooks the starch in the fibrous middle. Then you open up the root and pull the fibers through your teeth to get the cooked starch off. It tastes like chestnuts, and there are no pots to clean.

Groundnuts grow in a string in damp areas.

Also available stream side in winter are duck potatoes and groundnuts, the latter a good source of starch and protein. Duck potatoes grow deeper than groundnuts so they probably won’t be in any frozen banks but you do have to fish through cold water. Groundnuts are closer to the surface but still should be below the frost line or protected by water.  That’s a toss up. The good thing about groundnuts is they are unmistakable. Nothing else looks like them. While stream side also look for watercress, a plant that likes cold water. It’s a peppery member of the mustard family. Often found in winter streams, it can be a flavoring and/or a green to put into that clam chowder.

Mussels were prime kid food when foraging 50 years ago.

If you live near the ocean there’s a lot of food available in winter. The natives used to say that when the tide was out dinner was on. Not only are there a wide variety of creatures to be had but sea weed as well. Most seaweed in northern climates is edible except for one variety in the pacific northwest that has sulfuric acid. If you mistakenly bite into Desmarestia ligulata you will know it. The problem with seaweed is most of it is not tasty but semi-drying and frying can help. If the weather is not too cold edibles can also be found hiding in the seaweed or on the rocks, such as crabs. One of the more odd things is that 50 years ago mussel at low tide were ignored except by us hungry latchkey kids. Now they are gourmet fare.

Chickweed thrives in cold weather.

Depending on how cold and how much snow there are quite a few other edibles possible in winter.  Sorrel can often last through a mild winter. Some radishes and wild mustards can take quite a freeze and stay alive and green as can any cabbage left over in your garden. Oyster mushrooms can be found anytime of the year even after warm weather has past. They don’t take freezing, however. Dandelions can survive the winter in snow but they undergo some chemical changes that make them more a famine food than a tasty find. Hardy little chickweed can germinate under snow so when the spring melt comes it is among the first green plants. Wild garlic and garlic mustard can can also be found in winter especially on south facing hills with little or no snow (so can some of the little mustards.)  If there been no snow plantagos (plantains) can also be found in winter along with clover.  But you have to be careful with clover. It can be a blood thinner. In some areas  Stork’s Bill, (Alfilaria) is edible in winter. Just as a matter of routine south facing hills are always worth investigating for edibles particularly in the winter. Don’t forget to (carefully) roll over logs to find wintering lizards and or snakes. Colorful salamanders usually are NOT on the menu.

Cheery red and green makes Wintergreen easy to spot.

Just as I collected frozen cranberries don’t forget to look for rose hips, dried grapes and frozen wild apples (which are often better after freezing and cooking.) Hawthorn berries can persist into the winter as can persimmons,  mountain ash, wild plums (sloes) various edible Viburnum berries and Rumex seeds still on the stalk.  Partridgeberries are a common winter find as is wintergreen, which has edible berries and leaves for tea.  Where I grew up I always found wintergreen with berries in the spring snow. It was years before I learned the berries over wintered. The little plant is also medicinal. Most persistent grass seeds are also edible. There are no toxic native North American grasses.

Birches offer several edibles.

Finding Burdock in Winter is Easy

There are more winter edibles but much depends upon the conditions. Acorns can be food but if they are covered with snow that doesn’t help much, and they will be frozen, and they need to be shelled, and they need to be leached and… well, you get the idea: Labor intensive in the best of times. The long skinny  Burdock Root is edible but if the ground is frozen it can be a challenge to dig up as are Jerusalem Artichokes. Thistles, the kind that produces a large basal rosette with thorns that prick you like needles, also have an edible root raw or cooked. But the issue is whether the edible is buried in snow, and or is the ground granite hard?

In northern climates juniper berries can be used for flavoring… but not in the clam chowder. Juniper berries are used for bigger, gamey game… Elk and Moose come to mind…

Collection of all of Green Deane’s videos on one USB stick!

Whether you lack a stable internet connection or you just want Green Deane on USB, this will be a valuable resource to add to your foraging collection. Every video that Green Deane has created for Eat The Weeds is included in this set!

Over the years, Deane has created 171 short videos, describing natural plants and other foliage around the area to help you identify those that are edible and what to do with it.

Order Now

Would you like to know what topics are covered in the USB set? Keep reading …

Volume 11                                                                                                        Volume 12

Order Now

 

Classic simple Greek Meal of “horta”

Dear Reader: I started this list years ago and have never had the time to finish it, that is, make separate entries with photos. But it has good information so I am going to post the work thus far:

Below is a complete ethnobotanical survey of wild plants people eat on Cyprus, or at least the Greek portion of the island. Many of these are also found in other countries around the world.

Greeks have a long history of foraging. A plate of cooked greens dressed with olive oil and lemon and accompanied with heavy bread is considered a proper meal. Another problem is an extreme proliferation of common names. Not only can different villages have different names for the same plant but different families within a village can have different names for the same plant, and have been using those different names for generations. Put three Greeks in a room and you have seven opinions. Perhaps no where was the binomial naming system more needed for plants than among those who speak Greek. I have extracted a list of the edibles mentioned in the study which follows.

Allium neapolitanum, Ammi majus, Apium nodiflorum, Asparagus acutifolius, Asparagus stipularis, Capparis spinosa, Capsella bursa-pastoris, Carduus argentatus ssp. acicularis, Carlina involucrata ssp. cyprica, Centaurea calcitrapa ssp. angusticeps, Centaurea hyalolepis, Ceratonia siliqua, Cichorium intybus, Crataegus azarolus, Crataegus monogyna, Crithmum maritimum, Cynara cardunculus, Cynara cornigera, Cynara scolymus, Echinops spinosissimus, Eruca sativa, Eryngium creticum, Eryngium glomeratum, Ficus carica, Foeniculum vulgare, Gundelia turnefortii, Laurus nobilis, Limonium sinuatum, Malva parviflora, Mentha pulegium, Mentha spicata, Muscari comosum, Myrtus communis, Nasturtium officinale, Notobasis syriaca, Onopordum bracteatum, Onopordum cyprium, Origanum dubium, Origanum majorana var. tenuifolium, Portulaca oleracea, Pistacia lentiscus, Pyrus syriaca, Rosmarinus officinalis, Scolymus hispanicus, Scolymus maculatus,  Silene vulgaris, Silybum marianum, Sinapis alba, Sinapis arvensis, Sonchus oleraceus, Taraxacum cyprium, Taraxacum hellenicum, Thymus capitatus,  Ziziphus lotus

Allium neapolitanum

Allium neapolitanum is also called the Naples Garlic, Daffodil Garlic, False Garlic, Flowering Onion, Naples Onion, Guernsey Star-of-Bethlehem, Neapolitan Garlic, Star, White Garlic, and the Wood Garlic. Native to the area it is considered an invasive species in California, Texas, Louisiana and Florida. It usually grows one to 1.5 feet high and has a large head of flowers.

Ammi majus

Ammi majus, has edible leaves and is used in salads. It is native to the Nile River basin and is also called Bishop’s Flower, Bishop’s Weed, False Bishop’s wWed, Bullwort, Greater Ammi, Lady’s Lace, Queen Anne’s Lace (dont’ donfuse with a Daucus carota) and Laceflower.

Apium nodiflorum

Apium nodiflorum, also called Helosciadium nodiflorum and Fool’s-water-cress is a flowering plant found in ditches or streams in western Europe. It’s a low-growing perennial with five-petaled blossoms and pinnate leaves that some think resembles watercress. It is not toxic but is easily confused with the Lesser Water Parsnip, Berula eracta, which is toxic.

Asparagus acutifolius

  Asparagus acutifolius and Asparagus stipularis, young leaves and shoots are cut, fried then mixed with eggs in an omelette.  The stems have much-branched feathery foliage which are actually needle-like modified stems. Flowers are bell-shaped in small clusters, greenish-white to yellowish, flowering in August through September, often after storms. It’s green berries are not edible.

Capparis spinosa

Capparis spinosa is quite familiar as its punget fruit are capers. Both the blossom  and the berry is used, the latter often pickled. Over the last 40 years the caper bush has been planted in other areas of Europe to increase commercial productions. The caper bush is a rupicolous species. Got to admit, I had to look that one up. It means growing on rocks quite understandable as many areas of the Mediterranean area are nothing but rock.

Capsella-bursa pastoris

Capsella bursa-pastoris grows not only on Cyprus but most of the rest of the world as well. Better know as Shepher’s Purse because of the seed shape it can be found in such places as Ocala, Florida where it is more common than its close cousin, Poor Man’s Pepper Grass. The entire plant is edible, the seeds as a pepper substitute, the leaves as a green, even the root has a ginger-like pepper flavor. Usually a cool-weather annual, it can grow nearly year round in some areas. Locally it shows up about Christmas and is gone by St. Patrick’s Day.

Carduus argentatus

 Carduus argentatus ssp. acicularis, or the Silver Thistle has laternating leaves and a basil roset with toothed or serrated leave and spines. Flowers are pink in April through May in distrubed habitats. It is found i Mediterranean woodlands, shrublamds, semi-steppe shrublands, desert and mountains. It is one of the flowers tentatively identified on the Shroud of Turin.

An Ethnobotanical Survey of Wild Edible Plants of
Paphos and Larnaca countrside of Cyprus

 Athena Della, Demetra Paraskeva-Hadjichambi and Andreas Ch Hadjichambis

Corresponding author: Demetra Paraskeva-Hadjichambi d.chadjihambi@cytanet.com.cy

Agricultural Research Institute, P.O. Box 22016, 1516 Nicosia, Cyprus

Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 2006, 2:34 doi:10.1186/1746-4269-2-34

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.ethnobiomed.com/content/2/1/34

Published: 4 September 2006

Abstract

An ethnobotanical survey of wild edible plants of Cyprus was carried out in two sites. Paphos vine zone and Larnaca mixed farming zone. These are among the areas in Cyprus whose inhabitants subsisted primarily on pastoralism and agriculture and therefore still preserve the traditional knowledge on wild edible plants.

The information was collected for three-year period, in the framework of the EU-funded RUBIA Project. Four hundred and thirteen interviews have been administered to 89 informants of various ages and background categories in 29 villages of Paphos site, and 8 in Larnaca site. A total of 78 species were recorded. Ethnographic data related to vernacular names, traditional tools and recipes have also been recorded. A comparison of the data collected from the two sites is undertaken. During this ethnobotanical research it was verified that wild edibles play an important role in Cyprus in rural people, however, it was realized that the transmission of folk uses of plants decreased in the last generations. The research of ethnobotany should be extended to other areas of Cyprus in order not only to preserve the traditional knowledge related to plants but to make it available to future generations as well.

Background

Even though covering only 9251 square kilometres, Cyprus is a country diverse in geography, climate, flora and fauna and rich in history and culture. Cyprus is the third largest island in the Mediterranean with a climate of wet, changeable winter and hot dry summers, separated by short spring and autumn seasons of rapidly changing weather. The vegetation of Cyprus is formed by typical Mediterranean types: the coniferous forest, the maquis, the garigue and the batha vegetation, whilst more localized communities occur around salt marshes, sand dunes, stone walls and mountain streams [1–4].

In Cyprus, about 2000 taxa were recorded as native or naturalized. From the native taxa, 143 were recorded as endemics [5–8]. References to the Cyprus flora and in particular to plants of economic importance go back as far as Homer. Cyprus’ plants are mentioned in the works of ancient authors such as Theophrast, Dioscourides and Pliny. Among Cyprus natural vegetation, a number of aromatic, medicinal and other useful plants are being exploited in their wild form [9].

The Cyprus diverse topography has permitted the survival of traditional knowledge related to vegetable resources used by locals as food. Even though, the consumption of plants gathered from the wild represented an important part of human nutrition in Cyprus, however, there are few ethnobotanical studies focused on wild edibles [10–13].

The present research was performed in the framework of the EU-funded RUBIA Ethnobotanical Project (Contract Number ICA3–2002–10023, 2003–2006). The perspectives of this research project were to record ethnobotanical knowledge related to traditional plant uses of wild and neglected cultivated plants for food, medicine, textiles, dyeing, handicrafts, and basketry, as well as to identify and evaluate the socio-economic and anthropological context in which these plants have been gathered and processed.

As a part of this broad study, wild food plants have been recorded in Cyprus and therefore the aim of this paper, is to present and analyze the wild food data gathered in the study areas of Cyprus during the years 2003–2005.

Methodology

Location and study area

Within Cyprus, two areas of study have been selected for this research project, according to the Agro-economic zones of Cyprus [14]. The decision was made in order to fulfil the criteria set by the EU-RUBIA Consortium for rural areas administratively, geographically and ecologically homogeneous with similar socio-economic context (Figure 1).

In both sites man transformed the natural landscape, in order to create opportunities for agriculture and stock raising. The floral diversity of the territories (especially in Paphos area) and the different ways in which their inhabitants have exploited the natural resources available have engendered a rich popular knowledge of the use of plants. Not ethnobotanical studies have been carried out in these regions until now.

Site one belongs to the 4^th phytogeographical zone of Cyprus, which has mostly cultivated or heavily grazed land in the North and numerous barren, eroded chalk or limestone hills in the South [3]. Is a part of Larnaca mixed farming zone and is an area of 155 km² consisting of 8 relatively big villages: Athienou, Avdhellero, Kellia, Livadhia, Petrophani, Pyla, Troulli, Voroklini, with in total 9545 inhabitants all of whom are autochthonous Greek-Cypriots, Greek speaking with Cypriot dialect. Cereals are the main crops planted, however the low irrigation of the area and the limited profitability of cereals compelled the farmers to concentrate mostly to livestock production.

Site two belongs to the 1^st phytogeographical zone of Cyprus, which is an area heterogeneous topographically, geologically and floristically, with much natural vegetation. It is mostly hilly, with deep narrow gorges, limestone or sandstone and with interesting areas of serpentine [3]. Site two is a part of the Paphos vine zone and is an area of 375 km² comprising 29 small villages: Axylou, Amargeti, Agios Demetrianos, Dhrinia, Dhrousia, Eledhio, Inia, Kallepia, Kannaviou, Kathikas, Kato Akourdhalia, Kelokedara, Pano Arodes, Panayia, Choulou, Kritou Marottou, Lemba, Letymbou, Melemiou, Miliou, Pano Akourdhalia, Phiti, Polemi, Psathi, Stroumbi, Theletra, Tsada, Yiolou, Pitagrou, with 9540 inhabitants all of whom are autochthonous Greek-Cypriots, Greek speaking with Cypriot dialect and Paphian idiom. Even though the region extends over a large area with many villages, there is a small number of inhabitants in each village and it is considered the less densely populated region of the country. The major crop planted is the grape vine followed by cereals [14]. Part of the western site of this territory has been suggested for inclusion in the Akamas Natura 2000 site.

These two sites are among the few areas in Cyprus whose inhabitants subsisted primarily on pastoralism and agriculture and therefore the older people of these areas still preserve the traditional knowledge on wild edible plants. The intensity of farming and the unavailability of off-farm job opportunities were closely related to the population engaged in agriculture. Today, most of the young people of both sites work in Paphos or Larnaca towns, leaving the agricultural and pastoral activities to be carried out by the middle-aged and older generations.

The interest of the present study was focused on wild food botanicals in the two sites. Attempts have been made to correlate and compare the plants recorded between the two sites as well as with other research work carried out in Cyprus and abroad.

A further aim of this research was to develop an ethnobotanical framework which could be the basis for further studies.

Methods

The present research was performed in the framework of the EU-funded RUBIA Ethnobotanical Project. The aim of this research project was the recording of ethnographical field data in order to develop a model for the re-evaluation of tools and technologies related to traditional uses of wild and neglected cultivated plants for food, medicine, textiles, dyeing, handicrafts, and basketry, as well as to identify and evaluate the socio-economic and anthropological context in which these plants have been gathered and processed. Eight study areas from the following countries were participated: Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Holland, Italy, Morocco and Spain.

The field methodological framework chosen for this research was that used in ethnobiology [15–17]. Field research was conducted by collecting ethnobotanical information during structured and semi-structured interviews with knowledgeable people native in each site territory. For each plant recorded one questionnaire was filled. Even though a structured questionnaire had to be filled direct questions were avoided. The basic information needed was taken during the conversation. Whenever possible the conversation was recorded on cassettes.

No special selection criteria were used in the choice of the informants because one of the aims of this work was to assess the breadth of popular heritage in the field of wild edible plants, knowledge which is widespread among locals. However, most of the interviewees were more than 60 years old, and belong mainly to families which have a strong connection with traditional agricultural activities.

Plant data and their related information were entered into a data base. The data acquired for each plant comprise the common local name, its uses, the part of the plant used and its preparation and administration processes. The way plants were collected, preserved, stored, prepared and used and the most relevant processes were photographed and video recorded.

Most of the mentioned plants were recognised by the villagers in-situ during short field walks and collected for scientific identification. Nomenclature followed mainly the Flora of Cyprus [3,4] and in some cases the Flora Europaea [18]. Herbarium specimens of most of the taxa cited were prepared and deposited in the National herbarium of Cyprus at the Agricultural Research Institute, Nicosia. Seed samples were also collected in the appropriate season for the most representative wild plants and deposited in the Cyprus National Genebank, at the Agricultural Research Institute.

Results/discussion

Four hundred and two interviews have been administered to 89 informants, of which 38 (43%) were women and 51 (57%) were men. Informants were between the ages of 48–82, with the average age of 66.

A total of 78 plants have been recorded. All these species are native and are gathered from the wild whilst 11 of them are cultivated as well (Ceratonia siliqua, Eruca sativa, Mentha spicata, Origanum dubium, Rosmarinus officinalis, Thymus capitatus, Laurus nobilis, Ficus carica, Myrtus communis, Portulaca oleracea, Crataegus azarolus). Comparing the plants recorded in the two sites it can be seen that 40 plants are common in both sites, 5 of the edible plants are used exclusively in Larnaca site and 33 plants are used exclusively in Paphos site. Within the two sites the dependency of rural people on agriculture was much greater in the Paphos vine zone than in Larnaca site. According to studies of 1983 [14] in Paphos site 71% of rural people were gainfully employed in agriculture and 29% in other occupation whilst in Larnaca site 43% of people employed in agriculture and 57% in other occupation. The closer relation of the indigenous people with their land probably resulted to the higher degree of usage of the natural plant resources in Paphos site. Additionally, many villages in Paphos site are near or within the Akamas Nature Reserve, a big area with many natural habitats and rich vegetation and therefore many of the wild edibles are gathered from the undisturbed shrublands of the area. Furthermore, the middle-aged generation of the Paphos vine zone, even though working in the town, they have relation with the countryside, still gaining profits from their grapes, and therefore still preserve some of the TK of their parents.

The survey of wild edible plants of Paphos and Larnaca countryside is the first study in Cyprus which has followed ethnobotanical methodology, recording not only a species list but ways of gathering, storage, preservation, preparation processes, common and traditional recipes and therefore the comparison of our data with previous studies is not possible. However, an attempt was made in order to compare only the species list of wild edibles recorded in our two study areas with the list of edible wild plants of the Cyprus Flora published in 2000 which enlisted 57 edible species from all around the island [13]. From the comparison was revealed that 47 plants were recorded in both species lists, 29 wild edibles were reported for the first time in our ethnobotanical study and 10 species were recorded only in Savvides’ list and not in ours.

All the plants recorded are presented in Table 1 with the indication of scientific name, vernacular name, family, plant part used, type of preparation, site recorded, number of records and herbarium specimen number.

Most used plants

The recorded plants belong to 31 different families. Asteraceae was with difference the most frequently encountered botanical family with 20 taxa, whilst Apiaceae and Brassicaceae follow with seven taxa, Lamiaceae with six and Boraginaceae is represented by four taxa. The other 26 families have less representation between one to three taxa each. Most of them are big families with many representatives in the Mediterranean region, some of which are very common plants. The data of this study confirm that people tend to use preferably the plants that are easily available to them excluding of course, those that are toxic or noxious. As was affirmed by other publications as well [19–22], the more common a plant (family or species) is in an area, the greater is the probability of its popular use. As for the most known and used species 13 of them were cited 10 times or more. The food utilization of Centaurea hyalolepis, has been reported by 18 informants, followed by Silene vulgaris (17 citations), Capparis spinosa (16 citations), Thymus capitatus (16 citations), Asparagus acutifolius (15 citations), Malva parviflora (14 citations), Scolymus hispanicus (13 citations), Eryngium creticum (12 citations), Foeniculum vulgare (11 citations), Onopordum cyprium, Carlina involucrata ssp. cyprica and Portulaca oleracea with 10 citations each. A high number of plants (49 out of 78) have been recorded by at least three independent informants, so that they follow the reliability criterion of Le Grand and Wondergem [23] and would be particularly interesting in view of further studies [22].

At this point it should be noted that 40 of the edible plants recorded are used exclusively for food. Some other plants have two or more uses and they appear in different categories as well. As can be seen in figure 2, 37 (30+4+3) plants have been recorded to be used for food as well as for medicine.

This overlap indicates the close relationship between health and food. A good example to this is Origanum dubium. The origan, locally called “rigani”, is one of the most commonly edible plants used and many traditional recipes were recorded for its use as a condiment such as in recipes of roasted meat, as a scent in kebab, and is added as a scent in a traditional recipe, called “tsamarella” which is made from salted goat meat. It is also considered one of the most commonly used medicinal with about six different recipes, against flu, cold, as antipyretic, anti-stress, for stomach-ache and good digestion. These plants (Origanum dubium, Thymus capitatus, Laurus nobilis, among others) are often used in folk medicine as digestive, so it may be that their presence in these often heavy dishes is not only a culinary but medicinal, to increase the digestibility of the cooked food [19]. Overlapping between foods and medicines is quite well known in traditional societies [24–26] and represents an often neglected field in ethnopharmaceutical research.

Plant supply/availability throughout a year

Most of the plants are collected in wild populations nearby the places where the informants live. Occasionally there is a small-scale cultivation in their home gardens (Origanum dubium, Myrtus communis, Crataegus azarolus). Some plants which were very much appreciated and frequently consumed in the past are now considered as weeds and even though have been mentioned they are only rarely eaten; in the territories studied this is the case of Sinapis alba and Sinapis arvensis. Sinapis spp. are still eaten in other areas of Cyprus [13].

Among all the edibles, four endemic species of Cyprus were recorded. The presence of endemic species illustrates the fact that the informants have a deep knowledge of their environment, since the three of them are not very abundant and can be found only in certain areas. For example, the endemic subspecies Carlina involucrata ssp. cyprica and Centaurea calcitrapa ssp. angusticeps are used only from the inhabitants of specific villages in Paphos area whilst the endemic Origanum majorana var. tenuifolium, which is used like common oregano, can be found only in a shrubland area of the Akamas National Park. The endemic species Onopordum cyprium, is used both in Paphos and Larnaca site and is a very common plant (Figures 6 and 7).

One of the favourite edibles of the recent past, Gundelia tournefortii, known by locals in Paphos area as “silifa”, is under threat since it has become rare and it can not easily be found. This plant has been included in the Red data book of Cyprus Flora as Endangered because its populations have been eliminated [27].

Most wild species are gathered from waste and uncultivated land (48%) or from shrubland (17%) and by the roadside (12%). Eight percent (8%) of wild edibles are grown within or around the cultivations and therefore can be collected from the cultivated land of grape vines in Paphos and Cereals in Larnaca,

In the local Cyprus cuisine, greens and wild plants in general, have an important role. According to this study during winter, it is possible to use 49 wild plants, and this number can increase to 56 during spring. The number then decreases and in May many edible greens have bloomed and the leaves have become tough, leaving only about 16 still edible. During summer some fruits of wild trees are edible.

From these plants only 15 can be purchased throughout a year from local markets and stores (Capparis spinosa, Ceratonia siliqua, Cynara cornigera, Eruca sativa, Mentha spicata, Origanum dubium, Rosmarinus officinalis, Pistacia lentiscus, Silene vulgaris, Thymus capitatus, Laurus nobilis, Ficus carica, Myrtus communis, Portulaca oleracea, Crataegus azarolus). These plants are partly collected from the wild and partly coming from small scale cultivation. Some of them are used as a condiment, some others are consumed as greens in salads or they are used for the preparation of cooked recipes. The other 66 taxa people should gather only from the wild by themselves (Figure 3).

As regards the tools used for gathering, 44% of the plants are gathered simply by hand while 37 % are gathered by a knife. Other tools such as a big knife (9%), a traditional big curved knife called “skylloua” (7%) and scissors (3%) are also used.

4.3 Plant parts

Within the edible plants, leaves (29%) and stems (25%) are the plant parts most widely used. Fruits and aerial part follow with 16% and 15% respectively (Figure 4).

Among the recorded plants thistles are very popular as wild edibles of Cyprus. The young stems of 16 wild plants are used. Eight of them are used in both sites (Centaurea hyalolepis, Scolymus hispanicus, Scolymus maculatus, Onopordum cyprium, Eryngium creticum, Cynara scolymus, Echinops spinosissimus, Notobasis syriaca, while seven of them are used exclusively in Paphos site (Centaurea calcitrapa ssp. angusticeps, Silybum marianum, Cynara cardunculus, Carlina involucrata ssp. cyprica, Carduus argentatus ssp. acicularis, Gundelia turnefortii, Onopordum bracteatum) and one of them is used exclusively in Larnaca site (Cynara cornigera). These plants can be gathered from January to March, and their young stems, cleaned of spines, are used in most cases boiled with legumes or fried.

Models of consumption

The edible plants are consumed in many different ways. Some of them need only the washing of the part of the plant to be eaten, and some others imply a more or less complex preparation process (Figure 5).

Raw

Many plants (26%) with edible leaves, roots or fruits are eaten raw. Many of them are used in salads. This is the case of Portulaca oleracea, Ammi majus, Apium nodiflorum, Taraxacum cyprium, Capsella bursa-pastoris, Foeniculum vulgare, Mentha pulegium which are usually dressed with oil, and vinegar or lemon. Some others like Sinapis alba, Sinapis arvensis, Taraxacum hellenicum, Cichorium intybus, Nasturtium officinale, Sonchus oleraceus, Allium neapolitanum are eaten fresh with olives, onions and bread. On the other hand, many edible fruits are directly consumed as desserts, in fresh form (Pyrus syriaca, Crataegus azarolus, Crataegus monogyna, Ziziphus lotus). The existence of Limonium sinuatum in this group is remarkable, because it is the first time that this plant is cited as a food plant in Cyprus [13] even though has been listed as an edible for the Mediterranean in Bodrum area of Turkey [29].

Cooked plants

A number of wild plants (59%) are eaten cooked. Most of them, 27 %, are eaten boiled, 17% are eaten boiled alone and 10% are eaten boiled with legumes, especially with broad beans. In both cases they are garnished with olive-oil and lemon. The most popular plants used as boiled are: Centaurea hyalolepis, Scolymus hispanicus, Carlina involucrata ssp. cyprica, Malva parviflora. However, some more elaborated preparations were recorded. Some plants are consumed fried (9%) and especially in an omelette. The young shoots of Asparagus acutifolius, Asparagus stipularis and the young leaves of Silene vulgaris, which are the most typical examples in both sites studied, are cut, fried and mixed with the eggs to make the omelette. Asparagus acutifolius is prepared in the same way in some parts of Italy [28] the Iberian Peninsula [19] and in Bodrum area of Turkey [29].

A number of wild edibles (17%) is used in traditional recipes. It is worth mentioning that very popular among traditional recipes in Cyprus are home made pies, called in general “pittes”. Eleven plants are used for making traditional pies. First, dough is made from flour, water and salt and then it is used for making small pies. Some times the pies are filled with the boiled or fried leaves (Beta vulgaris ssp. maritima, Papaver rhoeas, Silene vulgaris, Rumex pulcher) along with rice or “pourgouri” (like couscous) and spices. Some other plants are used as a scent in the pie (Foeniculum vulgare, Mentha spicata). In other cases fruits raw or preserved are used as the main filling of the pie (Pistacia lentiscus, Pistacia terebinthus, Ficus carica). Pies are cooked in the oven. Wild plants can also be a basis for a soup, the most famous of which is the so-called “molochosoupa” (malva soup), made with Malva parviflora. Some plants are often cooked in a traditional recipe called “yiachni” meaning, fried with onions and then tomato juice is added. Finally, plants are sparsely a condiment or the complement of meat stews as occurs with Cynara cardunculus, Cynara cornigera and Gundelia tournefortii.

Preserved plants

A number of plants are gathered and preserved to be stored and consumed all year round. Many plants which are used as a scent are dried and stored in plastic bags, plastic bottles or glass vessels and therefore used all year round. Nine plants (10%) are used to condiment stews, soups, pies or other dishes and traditional recipes. The most popular aromatic plants are Origanum dubium, Mentha spicata, Rosmarinus officinalis, Laurus nobilis, Thymus capitatus, Origanum majorana var. tenuifolium, Foeniculum vulgare. These plants add a distinct flavour and aroma to pies as well as to meat stews. Rosmarinus officinalis is used in a traditional fish recipe called savoro.

Some other plants such as Capparis spinosa, Crithmum maritimum, Eryngium creticum, Eryngium glomeratum and Muscari comosum, are preserved in vinegar and eaten like appetizer with several kind of food. Fruits of several wild trees are used for the preparation of jams and marmalades such as Pyrus syriaca, Crataegus azarolus and Crataegus monogyna.

Many tools used in processing were recorded. The five tools more often recorded are: “Madratzi”, a traditional wooden long tool for opening pies, “Chti and Chtocheri”, a traditional copper pot used for pounding, “Chartzi”, a traditional copper pot used for boiling, “Satzi”, a metal hot plate used for cooking pies, “Koumna”, a traditional jar used for storage and “Gastra”, an earthen vessel used for storage.

Conclusion

This study carried out in two sites of Cyprus showed that the habit of using edible wild plants is still alive, but is “ageing”. The consumption of wild plants is done as an addition or a complement to a diet of cultivated food plants. During this ethnobotanical research it was verified that even though wild edibles has been playing an important role in Cyprus since ancient times, it was realized that the transmission of folk uses of plants decreased in the last generations and surely in urban areas the knowledge is very much delimited. Almost all the interviewees, were past retirement age, and agreed that today far fewer wild plants are consumed than in previous decades. The people of the younger generation we met during the field survey declared that “it is much easier and less time and effort consuming to buying greens, fruits or spices from the markets, no matter if they are cultivated or even imported, instead of running to the fields. Since even though, going to the wild it is not easy to recognise the edible plants and in case can identify some of them they are not familiar with the way plants should be processed”. It is obvious that the younger generation has all but lost the TK necessary to identify, gather and process these species, while many middle-aged informants perceive the consumption of non-cultivated vegetables in a negative way, often as a symbol of poverty of the past.

The data of this study agree with those from other authors [30,31,19], and confirm that non cultivated edible plants deserve to be more thoroughly surveyed from an ethnobotanical and economic-botanical viewpoint, as a basis for agricultural, nutritional and other studies which may lead to the use of some new or renewed food plants. When studying wild food plants from this point of view, we must give recognition to the contribution of rural societies to the diversification of the sources of human nutrition and work for the reappraisal of folk knowledge on plants and their uses [32,33,19].

Our study, as well as other studies in a Circum-Mediterranean level [34,35], demonstrated that there is an urgent need for documentation of TK related to the intangible cultural heritage concerning traditional plant uses, and that such a heritage is much more complex that we may think. The ethnobotanical research should be extended to other areas of Cyprus in order not only to preserve the traditional knowledge related to plants but to make it available to future generations as well, showing the way for authenticity, simplicity and revival of that which is genuine.

All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the European Commission-Research Directorate General, for financing this project and the Agricultural Research Institute, Nicosia, Cyprus, for the overall support. Thanks are also due to all the informants who contributed to this study with their valuable traditional knowledge. Special thanks are addressed to the scientists Ms Natasa Pappouli as well as to the technical staff of the Agricultural Research Institute for their assistance.

References

1. Della A: The plant word of Cyprus. In Cyprus to-day Edited by PIO, Nicosia Cyprus. 1987, XXV 3:2-13. Return to text
2. Della A: Cyprus Flora in Mythology, History and Beauty. Proceedings of the Consultation Meeting on Neglected Plant Genetic Resources with a Landscape and Cultural importance for the Mediterranean Region. 7–9 November 1996; Naples, Italy 1996, 53-57. Return to text
3. Meikle RD: Flora of Cyprus. Volume II. Bentham-Moxon Trust (UK), Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; 1977:833-1969. Return to text
4. Meikle RD: Flora of Cyprus. Volume II. Bentham-Moxon Trust (UK), Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; 1985:833-1969. Return to text
5. Della A: The Cyprus Flora in Checklist Format; Native or Naturalized, Cultivated, Endemic, Rarities, Additions. International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, Rome, Italy – Agricultural Research Institute, Cyprus; 1999. Return to text
6. Della A: Contribution to the Endemism of the Flora of Cyprus. In PhD Thesis. University of Patras Greece; 2000. Return to text
7. Hand R: Supplementary notes to the Flora of Cyprus IV. Willdenowia 2004, 34:427-456. Return to text
8. Raus Th, Scholz H: Contribution to the flora of Cyprus: a new species of Crypsis (Poaceae). Willdenowia 2004, 34:457-462. Return to text
9. Della A: Neglected and Underutilized Species of Cyprus: Use and Conservation. In Priority-setting for underutilized and neglected plant species of the Mediterranean region. Report of the IPGRI Conference: 9–11 February, 1998; ICARDA – Aleppo, Syria. Edited by Padulosi S. International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, Rome Italy; 1999:86-93. Return to text
10. Arnold-Apostolides N: Ethnobotanique et Ethnopharmacologie de la flore de Chypre et de l’ Est mediterraneen. Publications du Centre Regional de Phytosociologie, Bailleul 1991, 6:2201.+ 105 non numbered pReturn to text
11. Gennadiou PG: Botanical Dictionary A&B. Edited by M Chr Giourda. Athens; 1959. Return to text
12. Panaretou A:Cyprus Agricultural Ethnography. The Flora of our Land. Cyprus. 1967. Return to text
13. Savvides L:Edible wild plants of the Cyprus Flora. Nicosia, Savvides. 2000. Return to text
14. Philippides P, Papayiannis Chr:Agricultural Regions of Cyprus. The Department of Statistics and Research Ministry of Finance and The Agricultural Research Institute. Agricultural Studies: Report No. 1. Republic of Cyprus. 1983. Return to text
15. Martin GJ: Ethnobotany. Chapman & Hall, London (UK); 1995. Return to text
16. Alexiades NM, Sheldon JW, Eds: Selected Guidelines for Ethnobotanical research: A Field Manual. New York (USA): New York Botanical Garden; 1996. Return to text
17. Cotton CM: Ethnobotany. Principles and Aplications. Chichester (UK): Wiley; 1996. Return to text
18. Tutin TG, ed: Flora Europaea1963–1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1-5. Return to text
19. Bonet MA, Vallès J: Use of non-crop food vascular plants in Montseny biosphere reserve (Catalonia, Iberian Peninsula). Int J Food Sci Nutr 2002, 53:225-248. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text Return to text
20. Bonet MÀ, Parada M, Selga A, Vallès J: Studies on pharmaceutical ethnobotany in the regions of L’Alt Empordà and Les Guilleries (Catalonia, Iberian Peninsula). J Ethnopharmacol 1999, 68:145-168. PubMed Abstract Return to text
21. Johns T, Kokwaro JO, Kimanani EK: Herbal remedies of the Luo of Siaya Distinc. Kenya: establishing quantitative criteria for consensus. Econ Bot 1990, 44(3):369-381. Return to text
22. Stepp JR, Moerman DE: The importance of weeds in ethnopharmacology. J Ethnopharmacol 2001, 75:19-23. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text Return to text
23. Le Grand A, Wondergem PA: Les phytothérapies anti-infectieuses de la forêt-savane. Senegal. Afrique Occidentale. Un inventaire. J Ethnopharmacol 1987, 21:109-125. PubMed Abstract Return to text
24. Etkin NL, Ross PJ: Food as medicine and medicine as food: an adaptive framework for the interpretation of plant utilization among the Hausa of northern Nigeria. Soc Sci Med 1982, 16:1559-1573. PubMed Abstract Return to text
25. Pieroni A, Nebel S, Quave C, Munz H, Heinrich M: Ethnopharmacology of Liakra: traditional weedy vegetables of the Arbereshe of the Vulture area in Southern Italy. J Ethnopharmacol 2002, 81:165-185. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text Return to text
26. Pieroni A, Nebel S, Santoro RF, Heinrich M: Food for two seasons: Culinary uses of non-cultivated local vegetables and mushrooms in a south Italian village. Int J Food Sci Nutr 2005, 56(4):245-272. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text Return to text
27. Tsintides T, Christodoulou Ch, Delipetrou P, Georgiou K, Eds:The Red Book of Threatened Cyprus Flora. Nicosia. 2006. Return to text
28. Pieroni A: Gathered wild food plants in the upper valley of the Serchio river (Garfagnana), Central Italy. Econ Bot 1999, 53(3):327-341. Return to text
29. Ertu? F: Wild edible plants of the Bodrum area (Mu?la, Turkey). Turk J Bot 2004, 28:161-174.TÜBÌTAK.Return to text
30. Barrau JF: The possible contribution to ethnobotany of the search for new crops for food and industry. In New Crops for Food and Industry. Edited by Wicknes GE, Haq N, Day P. London/New York: Chapman and Hall; 1989:402-410. Return to text
31. Gispert M: La cultura alimentaria mexicana: fuente de plantas comestibles para el futuro. Monogr Jard Bot Córdoba 1997, 5:51-57. Return to text
32. Gispert M, Álvarez A: La diversidad etnológica y alimentaria en la encrucijada de la conservación y el desarrollo. Rev Dial Trad Popul 1997, 52:283-288. Return to text
33. Turner NJ: A gift for the taking: the untapped potential of some food plants of North American Native Peoples. Can J Bot 1981, 59:2331. Return to text
34. Pieroni A, Giusti MA, Pesquale C, Lenzarini C, Censorii E, Gonzales-Tejero MR, Cristina , Sánchez-Rojas Ch, Skoula M, Johnson Ch, Sarpaki A, Della A, Paraskeva-Hadijchambi D, Hadjichambis A Ch, Hmamouchi M, Mohamed El-Demerdash M, El-Zayat M, Houmani Z, Scherazed M: Circum-Mediterranean cultural heritage and medicinal plant uses in traditional animal health care: a field survey in eight selected areas within the RUBIA project. J Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 2006, 2:16. Return to text
35. Rivera D, Obón C, Heinrich M, Inocencio C, Verde A, Fajardo J: Gatherd Mediterranean Food Plants-Ethnobotanical Investigations and Historical Development. In Local Mediterranean Food Plants and Nutraceuticals. Volume 59. Edited by Heinrich M, Müler WE, Galli C. Forum Nutr. Basel, Kanger; 2006:18-74.

Soft growing tips are edible

Salsola kali: Noxious Weed, Nibble & Green

When you first encounter a Russian Thistle it is the very last plant you would consider edible. Wiry, tough, sharp, pin prickly, irritating.  In fact, it kind of reminds you of a green sand spur on steroids.

However, the young shoots and tips of the growing plant are edible raw and actually quite palatable and pickable. Cooked like greens they’re even better. As the plant ages, though, it grows tough and formidable. Also called Tumbleweed and Windwitch, dried ones tumbling across the HD screen are now classic visual cues of desolation in Western-type movies.

Growing in beach sand at Daytona Beach, Fla.

The most reliable to eat is the Salsola kali  (SAL-so-la KAH-lee) which is believed to have arrived in the United States in the early 1870s in southern South Dakota. Some Russian immigrants moved to the town of Scotland in Bon Homme County. They had some Salsola seed in with their flax seed. By 1873 local botanists identified the new weed in town. By 1895 it had reached from the remote north middle of the country to New Jersey and California. That’s remarkable distribution in 30 years considering the plant had only summers to move.

Professor Lyster Hoxie Dewey, who worked for the US Department of Agriculture, said in two reports in 1893 and 1894 he knew how the plant was spreading: The trains. That may seem obvious to us now but back then it was hard work and good insight.  In Illinois he documented Salsola along railroad tracks and gave specific locations. The plant was not yet an “obnoxious weed” but Dewey saw the potential problem. He recommend railroad get rid of the plant wherever they found it and he theorized that by using the railroad and the wind the plant could be come a severe problem. Right man, right place, right observation, right idea, and completely ignored.

In fact, let’s give Dewey his due. People who got it right should be given some recognition. Lyster Hoxie Dewey (1865–1944) was an American botanist born in Cambridge, Michigan. In 1888 he graduated from Michigan Agricultural College where he went on to teach botany for two years. He was an assistant botanist for the United States Department of Agriculture from 1890 to 1902 and then botanist in charge of fibre investigations. By 1911 he was the U.S. representative to the International Fibre Congress in Surabaya, Java. Nice work if you can get it. His publications were mostly bulletins for the USDA on the production of fibre from flax, hemp, sisal, manila plants,  on the classification and origin of the varieties of cotton, and what brought him to our attention, investigations on grasses and troublesome weeds.

Some 117 years after Dewey’s Salsola report the current and perpetually out-of-date USDA distribution map shows Salsola to be in coastal areas only. However, it has been reported throughout the United States and Canada, particularly in dry and or salty areas including along northern (salted) roads, along fences/gullies in the plains states, and southwest deserts. Millions are spent each to get rid of it especially along highway right-of-ways. It can rapidly take over open land via up to 200,000 seeds per plant, the wind, and …yeph… the trains.

If your Tumbleweed is a Salsola but not the kali, you will need to verify its edibility with a local expert.  Elias and Dykeman (2008) say related species in the desert southwest of the United States are edible. This is where botanists let foragers down. They can’t quite decide if there is one species of Salsola ( the kali ) and a lot of varieties of that one species, or, if there are several species of Salsola. (Note: Edibility is usually not on the botanical radar either.)  If that’s not bad enough then one botanist thinks he can improve upon the name so we get different names for the same plant, or plants, or variety, or varieties. That turns it all into a linguistic morass meaning it’s tough to figure out if the plant you are looking is the plant they are talking about. Again, all the more reason to check with a local expert. You don’t need to know the name but you do need to know if it is edible….  Let me put it this way…. whatever the name is the one that grows on the sandy beach due east of me IS edible. Which species is it? Probably Salsola kali var. pontica. Three other Salsola that are known to be edible are S. australis, S. komarovi and S. soda.

Globally, Salsola kali et al is found in Afghanistan, Argentina, Canada, Chile, China, Egypt, Greece, Hawaii, Hungary, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Mexico, Morocco, Norway, New Zealand, Pakistan, Poland, South Africa, Turkey, Western Siberia and Russia, where it is native to the southlands. In fact, more than a century ago Russia had to give up several development projects because the Salsola kali just plain got in the way.

Salsola is from the Latin salsa, and means “salted.” Kali (KAH-lee) has many meanings but the one that makes sense to me is Black because the plant was in high demand for soda ash and for that the plant had to be burned. The word also means “good” in Greek. In Hindu mythology, the goddess of destruction and creation is Kali. The English the word “alkali”  comes from the Arabic “al qaly” or “from Kali.” Oh, and here is brilliant botanical naming: Pontica (PON-ti-kah) means from Asia Minor, north of the Black Sea, where the plant is native. Talk about redundant….

Young plants make good fodder and grows well in low-water areas. In fact, when dry Salsola is a good source of fuel. It also has been used to make soap since Biblical times. Salsola soap can still be purchased around the Mediterranean.

Now some warnings: The plant, a relative of the Chenopodium, can contain as much as 5% oxalic acid thus folks who are sensitive to oxalic acid should avoid the genus.  It is also a severe allergen for some people. And if you eat it when it is too old the shape of the leaves — fat and pointed — will irritate your throat. Lastly, Salsola kali is a host plant of the Sugar Beet Leafhopper. This insect carries curly-top virus, a disease affecting sugar beets, tomatoes, and beans. This puts it on the farmers’ hit list.

Steamed Russian Thistle

Take two cups of shoots or tips (hint, they easily break off when bent.) Rinse and steam as is or cut them up and steam. Season with butter

Russian Thistle Broth

Five cups chicken broth

Two cups Russian Thistle tips or shoots

One potato or Jerusalem artichokes

One onion

Half cup parsley chopped

Half cup watercress chopped

3 cloves of garlic, chopped

One bay leaf

Simmer the potato or Jerusalem artichoke in the broth. Add chopped onion and garlic. Cut Russian Thistle into one inch pieces (this is to assure you have edible pieces and makes it easier to eat.) Chop parsley and watercress, add with the whole bay leaf. Simmer 20 minutes or until the potato et al is done.

Tumbled Rice and Russian Thistle

Four cups Russian Thistle

One cup rice

One cup mustard or radish leaves or any mild green

One teaspoon pepper

One teaspoon garlic powder

A third of a cup of jack or similar cheese shredded.

Cook rice. Steam Russian Thistle tips or shoots. After a few minutes add the rest of the greens to the thistle tips. When greens are cooked, mix with the rice, season, sprinkle with the cheese.  Serve hot.

Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant Profile

IDENTIFICATION: Herb to five feet usually less than three, bushy, branching from base; upright or almost prostrate .Leaves and bracts fleshy, flatish, short,  tipped with sharp spines.  Flowers with 5 narrow whitish petals, solitary, unstalked. Older branches serpentine, purplish

TIME OF YEAR: Early summer locally, varies with local, can be late summer to fall in other areas, some nearly year round.

ENVIRONMENT: Sandy areas, seashores, some desert environments, salty areas, beside northern roads because of salt, or western roads because of open space, railroad tracks.

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Young shoots raw or cooked, tips of growing plants raw or cooked. Its seeds are reportedly edible but I don’t personally know that.

Sometimes a toxic plant can give even an experienced forager reason to pause.

Nasturtium officinale

When I was making a video last week I saw a beautiful growth of watercress, Nasturtium officinale (though names can vary.)  Like all the wild plants in the mustard family, it is a short-lived resident here in Florida, one to two months under the best of cool conditions. It lasts longer father north. As I write this is late February and the water cress is starting to blossom so it will soon be gone.

Cicuta maculata

The cause for the pause was… it was growing in and among Water Hemlock, Cicuta maculata, which is about as close to sudden death as a plant can get. How sudden? You have 40 minutes to get your stomach pumped out. The last death on record from eating Water Hemlock — based on non-identification — was only last year. One brother died and another sickened in the 90s, and two died in 1975, a forest ranger who should have known better and a boy who made a whistle out of the stem. Three people avoided death that same year via a bystander who came upon them eating the hemlock. A high-speed 45-mile drive to the hospital and stomach pumping saved them all.

Water Hemlock and Watercress grow in similar environments.  I like watercress. Cooked it’s a delicious and wholesome green. It does not look like Water Hemlock and does not have the same growth pattern. The Water Hemlock tends to be a yellow green and tall, the Watercress is a deep green — rare for Florida — and low growing. The leaves are different et cetera but… when one is picking Watercress in and among Water Hemlock one picks carefully because you are only one leaf away from death. One leaf. And, when it comes time to cook, inspecting every stalk of Watercress is imperative.

Now … all of that seems quite reasonable. Eat the right plant and avoid the deadly one.  Yet, one of the hardest aspects of foraging is having good judgment and trusting your judgment. Desire is a strong drive and there is a tendency even among experienced foragers to make a plant “fit” a description.  “Arriving” as a forager is, in my opinion, the ability to want that plant to be what you think it is but being able to admit it is not.

So when one is picking Watercress among Water Hemlock it is an act of judgment and caution that puts your life on the line. Whenever a life is on the line by a judgment — your own or others — it is indeed time to pause for the cause and be certain.

(Incidentally, the deadly Water Hemlock is the only member of its family whose veins on the top side of the leaves go to the notches between leaf teeth rather than to the end of the teeth.)

Ramalina and Usnea over rag lichen. Photo by Dan Dowling

Usnea stringosa, photo by William Weber

Chef and forager Dan Dowling sent me an excellent picture of lichen (above.) The reason why he took it is the photo shows two common lichen people get confused, Ramalina near the center, and Usnea on our upper right (above some rag lichen.) Almost all lichen are edible once leached of their bitter acids. The flavor ranges from bad to almost palatable. But, they are high in calories, have saved many a stranded hunter or downed pilot, and are found nearly worldwide. Lichens have been used in dyes, deodorants, laxatives, expectorants, tonics, and as one monograph put it, “healing pastes.” They are also an indicator of clean air. We’re more interested in Usnea than Ramalina for its medicinal qualities. Usnea is basically an antiseptic. While Ramalina and Usnea resemble each other there are three main differences: The Ramalina’s stems are flatish, Usnea is round; Ramalina does not appear to be hairy, Usnea looks hairy; and only Usnea — among all the many genus of  lichen, has an elastic, white inner core. If you want to read more about lichen (Yes, the rag lichen is edible but it tastes like dirty tree bark.)

This week saw me in and about Gainesville and attending the Florida Earthskills gathering. I’d like to thank Mycol Stevens for having me back for a second year to teach foraging classes. Having learned last year that the weeds there can vary with the amount of rain I collected seasonal edibles from local areas as well as on site. Next year I will have to remember to take camphor seedlings with me. I was going to camp out in my newly resurrected van but unusually cold nights and a visiting a friend recovering from major surgery prevented that. Three wild edibles stood out from the many ones we find this time of year. First were Silverthorn berries.

The jelly-bean size Silverthorn berry. Photo by Floridata

Related to the Russian and Autumn olives the Silverthorn is an escaped ornamental. Thus eating as many ripe berries as one can is a civic duty to reduce its naturalization. The shrub escapes from hedge rows. The largest and longest planting of Silverthorn I have ever seen in just north of Ocala, Florida, while on the way to Gainesville. There is well over a half-a-mile of unattended hedge about eight feet high and eight feet wide heavily ladened with sweet fruit. (For you local residents it is on the north side of 326 one half mile east of where 326 intersections with 301/441.) Silverthorn is atypical in that it fruits in January and February, depending where you are. And it can be found farther north than just Florida. If I remember correctly no plant produces more lycopene than the Silverthorn and the seeds are high in omega 3 fatty acids. To read more about the Silverthorn go here.

Wild Garlic, photo Prairiemoon

The second find was during a class in Gainesville. Wild Garlic is difficult to find in Central Florida. I’ve been wanting to do a video about it for several years but the old haunts where I used to collect it are now parking lots or housing developments. I knew it grew in Gainesville because I saw it once at a private class I taught there a few years ago. But, it’s never been apparent in my other classes there until this week. Because of my first cold in seven years my nose wasn’t working well but one of the students ask where the garlic aroma was coming from: Wild garlic under our feet was the answer. It was not yet putting on cloves so it was not easy to see visually. But it is always a delightful find; pungent, sharp, tasty. You just know it was a welcomed winter green and flavored many an ancient meal. Wild garlic, wrongly called wild onion, is unusual in that it puts cloves on the top of its stem, not underground on the bottom. (Onions put on a bulb, garlic puts on cloves.) To read more about the wild garlic, click here.   Where we found it in Gainesville was in the ditch across the street and slightly northeast from the four parking spots on Palm Point Park on Lakeshore Drive off SE Hawthorne road. (Take it home and transplant it to a more wholesome environment.)

Watercress, photo by Max Licher

The other mentionable was found by curiosity.  Just before reaching the Florida Earthskills site I wondered if a mound of green in a ditch was young deadly Water Hemlock. A closer look proved it to be Watercress, an esteemed edible (if in wholesome water.) Central Florida is the Watercress capital of North America and has escaped from cultivation. From the back of a motorcycle going 65 Water Hemlock and Watercress bear some resemblance. Up close they do not. However, they do grow in the same environment and can do so at the same time of year, intermixing. Thus one harvests Watercress carefully checking twice just to make sure no stray Water hemlock leaves gets in the mix. Usually when folks die from eating wild food if it isn’t a mushroom it’s Water Hemlock. When I say they don’t look alike that depends on how closely one looks, or can look. They have qualities in common but so do people. Even twins have some differences if you look close enough. Watercress is very seasonal and should be harvested when you find it if you find it in wholesome areas. To read about Watercress go here. To read about the deadly Water Hemlock go here.

Thistle Epistle: Sorting out true thistles for food is on par with identifying true pines and oaks. If it is a Quercus the acorns are edible (after necessary leaching.) The particular species is usually not relevant.  If it is a Pinus it has parts you can eat. Again the particular species is usually not relevant. And all Cirsiums — true thistles — are edible though the flavor and texture will vary from species to species. Thus telling true thistles from each other is matter of form than necessity but here is how to tell a couple of common ones apart:

Canada Thistle, photo by the Univ. of Iran

Cirsium arvense: The Canadian thistle grows from one to five feet tall. Its main stems is ridged, slightly spiny, and branches near the top. The leaves are lance-shaped, spiny and deeply cut whereas the flower heads are smooth and occur in small clusters. The upright flowers are NOT spiny and can be white, purple or light lavender. Its one-eighth inch seeds are smooth, brown and pointed. This member of the sunflower family has fleshy, creeping roots.

Bull thistle, photo by Walter Obermayer

Cirsium vulgare, the Bull Thistle, looks similar to the Canadian Thistle. They grow to similar heights and have prickly stems. The Bull thistle also has white to purple to pale lavender upright blossoms but they are spiny and solitary, NOT in clusters. In both species the blossom resembles a shaving brush. Bull thistle leaves are larger and more spiny than the Canadian Thistle and have prickly hairs on the upper surface.

A third similar thistle, Cirsium edule, the so called “Edible Thistle” has a drooping flower head and only grows from Oregon and Idaho north in western North America. To read more about true thistles go here.

The ice keeps the citrus from freezing

Frostbites:  Our last average frost date in central Florida is Valentine’s Day, if we have a frost or freeze at all. Some winters we don’t dip into freezing. But, there is a full moon on the 25th of February. That usually brings cold weather — said the gardener — as will the full moon on March 27th. There is a full moon on April 25th, too, but a frost in April is rare though the latest one on record locally is April 24th.  I mention frost and cold weather because my mulberry is putting on fruit and a frost could ruin the crop. There is also the odd fact that I get frost in my front yard more often than my back yard, which is geographically the opposite of what one would expect. Mother Nature plays by her own rules.

Mulberry in Blossom, photo by James Baker

I don’t think plants can think but their behavior can echo historical experience. In that regard my mulberry tree — a native — is far more experienced than my peach or nectarine, man-crafted hybrids. At the slightest hint of warm weather the peach and nectarine will blissfully blossom only to get slapped with a cold snap. This has happened for several years in a row. Blossoms fall like freezing rain. The mulberry is more restrained. It doesn’t get all blossomy unless it thinks warm weather is really here. So my mulberry is putting on fruit, but we have at least two more full moons to go. We’ll see what happens.

Ripening Mulberries, photo by Missouri Permaculture

Almost all of the mulberries locally are red mulberries, native and cultivated. They usually take a rest a month or two around Christmas. Early January is a good time to trim them. With February just here new leaves and blossoms are appearing. What you may not know is that young mulberry leaves are edible cooked. Quite mild. The green fruit is also slightly mind-altering. To read more about the mulberries go here.

Don’t forget the The Florida Herbal Conference less than two weeks away, still plenty of time to sign up. This year it is held in Deleon Springs February 15-17.  For more information go to: Florida Herbal Conference.

Upcoming classes:  My schedule appears light this month because I’m teaching at two conferences.

Saturday, February 9th, Highwoods Preserve, 8401 New Tampa Blvd., Tampa FL, 33647., 9 a.m.

Sunday, February 10th, Mead Garden, 1500 S. Denning Dr., Winter Park, FL 32789. 9 a.m.

Saturday, Feb. 16th, Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge, 2045 Mud Lake Road, DeLeon Springs, FL . 32706, 10 a.m.

Sunday, February 24th, Florida State College, south campus, 11901 Beach Blvd., Jacksonville, 32246.  9 a.m.

Note the starting times vary. For more information on my February classes go to my main website and click on classes.

To donate to the Green Deane Newsletter click here.

Green Deane
Newsletter, June 2010

WHY FORAGE?

Often I am asked “why forage for wild food?” Why that question is asked is probably worthy of an article unto itself. But here let’s focus on one answer (out of several.) Let’s look at cost.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released recently their March (2010) number crunching. Food prices in March rose 2.4%, the sixth month in a row food prices have gone up, and the largest jump since 1984. But that’s counting everything. If you look at specific categories the numbers are more revealing.

Fresh and dry vegetables went up up 56.1%, fresh fruits and melons 28.8%, fresh eggs 33.6%, pork 19.1%, beef and veal up 10.7% and dairy products up 9.7%.  All of that makes the Bidens pilosa growing in my yard all the more attractive, maybe even that pesky squirrel. Some think “food inflation” will continue even if the economy improves. Apparently that is what is happening in India now. Some investment gurus are talking about investing in, literally, food, and others like Warren Buffet are recommending investiment in agriculture or countries with a lot of agriculture.
It’s interesting the price of plant products rose more than animal products, though animal products are also dependent on plants, however not necessarily plants that man grows. The difference is commercial plants for people need chemicals and tending whereas many plants for animals — range grass for example — do not nor do most of the weeds we eat. However, contrary to what most folks think foraging is not free. There are costs. Discounting time, one has to get to a place to forage. One has to transport the collected food and the food has to be cleaned. That requires some cost, from calories to bike tires to gasoline to clean water.

One also needs to know which plants to pick. That knowledge can come free, and/or from lessons, books, and internet services. My personal plant library of some six dozen books cost me about $1,000. You may never own more than one foraging book but my point is wild food is not totally free. But, it is the next thing to free, and the cost a lot less than store-bought food and is less subject to inflation and taxes.  Once you have foraging knowledge inside your head any cost gets prorated over time to the point of being negligible.  A $20 course and a $30 book totals up to $50 but if you and yours can eat for a lifetime it’s a good investment. It’s also a certain measure of independence and security.

I’m not suggesting foraging an answer to the growing food problem.  With unemployment hovering near 17% (depending who’s counting and how they count) there are nearly 40 million Americans on food stamps, up 22.4% over this time last year. The government is now paying out more in benefits than it is taking in. At some point entitlement programs will be cut back.  However, 40 million people can’t go out and forage even if they knew how. The impact on the environment would be devastating. The realty is not even one percent of them (400,000) are interested in foraging. I doubt that even one tenth of one percent (40,000) are interested. Maybe one hundredth of one percent might be interested, 4,000, which is close to my number of subscribers. See how uncommon you are?

This we know: Food prices are rising, sharply. There is some cost associated with learning how to forage, and most people are not interested in foraging — at least not now. I think that adds up to a strong argument that not only is it economical to forage but that it will be a steady food supply because others don’t see the value it represents, and even if they did they are far behind you in the learning curve. Learning to forage can mean you have something to eat when they don’t. You certainly have more variety and better nutrition.

When you learn to forage you are doing more than identifying edible wild plants. You are also developing a skill and confidence. No matter how dire the need, those cannot be learned overnight. Foraging is like rigging, you learn mostly by doing and that cannot be rushed. You’re already way ahead of millions.
A NEW VEGETABLE

If you could choose one wild plant to become a commercial product, what would it be? Many people have tried to make poke weed (Phytolacca americana) a green in your local grocery but toxicity and the required two-boilings has always plagued its commercialization. The ground nut (Apios americana) was one of the original exports from colonial America but it has at least a two-year growth cycle. Louisiana State University (1984-96) developed a commercial variety but the program disappeared when the professor-in-charge, Bill Blackmon, changed colleges. In 1962 Professor Julia Morton of the University of Miami recommended Spanish Needles (Bidens pilosa) become a commercial product. Nearly a half a century later that hasn’t happened, perhaps because of flavor or the fact it can grow almost anywhere as a weed.  My candidate would be Suaeda linearis, Sea Blite, and if I could figure out how to do it I would.

Sea Blite has everything going for it except perhaps for its name. It’s mild but tasty, has excellent texture, can be eaten raw or cooked though cooked is the usual way. It’s nutritious, stores well, looks good, easily grows in salty ground (read unused land) and even feels good to handle.  About the only downside, for me, is that I have to drive about 55 miles to get some. I need to introduce it to my garden.

Think of Sea Blite as a Chinopodium that likes to grow in salty places, either near the ocean or salt licks. It has a high sodium content but boiling reduces that significantly.  If you live anywhere near the ocean or inland salty areas, now and the next few months is the time to go looking for seablight and seepweeds. To read more about Sea Blite click here.

HOW SAFE IS FORAGING?

Excluding mushroom hunters, plant foragers have a good track record of staying alive. Plant foragers have about one accidental death every 20 years, and usually that’s from eating some member of the poison hemlock crowd.  That should be a word to the wise. Locally, the nemesis is the water hemlock and it grows exactly where watercress grows. When I collect watercress I look at every piece before I collect or cook it, every single piece.  Actually, there are several deadly local plants: Water hemlock, the Yew, Oleander, Castor Beans, and the Rosary Pea, the most toxic seed on earth. I have been asked to do a video on toxic plants but I am afraid some idiot will not understand what the video is about and eat the wrong plant.

Most plant poisonings involve toddlers eating from the landscaping around their home, with the next highest incidence is toddlers eating the landscaping from their neighbor’s yard. Why we fill our home space with toxic plants rather than edible landscaping is beyond me.

Excluding suicides, adult poisonings are extremely rare. So, don’t be afraid of foraging. Just be careful. Study. Take lessons. Go with a friend.  ITEMize!

CAN A FORAGER FIND TRUE LOVE?

According to the Timberland Company they can. The New Hampshire-based outfitting company has released the results of their 2010 eco-love survey. Oddly, it was male-centric. Apparently men are looking for love in all the green places. (Don’t shoot this messenger.)

Must Love the Earth. Fifty-four percent of men would question whether to start a relationship with a woman someone who litters. Others would ponder if a woman was worth dating if she doesn’t recycle (25%), leaves the lights on when not at home (23%) or drives a gas-guzzler (21%).

Guys Dig Green. One-quarter of men think “green” women make better life partners (24%) or friends (27%) than those who aren’t so environmentally responsible.

Plan an Eco-date. 41% of men would be more interested in an “adventure” date like hiking or rock climbing or a charity or service-focused date like tree planting, rather than the traditional “dinner and a movie” date.

Green eco-lebrities. Men say Cameron Diaz (27%) and Kate Hudson (26%) would inspire them to go green. Feelings are mixed on eco-celeb Jessica Biel. Twenty-one percent of men say she’s an inspiring green celeb, but only 13 percent of women agree.

Going Green. Almost a third of Americans (30%) feel they need to make more of an effort to purchase eco-friendly clothing over the next year. And, before you set out on your eco-date, consider eating locally grown food. More than half (53%) of Americans think that eating locally grown foods should be a priority in the next year. Almost three-quarters (72%) think Americans need to switch to energy-efficient light bulbs, 57 percent think Americans need to green their daily commutes by carpooling, walking or biking to work and 47 percent want others to take showers instead of baths to save water (showering with someone even saves more water.)

SALT SELLER

There’s less salt in your future but not less salt flavor, so it is claimed. PepsiCO did some research and found that only 20% of the salt on their products contributed to taste whereas 80% got swallowed undissolved, read untasted. So the company successfully set out to reshape salt crystals to melted faster on the tongue thus giving the same salty flavor but using 25% less salt.  That would clearly cut costs for them in the future but the question is how will that be positioned on the label? 25% LESS SALT! LESS SALT MORE FLAVOR! Heck they might make an extra salty tasting product but claim it has normal salt levels. Quite a few possibilities. The new salt needs no approval, says PepsiCo, because it is just reshaped salt.

SPROUTS

The Weeping Holly (Ilex vomitoria “pendula”) has more caffein in its leaves than any plant in North America.

Articles

•     Ackee

Delicious and deadly, that’s ackee

• Acorn Grubs: Bait, Trailside Nibble  (2)

  Yes, this is about eating grubs. Deal with it.

  Without the expertise of Charles E. Williams and the Michigan Entomological Society, Department of entomology,…

• Acorns, or Oak Nuts?  (1)

  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.…

• Acorns: The Inside Story  (27)

  Acorn: More than a survival food
  The first time you eat an acorn it makes you wonder what the squirrels are going nuts about. As the bitterness twists…

• Agave, Century Plant

  Century Plant: Edible Agave Americana

  If you like tequila, thank a bat. If that’s not possible, thank a humming bird or a moth. Those three pollinate the…

• Alligator a la Carte  (5)
  I caught a small alligator once. I was fishing for bass in a golf course water trap behind an apartment complex in Titusville, Florida (that’s west across…
• Alligator Weed

  Alternanthera philoxeroides: Exotic Munch

  If you have alligators you have alligator weed. That’s a little odd because alligator weed is a native of…

• Alternate Pepper of Brazilian Pest?  Brazilian Pepper is a personal unknown
• Amapola, Sea Hibiscus, Rope Mangrove

  Hibiscus pernambucensis: Walking Lunch

  The Amapola is on the go, but unlike the “walking” mangrove, the Amapola crawls.

  There is something of a…

• Amaranth: Grain, Vegetable, Icon  (3)

  Amaranth, the forgotten food

  A book could be written about amaranth, and probably has, if not several.

  A grain, a green, a cultural icon, a religious…

• Amaranth Identification:

  Sorting out some amaranths

• A Matter of Attitude

  “Yuck.”

  That word has been in my mailbox lately, sprinkled through like spice on an entree. It reminds me of what a great language English is.

  English…

• American Lotus: Worth Getting Wet For  (1)

  More American than apple pie
  Nature fights back.

  Much of Florida is giving way to housing. For several years I passed a large abandoned pasture with a dry…

• American Nightshade: A Much Maligned Edible  (5)

  Solanum americanum: Food or Poison?

  Anyone who’s done some foraging has seen the “Black Nightshade” also called the “Common Nightshade” and (DRUM ROLLLLLLLL…

• Annona Quartet

  The Annonas Four: Sugar, Sour, Custard, Pond
  Many species and a few family of plants sit on the cusp of edible, non-edible, among them the Annonas, tropicals…

• Antikythera Mechanism
  The Antikythera Mechanism is unique, kind of like a monotypic genus plant. In fact, this short article was originally written as the introduction for the…

• A Pitch For Spruce Gum: Real spruce gum is not easy to chew. It is not soft or sweet. Hard and crumbly is more accurate along with pieces of bark and bits of insects.

• Apples, Wild Crabapples

  Malus sieversii, Hard-Core Apples
  Wild Apples are one of the most common over-looked foraging foods. People take one taste, spit it out, and go on their…

• Are Raw Vegetables Healthy for Humans?  (4)

  The quick answer by most would be yes, the presumption being man ate raw vegetables for a long time and is better suited to them, and them to him. But, whether…

• Are You A Cook Or A Baker?

  I am often asked about herbal medicine. My answer to the inquirer is often a question: Are you a cook or a baker? Their answer is instructive.

  While one…

• Armadillo: Possum on the Half Shell  (2)

  Armadillo Cuisine: Cooking a Hoover Hog
  Armadillos are an overlooked food animal, not protected by law, available throughout the year, and good tasting. And…

• 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…

• Australian Pine  (1)

  Casuarina equisetifolia: Dreaded Edible
  It is truly fitting that the Australian Pine ends up on a site dedicated to edible plants because where it has been…

• What do you do when the description of a plant doesn’t fit? The answer depends on how far off the description is: You might have the wrong plant.

  If it is…

• Balloon Vine, Heart Vine, Heart Seed

  Cardiospermum halicacabum: Edible Leaves

  For a tropical plant, the Balloon Vine can take cold weather, growing from west Texas north to Montana, Florida…

• Bamboo Doesn’t Bamboozle You

  Bambusa
  Do not tell me you don’t live near bamboo. I grew up in 50-below zero Maine and we had bamboo in front of the house for decades. In fact, the…

• Bananas: More Than A Yellow Frou Frou Fruit  (5)

  Bananas Trees: Survival Food
  Yes, everyone knows bananas are edible, as are their starchy cousins, the plantains. One doesn’t think of banana or plantain…

• Barnyard Grass  (8)
  The first time I saw Barnyard Grass was decades ago in a real barnyard near a drain spout. I was with forager Dick Deuerling who identified it for me.…

• Basswood Tree, Linden, Lime Tree

  Tilia americana: Forest Fast Food
  My first recollection of basswood was not on the supper table but rather helping my father make pipes.

  First we’d…

• Bauhinia: Pretty Eats

  Bauhinias’ Beauty

  It’s called the Camel Foot Tree, the Cow Foot Tree, the Mountain Ebony Tree, the Orchid Tree, and the Hong Kong Orchid Tree. I ignored it…

• Birches: One could easily write a book about Birches because they are so valuable to foragers.

• Beach Bean, Bay Bean  (2)

  Canavalia maritima, Rosea, Beach Bean
  It’s the tank of beans: Three inches long, an inch wide and very thick. And with good reason, it lives near the…

• Beach Orach, Crested Salt Bush

  Atriplex cristata: Pigweed by the Sea

  Anyone familiar with the Goosefoot family will see the Beach Orach and presume it is probably edible, and it is.

  A…

• Beautyberry: Jelly on a Roll  (23)

  Beautyberry: Callicarpa Americana
  The Beautyberry is squirrel’s version of take out.

  Squirrels will often break off a branch a foot or two long and…

• Beech, American

  Fagus grandifolia: The All-American Beech

  Tree trivia: Beechnut chewing gum had nothing to do with the Beech tree or the seeds it produces. It was, however,…

• Bees 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,…

• Before There Were Baked Beans

  Baked beans is about as traditional a New England meal as one can get… That and boiled dinners. Every Sunday for decades we had boiled dinner. Potatoes,…

• Begonia Bonanza

  Waxing about Edible Begonias
  It was on Rock Springs Run, some 20 years ago here in Florida, when I first saw them, just above the variable water line. I…

• Betony: Rich Root, Poor Root  (5)

  Stachys Floridana, Culinary Pretender
  I have read from a good source that all Stachys are edible. I politely doubt that for three reasons. First there are 300…

• Big Caltrop: If you’re an adult with aging eyesight Kallstroemia maxima when first spied can look like purslane. A closer examination shows it is not.
• 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…

• Birches: One could easily write a book about Birches because they are so valuable to foragers.

• Bird Peppers

  Capsicum annuum var. glabriusculum: Hot Eats

  Did y0u know hot peppers grow in the wild? From Central American north to Arizona east to Florida then up the…

•  Bitter Melon (6)

  Bitter Melon, Bitter Gourd, Balsam Pear: Momordica Charantia
  If the Balsam Pear did not exist a pharmaceutical company would invent it. In fact, there…

• Bitter Lettuce

  Launea intybacea: Edible Bitter Lettuce

  The plant came first, and it’s anybody’s guess to what its scientific name is.

  Every botanical wonderkin thinks…

• Bittercress and Kissing Crucifer Cousins

  Cardamine pensylvanica: Petite Pot Herb
  The first time I saw Bittercress I knew it had to be an edible. I just didn’t know which one.

  How did I know? Plants…

• Black Calabash: It started with spotting a blossom while teaching a foraging class. 
• Black Cherry: Chokecherry’s Better Cousin  (3)

  Prunus serotina: Better Late than Never Cherry

  Think of the Black Cherry as a chokecherry with some of the choke removed.

  Not a 100 feet from the…

• Black Ironwood, Leadwood
  Krugiodendron ferreum: Ironwood M&MsGreen twigs of Black Ironwood will sink in salt water. It’s that dense.The Black Ironwood was…

• Black Medic  (2)

  Medicago Lupulina: Grain and Potherb
  I debated a long time whether to include Black Medic as an edible. There are several plants in that category and over…

• Black Walnuts and Butternut

  Juglans nigra and butternut, too!

  I didn’t see my first Black Walnut tree until about 16 years ago. It so happened that the two places I lived the longest,…

• Blackberries, A Forager’s Companion  (1)

  Blackberries: Robust Rubus, Food & Weed
  Anyone who forages will eventually collect a few blackberries, and thorns. Blackberries are among the best known…

• Bladderwrack

  Fucus vesiculosus: Edible Bladderwrack
  Bladderwrack can wrack your brain.

  Why? Because in some places it has bladders and is textbook perfect. And in others…

• Blolly, Beeftree

  Guapira discolor: A Blolly by Golly
  The Blolly confounded me when I first saw the tree for it was growing by itself in a park. The fruit is quite distinct, a…

• Blue Porterweed, Bottom Up!

  Stachytarpheta jamaicensis: Near Beer
  Should the civilized world come to an end and you have a hankering for a stout beer you’re in luck: You can make one…

• Blueberries, or Huckleberry’s Kin

  Vacciniums: Am I Blue?

  Blueberrying was a family tradition. The only debate was did you pick them clean, or did you pick leaves, bugs and all then clean…

• Botanical Bachelor

  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.…

• Bottlebrush Tree:
• Bougainvilleas:     Bougainvilleas are often referred to as a toxic plant. 

I’m often asked during my classes why I mention many plants that can be used to make tea. There are two answers:

• Brookweed: Brookweed is an edible plant few know a lot about these days. Even Professor Daniel Austin, who managed to write 909 pages about ethnobotany, could only scrape up one paragraph.

• Brown Anoles  (3)

  “Did you clean them” I asked a friend who might want to remain anonymous.

  “No” he said.

  “You cooked them whole?”

  “Yes.”

  “You ate them head, tail and…

• Browne’s Savory: Clinopodium Browneii

  The Mighty Minty Micromeria Browneii

  Sometimes in central Florida you will drive past a car accident on the interstate, or another road, and smell…

• Budget Cut Benefits

  Two effects of the economic times are influencing foraging. First is an increase in the number of people who are putting food on the table by foraging. The…

• Bug-a-Boo’s or Grubs Up  (5)
  On this site are several articles about edible insects (among other creatures.) Below is an expanding collection of more than 50 edible insects. I plan to…

• Bulrush Bonanza  (3)

  Cattail’s Maligned Companion: The bulrush has a public relations problem. It found in the same environment as the cattail, can be used the same way, and tastes…

• Bunchberry Brunch

  Munching Cornus canadensis/unalaschkensis
  Discussing things little ears shouldn’t hear, they barely interrupt their conversations to pick a low Bunchberry from…

• Bunya Pine: The Australian Aboriginals knew a good thing when they tasted it. So did the immigrants. It’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t like the taste of Bunya Pine nuts. But you will find people who don’t like to clean up after it because the ancient species sheds sharp leaves and heavy cones.
• Burdock Banquet

  Arctium minus: Burdock’s Plus Side
  I have a confession to make: When I was a kid I had a miniature corn cob pipe. And in it I smoked dried burdock leaf… I…

• Buttercups:  Buttercups are usually considered not edible.

• Cabbage Palm, Sabal Palmetto  (4)

  Heart of Palm and Controversy
  The state tree of Florida isn’t a tree, but it is a weed of many edible parts.

  The Sabal palmetto, actually an overgrown…

• Cactus: Don’t Be Spineless  (3)

  Nopalea Cochenillifera: Cactus Cuisine
  Be brave when you collect cactus.

  Of course, good gloves and tongs help. With those tools you can have a very…

• Caesar Weed Sampler  (5)

  Urena Lobata: Cash crop to noxious weed
  Once it was an invited money-maker, now it is a hunted money spender: Caesar weed, cash crop to noxious weed.

  We have…

• Camphor Tree: Cinnamon’s Smelly Cousin

  Campy Camphor: Not Just For Grandma

  One would never guess Camphor trees are not native to Florida, or the South. One also probably wouldn’t guess they…

• Candlestick Tree: If you are meandering through a botanical garden in a warm climate and you see a tree growing four-foot-long candles it might be Parmentiera cereifera.
• Candyroot
  I will be the first to admit my experience with Candyroot is very limited. In a flower book I carried with me on field trips some 20 years ago with Florida…

• Canna Confusion  (1)
  How many species of Canna are there? Used to be perhaps 100 but now there are 20 or so, plus one Scottish island with a …ah.. population problem. And…

• Cannibalism
  There is no way to approach the topic of cannibalism without offending someone. Apologies offered. Cannibalism, the last great social taboo, is committed…

• Canoeing Rock Spring’s Run & The Wekiva
  Canoes are the best way for you to sneak up on deer, unless of course you’re the kind of canoeist who uses the paddle and canoe like a drum set.On a…

• Can We Eat Grass?  That simple question has a complex answer: Yes, no, and maybe.  It’s a topic I explored in a recent Green Deane Newsletter and the basis for this article.

• Carolina Bristle Mallow  (1)

  Modiola caroliniana: A Bristly Drink
  No one knows how many species of edible plants there are in the world, or in North America. In the former the guess is…

• Carpetweed  (3)
  When it comes to Carpetweed you need to know only two things: It grows nearly everywhere, or will. And the plant above ground is edible. To quote Cornucopia…

• Cassia Clan aka Senna

  Cassia occidentalis: Faux Coffee & Greens
  You either cook the Cassia Clan right or they make you sick. Any questions?

  Now that I have your attention,…

• Cast Iron Cookery, Buying and Restoring  (3)

  Cast Iron Pans: Yesterday is tomorrow
  Many books have been written about cast iron cookware. I will try to say a few things here perhaps not said elsewhere.

  B…

• Cast Net Junkie

  I will admit to being a cast net junkie.

  Some people collect coins or stamps. I collect cast nets. I started throwing nets some 30 years ago and have been…

• Cast Nets: Throwing Your Weights Around

  Throwing Your Trouble Away
  I love cast netting. I own five of them and rarely come home empty handed. I also never throw for bait: I go for the…

• Cattails – A Survival Dinner  (3)

  Cattails: Swamp Supermarket
  The United States almost won WWII with cattails.

  No green plant produces more edible starch per acre than the Cat O’ Nine…

• Caulerpa

  Caulerpa: Warm-Water Salad and Pest
  Caulerpa ssp.would seem to be a paradox. Eaten around the world by thousands for thousands of years but called a killer…

• Cereus Today Not Tomorrow

  Getting Down To Cereus Business

  There are three things irritating about Cereus other than their spines: 1) several botanical names for the same plant; 2)…

• Ceriman, Delicious Monster

  Monstera deliciosa: Hmm Hmm Good!
  Large Delight. That’s what Monstera deliciosa means…. It was an edible I did not know about until pointed out to me by my…

• Chain of Contamination

  In police work there is the chain of possession. When evidence is collected, who has it, and where it’s kept is recorded constantly. With food we might call it…

• Chaya: The Spinach Tree  (7)

  Cnidoscolus aconitifolius: Tree Pot Herb
  I knew about Chaya long before I ever saw one.

  It’s in the Cnidoscolus genus and has two relatives in the…

• Che: Che is not the tree it used to be.

• Checkerberry cum Wintergreen

  The Teaberry Shuffle
  I saw Gary Vickerson eat an earthworm I found near a checkerberry plant. Personally I preferred the Checkerberry.

  Before I go any…

• Chestnuts: Chestnuts have done more than just disappear from the landscape: They have dropped out of our lives save for a token appearance at Christmas.

• Chewstick, White Root

  Gouania lupuloides: How to Get Chewed Out

  The modern toothbrush was unknown in Europe until 1498, the year it came from China. Before that people…

• Chickasaw Plum: Yum  (5)

  Chickasaw Plum: First Springtime Blossom

  Every spring, three wild plums put on a show locally: The Chickasaw, the Flatwood, and the American. They…

• Chickweed Chic  (11)

  Chickweed Connoisseurs
  My being green really paid off this spring: For the first time (2009) I have chickweed in my lawn. I don’t know how it got there but it…

• Chicory History

  Cichorium intybus: Burned to a Crisp
  Chicory was not a common plant where I grew up or where I live. But I remember the first time I saw it, in 1990, in a…

• Chinese Box-Orange, Tsau Ping Lak

  Atalantia buxifolia: Wine-Cake Thorn
  The Chinese Box-Orange is one of my botanical mysteries. I know it is edible but I don’t know how… But I may still…

• Chinese Elm Take out

  Chinese Elm: A tree that doesn’t go Dutch
  Sometimes a wild edible can be under your feet and you never notice, or in this case, over your head.

  Anyone with…

• Chinese Tallow Tree  (1)

  Popcorn Tree, Florida Aspen, Tallow Tree

  There is a lot of debate whether the white waxy aril of the Chinese Tallow Tree is edible or not…

• Chocolate Vine, Abeki: Any plant with “chocolate” in the name is sure to get attention. And when it’s also called an invasive species then even more so.

• Christmas & Maiden berries

  Crossopetalums: Edible Berries & Medicine

  When I was an undergrad in music it was a revelation to learn that by studying music you also studied history:…

• Christmasberry, Wolfberry, Goji  (1)

  Christmas, Wolf, Goji, They’re All Berries
  It’s called the Christmasberry even though it fruits in April, and while it is one of several “Christmas Berries”…

• Chufa For Two  (1)

  Cyperus esculentus, C. rotundus: Serious Sedges
  There are two edible Cyperus locally: One that tastes like hazelnuts and one that smells and tastes to me…

• Cider Barrel Rules  (2)
  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…

• Cider Hard, But Quick and Easy  (22)

  How To Make Hard Cider
  You can make hard apple cider the difficult way, or the quick and easy way. I prefer the easy quick way. I’ve made a lot of beer and…

• Citron Melon, Tsamma  (6)

  Citron Melons: Abandoned Preserves
  Are they edible?

  Even people who do not forage want to know if the little watermelons they see in citrus groves are…

• Civilized Food

  While making my purslane video I was thinking back to a family friend who refused to eat purslane because it was a “weed.”

  It had taken over about one third…

• Climbing Fig, Creeping Fig  (3)
  If there is one thing about the Internet that irritates the sap out of me it is how mistakes proliferate rather than get corrected. I have ranted about…

• Clover, Available Around The World  (7)

  Clover, Available Around The World
  Hay may be for horses, but clover is for people…well…. almost.

  I was forever nibbling on clover blossoms when I…

• Coco-Plums

  Chrysobalanus icaco: Multi-Colored Fruit
  Coco-plums are three quarters patriotic: They can be red, white, or blue ( and yellow.)

  Actually, the “blue” is deep…

• Coconuts: It’s A Matter of Degrees

  Coconut, An Equatorial Palm
  Popular media and commercial production have made the coconut a common cultural item, even if you live thousands of miles away…

• Codium Compendium

  Codiums: Edible around the world
  Oceanographers like to call Codium a minor seaweed because it is not commercially exploitable. Yet where it is found around…

• Common Reed  (1)
  Some 20 years ago I pondered upon the identity of what appeared to be a very tall grass in a former marlpit in Port Orange, a few miles south of Daytona…

• • Cooking Like A Caveman

    The Mesolithic Era is not a sexy topic that will win friends and influence people at parties. But, it is something foragers should think about. If you are a…

  • Cooking without Pots or Pans  (2)

    Mesolithic Cooking: It’s the Pitshttps://www.eattheweeds.com
    How do you cook without pots or pans?

    It’s a question our distant ancestors never asked because pots and pans didn’t…

www.eattheweeds.com

• Coontie Courage

  Zamia Floridana: Making Toxins Edible
  This plant is included here in case 1) society falls apart; 2) You live in Georgia or Florida and need starch…

• Coquina: Tasty Tiny Clam
  Coquina: Donax: Good Eats
  Ounce for ounce there is probably no more delicious seafood than Coquina. The problem is getting an ounce of it, so we usually…

• Coral Bean: Humming Bird Fast Food
  Erythrina herbacea: Part Edible, Part NotThe (eastern) Coral Bean is one of those damned if you do, and damned if you don’t kind of things. Parts of…

• Coral Vine

  Antigonon leptopus: Creeping Cuisine
  The Antigonon leptopus ( an-TIG-oh-non LEP-toh-puss) inspires local names everywhere it grows: Tallahassee Vine, Honolulu…

• Corn Poppy
  Several plants have relatives whose reputations are difficult to live down. The Natal Plum is one. Related to the oleander the delicious plum suffers from…

• Corn Smut:   Mexican Truffles. Corn Smut. Raven Scat.  Ustilago maydis gets more unappetizing the further one goes down its list of names. The Aztecs called it huitlacoche.  The Mexicans call it a delicacy.

•  Crabgrass Was King  (3)

  Forage, Grain, Flour, Manna, Pest
  Americans did two interesting things when they moved from the farm to suburbia: They surrounded their homes with toxic…

• Cranberries, Lingonberries

  Get Your Annual Vaccinium Every Year
  Frozen cranberries are just as sour as fresh ones.

  I know that because when I was a kid skating on frozen ponds in Maine…

• Creeping Cucumber: Melothria Pendula  (2)

  Cute Cuke! Melothria Pendula

  The Melothria pendula is a little cucumber with a big reputation.

  That said, when it comes to the “creeping cucumber”…

• Crowfoot Grass, True Grits

  Dactyloctenium aegyptium: Staple Grain
  Grasses can be a pain in the …ah… grass…

  First, books about grasses are few and incredibly expensive. Next,…

• Dad’s Applewood Pipes  (3)
  Time edits your memories. It sands off the rough edges that were once painfully sharp. It makes some moments clearer by evaporating the fog of being…

• Dahlia Pinnata
  Here’s the good news: At least one species of Dalhia has edible roots. Here’s the bad news, there are some 20,000 cultivars, maybe even thousands more. A…

• Dandelions: Hear Them Roar  (3)
  Dandelion Wine and Coffee and SaladDandelions and I go back a long ways, more than half a century.When I was very young in Maine my mother…

• Dayflowers, Often One Petal Shy  (4)

  Commelina diffusa: What a day for a dayflower
  Common names can be a headache when one is trying to index a plant. The plant to the lower right is commonly…

• Daylily Dilemma  (3)

  Daylily: Just Cloning Around
  The daylily, a standard plant in foraging for a century or more, has become too much of a good thing and now presents a significan…

• Dead Man’s Fingers
  Decaisnea fargesii: True Ghoul Blue
  There are three Dead Man’s Fingers: A seaweed, a mushroom, and a shrub, all so-called because of the way they…

• Does Anyone Know What Time It Is?  (2)
  It is time for my semi-annual rant and wish that G.V. Hudson had a different hobby. Hudson, a New Zealander, collected insects and was a shift worker. In…

• Does The Nose Know?

  What Does a Word Smell Like?

  During nearly every class I have students smell three or four plants — depending upon the season — and I ask them what common…

• Dog and Cat  (1)
  Most Westerners would starve than eat their pet, and understandably so. There is a tacit agreement between pets and their owners. In exchange for putting…

• Doveweed

  Murdannia nudiflora: Tiny Dayflower Kin
  In India the Doveweed is a famine food. That should give you some idea of how it lines up in the culinary kingdom. The…

• Drymaria Cordata, Tropical Chickweed  (3)

  Drymaria cordata: Kissing cousin chickweed
  Drymaria cordata is one of those plants that confounds the mind. You know what it resembles: Chickweed. It has one…

• Duckweed

A Weed Most Fowl. Do ducks eat duckweed? Yes and no. Do humans eat duckweed? Yes and no. Domestic ducks tend to eat duckweed, wild ones don’t.…

• Dulse for Dinner

Foragers tend to ignore seaweed.

• Ear Tree, Sound Food

  Lend Me An Ear Tree

  Just about anyone who has spent anytime in a warm climate will some day find on a sidewalk a black seed pod that looks like a human…

• Earthworms  (7)

  Cooking with Earthworms
  The cartoon strip BC once had its peg-leg poet write: “The bravest man I ever saw was the first one to eat an oyster raw.”

• Eastern Gamma Grass:   Someone who supposedly knew their grasses wrote there are no toxic native North American grasses.

• Eastern Red Bud: Pea Pods Tree  (5)
  Cercis canadensis: In The Bud of TimeIt’s one of those trees that if you don’t see it at the right time you’re not looking for it the rest of the year.…

• Eating In Season  (1)
  There is little doubt that eating certain fiddlehead greens can significantly increase ones chances of cancer. In fact, science says they cause cancer. On…

• Edible Cultivated Flowers: All 20 articles in one article

• Edible Flowers: Part One  (1)Nasturtium, Calendula, Spanish Needles, Arugula, Squash, Cilanto, Bee Balm, Carnation, Dandelion, Lilac
  Which blossom will be your favorite edible…

• Edible Flowers: Part Two  (9)Tulips, Yucca, Begonias, Blue Porterweed, Queen Ann’s Lace, Dill, Gladiolas, Wapato, Impatiens, CitrusTulips are one of those wonderful flowers you…

• Edible Flowers: Part Three  (2)Mayflower, Chrysanthemum, Cornflower, Rose, Daylily, Elderberry, Chicory, Johnny-Jump-Ups, Linden, BananaA rite of spring in the frozen north, or at…

• Edible Flowers: Part Four

Spiderwort, Marigolds, Rosemary, Smartweed, Pineapple Weed, Chamomile, False Roselle, Lavender, Forsythia, Borage

• Edible Flowers: Part Five

Apple, Fuchsia, Sweet Goldenrod, Basil, Gorse, Bauhinia, Eastern Redbud, Angelica, Honeysuckle, Eastern Coral Bean
Apple Blossom
Every seed in every apple…

• Edible Flowers: Part Six  (1)Burnet, Magnolia, Fennel, Garden Sorrel, Tansy, Pink Wood Sorrel, Sunflower, Pineapple Guava, Prickly Pear, PansiesBurnet (Sanguisorba minor) is…

• Edible Flowers: Part Seven  (1)Scarlet Runner Bean, Peony, Hyacinth Bean, Clover, Jasmine, Chervil, Water Hyacinth, Plantain Lily, Meadowsweet, Perennial PhloxScarlet Runner Bean is…

• Edible Flowers: Part Eight

  Society Garlic, Anise Hyssop, Black Locust, Gardenia, Fragrant Water Lily, Strawberry, Marsh Mallow, Maypops, Milkweed, Hollyhocks

  It’s clearly not…

• Edible Flowers: Part Nine  (1)Mahoe, Moringa, Pineapple Sage, Plum, Hawthorn, Cattail, Papaya, Purslane, Tuberose, Wisteria
  Mahoe’s Blossoms Change Color
  One of the more fascinating…

• Edible Flowers: Part Ten

Alliums, Oregano, Pinks, Peas, Okra, Galium, Ginger, Scented Geraniums, Primrose, Mustard/RadishThe author of “Florida’s Incredible Wild Edibles” Dick…

• Edible Flowers: Part Eleven

Coral Vine, Citron Melon, Milkweed Vine, Dayflower, Evening Primrose, Kudzu, Stock, Dame’s Rocket, Freesia, Dendrobium phalaenopsisThe Coral Vine has…

• Edible Flowers: Part Twelve  (2)Forget-Me-Nots, Calamint, Mimosa Silk Tree, Clary Sage, Petunia x hybrid, Balloon Flower, Yarrow, Corn Poppy, Daisy, Sweet AlyssumThe story I heard…

• Edible Flowers: Part Thirteen  (1)Sesbania Grandifolia, Lemon Verbena, Szechaun Buttons, Horseradish, Tea Olive, Tiger Lily, Currants, Honewort, Thyme, Indian Paint BrushSesbania…

• Edible Flowers: Part Fourteen  (2)
  Manzanita, Rose of Sharon, Tea, Campanula, Artichoke, Saffron, Samphire, Sage, Parsley, Common MallowWestern states often seem to get short-changed in…

• Edible Flowers: Part Fifteen

Mango, Catnip, Pignut, Lovage, Salsify, Hairy Cowpea, Fritillary, Mint, Cow Slip, BirchDid you know mangoes and poison ivy are botanical kissing…

• Edible Flowers: Part Sixteen

Oregon Holly Grape, Snapdragon, Caesar’s Weed, Golden Alexanders, Loroco, Safflower, White Sagebrush, Puget Balsam Root, Yellow Commelina, Bitter Gourd

• Edible Flowers: Part Seventeen

Black Salsify, Coltsfoot, Yellow Pond Lily, Mexican Hyssop, Carambola, Baobob, Kapok, Durian, Italian Bugloss, BlueweedEdible plants collect a lot of…

• Edible Flowers: Part Eighteen  (7)

  Spring Beauty, Chickweed, Alpine Cress, High Bush Cranberry, Columbine, Hyssop, Musk Hyacinth, White Trout Lily, Yellow Adder’s Tongue, Aloe

  The Spring…

• Edible Flowers: Part Nineteen  (2)

  Tulip Tree, Eucalyptus, Melaleuca, King’s Spear, Gunnison Mariposa, Sego Lily, Star of Bethleham, Forest Lily, Guinea Arrowroot, Neem Tree

  The blossom…

• Edible Flowers: Part Twenty

Chinese Perfume Plant, Queensland Silver Wattle, Cloves, Chinese Lotus, Blue Lotus, Screwpine, Turpentine Tree, Sweet Autum Clematis, St. Anthony’s Turnip, Quince

• Edible Wild Flowers:

All 20 articles in one article

• Eels
  Eels: Lunch, Slip Sliding Away…
  I can remember the first time I caught an eel. It was in the Royal River in Pownal Maine, using an earthworm on the…

• Eggs

Eggs for Survival and Food
Eggs would seem like a simple foraging topic and it is, and it is not. My copy of the U.S Department of the Army…

• Elaeagnus Et Cetera

  Edible Elaeagnus
  First it was “poisonous.” Then it was “not edible.” Later it was edible but “not worth eating.” Actually, it’s not toxic but tasty, and easy…

• Elderberries: Red, White and Blue  (10)

  Sambuca’s Fine For Elderberry Wine
  Start your New Year off right with a glass of elderberry wine or elderberry blossom champagne. Don’t have any?…

• Epazote: Smelly Food of the Gods
  Mexican Tea, Dewormer: EpazoteHere is my dedication to being comprehensive: I am going to write about a plant I do not like.Why don’t I like…

• Eryngo, Tough Sweetie

  Eryngiums: Elizabethan Eryngo Candy

  While the edible versions are not widely distributed in North America, Eryngo (ERR-in-go) was too pretty a name to be…

• Evening Primrose  (5)

  Oenothera biennis: Foraging Standby

  The Common Evening Primrose has long been a foraging standby and for a century or so was a common vegetable found in…

• Experience and Judgment

  Sometimes a toxic plant can give even an experienced forager reason to pause.

  When I was making a video last week I saw a beautiful growth of watercress,…

• False Dandelions For Lunch  (2)

  Pyrrhopappus, Hypochoeris: Dandelion Impostors
  Most people don’t notice False Dandelions because they have the real thing. But here in the South where…

• False Hawksbeard

  Crepis Japonica: Seasonal Potherb
  If the Crepis fits….wear….ah…eat it

  Crepis japonica gets no respect. You won’t find it in field guides on edible…

• False Roselle  (1)I can’t do a stir-fry without visiting a tree. Actually, the False Roselle is a shrub not a tree but the point is made. Its leaves have just the…

• Fiddlehead Ferns, Signs of Spring

  Fiddlehead Fanatics
  If poke weed tests your foraging bravery, fiddleheads test your foraging philosophy.

  Pokeweed can kill you within hours if you make a…

• Fiddlewood  (1)

  Citharexylum fruticosum: Edible Guitar
  The Fiddlewood tree is not high on the list of edibles. As some authors state, only kids eat the fruit, lots of seed,…

• Field Testing Plants for Edibility  (7)

  I am dead set against it because it can kill you. I will make a large argument against it, and a small argument for it.

  “Field testing” is running through a…

• Figs, Strangler, Banyan and Strangler  (4)

  Wild Ficus: Who Gives An Edible Fig?
  It’s only 90 miles to the east, and 117 to the west, but the Strangler Fig and Banyan trees will grow farther south and…

• Finding Caloric Staples  (8)
  An Australian study tells us that modern day hunter gatherers get  two thirds of their food from animals, one third form plants.

• Firebush:
  The Firebush is probably one of the most commonly planted unknown edibles. They are usually arranged in the landscape…

• Fireweed Sale  (1)

  Erechtites hieraciifolia: Edible Pile Driver

  When I go to Greece I always stay a few days in Athens to get used to the time change and visit in-town…

• Fish Sauce and Rotten MeatFish Sauce, Rotten Meat, and Other Garbage
  There was a great scene from an episode of Barney Miller, a popular sitcom in the 70’s based in a…

• Fishtail Palms  (3)

  Caryota: Fishy Toxic Palms

  Often the botanical name of a species tells you nothing about the plant. Magnolia comes to mind. It’s a person’s name. However…

• Five Mile Walk

  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.

  Whe…

• Flamboyant FuchsiaMention “fuchsia” and most folks who recognize the word will think of a bright color. Personally I think of Fuchsia’s edible fruit and flowers.…

• Flowering Rush

  In one area of its native range — Israel — it’s endangered becauses of dwindling habitat. In another part of the world it is an invasive weed, and you can…

• 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…

• 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…

• Foraging for Beginners

  I was asked to write a short piece for a survivalist blog on getting started in foraging:
  How are a Musician and a Botanist Alike?
  As a professional musician I…

• Foraging in Florida  (1)

  Of all the “survival” skills foraging is probably the most difficult to learn, or certainly the one that takes the most time and personal fortitude. It is one…

• Foraging Myth Busting  (3)

  As many of you already know I am highly critical of the Internet as a source of information on foraging. This is not to say there isn’t quality information…

• Forsythia Foraging For Forsythia
  If you study the eating habits of North American Indians you learn one thing quite quickly. They weren’t mono-green eaters.…

• Garlic Mustard: Gather Garlic Mustard now for pesto or it may disappear presto… well… maybe not immediately but if one university succeeds Garlic Mustard will become hard to find or extinct in North America.

• Galinsoga’s Gallant Soldiers
  Galinsoga ciliata: Quickweed is fast foodQuickweed does not look edible or gallant. In fact, it looks like a daisy that lost a fight. But it, and a…

• Gar: Treasured Trash Fish  (1)

  Eating Gar, a Taste of the Primitive
  There are two things you need to know about the Gar. The first is that it is very edible, really. The second is that…

• Geiger Tree, Scarlet Cordia
  Cordia sebestena: Foraging Geiger Counter
  Foragers eat the mild fruit of the Geiger Tree and care not about the particulars. Botanists care about particular…

• Getting To The Leaf Of The Problem

  Why sudy with someone? Because student foragers see what they want to see rather than what’s in front of them. Let me give you consistent example.

  There are…

• Giant Taro
  One can ignore large leaves for only so long, and the Alocasia macrorrhiza has big leaves, up to four feet long. As one might suspect, it also has a large…

• Ginkgo: Putrid Perfection

  Going Nuts Over Ginkgo Biloba Nuts

  Though the Army sent me to Japan I didn’t see my first Ginkgo biloba (GINK-go bye-LOW-buh) tree until I attended the…

• Glasswort Galore  (3)

  Salicornia bigelovii, Brackish Nibble
  Glasswort does not sound like breaking glass at all, though it does crunch a bit.

  Salicornia bigelovii (sa-li-KOR-nee-a…

• Golden Dead Nettle  (1)
  Lamiastrum is in the eye of the beholder.If you want a ground cover that will grow in dry, shady places, Lamiastrum is exactly what you’re looking for.…

• Golden Rain Tree

  Showers of Golden Rain Tree

  The scallions didn’t have a chance.

  My Taiwanese friend liked to grow scallions in a postage stamp garden in her back…

• Goldenrod Glorified  (1)

  Solidago Odora: Liberty Tea

  After the Boston Tea Party of 1773 the colonists had only one good alternative: Goldenrod tea, and not just any Goldenrod,…

• Gooseberries

A century can make a lot of difference.

•       Goosegrass, Cleavers, Bedstraw  (1)

Galium aparine: Goosegrass on the Loose

You don’t find Goosegrass. It finds you.

Covered with a multitude of small hooks, Goosegrass, Galium…

• Gopher Apples: Not Just For Tortoises Anymore
  If you like the taste of pink bubble gum, you’ll like gopher apples, if you can find themWhy can’t you find them? Because nearly every woodland…

• Gorse, of Course

  Ulex europaeus: Edible Gorse or Furze Pas
  Gorse has edible flowers. It also has thorns… Really bad thorns.

  In August 2005 an Englishman, Dean Bowen,…

• Gout Weed  (6)
  Gout Weed does not sound too appetizing. Nor do some of its other names: Ground Ash, Ashweed, Pot Ash, White Ash, Ground Elder, Dog Elder, Dwarf Elder,…

• Gracilaria, Graceful Redweed

  Gracilaria: The pot thickens
  People eat a lot of seaweed. They just don’t know it. In the industry it is called covert consumption vs overt consumption. What…

• Grapes of Path  (3)

  Vitis: Wild Grapes
  Who ever first wrote the phrase “grapes of wrath” certainly must have been trying to identify a particular grape vine.

  Grapes are at the…

• Grass and Tree War  (1)
  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…

• Great Grandmother Cat  (1)

  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…

• Green Deane’s Bio, and Oliver, Too  (1)

  If you have any comments or suggestions please send them to GreenDeane@gmail.com. The B&W picture is from a Christmas long ago. That’s Tinkerbell on my…

• Green Deane’s Videos On You Tube
  While these videos are still on You Tube and will soon be on DVDs, these links below do not work. In creating the page one character was dropped from every…

• Ground Cherry, Wild Husk Tomatoes, Almost  (2)

  Physalis: Tomato’s Wild Cousin
  I discovered ground cherries quite by accident.

  It was back in the last century. I raided a particular field…

• Ground Ivy  (2)
  Most of the time when someone mentions Ground Ivy the comment usually is something like “How do I get rid of the damned stuff?” Here at ETW we have have…

• Groundnuts 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…

• Groundnuts: Anti-Cancer Treat  (3)

  Groundnuts: Dig ’em
  I will never forget the first time I dug up Apios americana, groundnuts. I got poison ivy. Oddly it showed up in the crook of one elbow,…

• Grub-A-Dub-Dub
  It had to happen. If you forage for wild foods at some point you run in to grubs and related insects and you wonder… edible? And once you’re past…

• Guinea Grass Panic Attack

  Panicum maximum and then some
  I eat grass. Actually we all do — rice, wheat — but my local trail nibble is Guinea grass, a relative to millet. I’d like to…

• Guinea Pigs, Cavy, Cuy
  Peruvians eat more than 65 million guinea pigs every year. That should answer any question about edibility.Sixty-five million guinea pigs (a 2005…

• Hairy Cowpea  (4)
  It’s called a Cowpea but it’s not THAT cowpea, and it has a famous relative that no one calls by its botanical name.So which Cowpea is it? Vigna…

• Halloween Editorial  (2)

  Halloween today is the most debatable of non-holiday holidays. With a past that perhaps goes back to Roman times it became in the Christian era All Hallows…

• Hardy Orange: Is the Hardy Orange edible? That depends on how hungry you are, or which century you live in.

• Have Dewberry, Will Travel

  Dewberries: Rubus Trivialis

  Dewberries go far in the world, for a lowly vine. They can reach up to 15 feet long, one node root at a time.

  Essentially a…

• Hawthorne Harvest

  The Crataegus Clan: Food & Poison
  The very first Hawthorn I ever saw — and the only one I knew for quite a while — grew on the other side of the dirt…

• Henbit: Top of the pecking order  (2)

  Henbit: Springtime Salad Green and More

  It was a zig and a zag for me. I heard the name as an edible for many years and saw the plant often but never…

• Hercules’ Club: Speak Softly But…

  Hercules’ Club: Zanthoxylum Clava-Herculis

  I sometimes feel sorry for my neighbors, who have lawns of decapitated grass. I’m sure my wild-looking…

• Hickory Harvest  (2)

  Cayra coffee, or Hickory Java
  Hickories are not a migraine, but when you’re learning trees hickories can be a headache.

  Just as plums and cherries are bothin…

• High Bush Cranberry  (1)
  I miss High Bush Cranberries. They don’t grow within a thousand miles of here, and they aren’t really cranberries. But they are hearty and familiar fare in…

• Hit With A Plank  (1)

  There’s an old joke. A man had a mule sit down under a load. Mules can be very stubborn. And despite all his efforts the man couldn’t get the mule to get up. I…

• Hollies: Caffein & Antioxidants  (4)

  Holly Tea With Vitamins A & C

  This time of year in the South — late fall, early winter —some of the hollies are so scarlet with berries that even…

• Honeysuckle Heaven

  Lonicera japonica: Sweet Treat
  The honeysuckle family is iffy for foragers. It has edible members and toxic members, edible parts, toxic parts, and they mix…

• Hornbeam, Ironwood, Blue Beech

  Carpinus caroliniana: Musclewood
  British author Ray Mears must have been thinking of the Hornbeam when he said a forager mustn’t pass up food no matter how…

• Horse Meat
  “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.”We’ve all heard the phrase, and it comes from when horse was on the menu. It was rather significant phrase to me as…

• Horsemint, Spotted Beebalm

  Monarda Punctata: Bergamot’s Bud
  First the good news: Horsemint makes a nice, intentionally weak tea. Stronger brews are used in herbal medicine. The…

• Horseweed, Mare’s Tail  (1)

  Conyza canadensis: Herb, Fire, Food
  Conyza will light your fire!

  If you’ve ever made fire with a bow and drill — you know, the Boy Scout way — you also know…

• How Do Things Pan Out?
  When Europeans began to migrate into tracts of North America what was the one thing they had the native Americans wanted more than anything else? Rifles?…

• How Ungreen Of Us  (29)
  I’m reaching retirement age. I’m also reaching the point of being tired of being told how green we are today and how ungreen we were in the past. Oh? When…

• Huckleberry, Blueberries Kissing Cousin
  Gaylussacia: Huckleberry History
  What’s the difference between a blueberry and a huckleberry?There’s almost an easy answer. The huckleberry…

• Hyacinth Bean

  Hyacinth Bean: Purple Protein, and More
  I’ve never understood the brouhaha over the Hyacinth Bean. Is it edible or is it not?

• Hydrilla:     There is only one species of Hydrilla, verticillata.

• Ignite of the Iguana  (6)

  The cookbook’s title says it all. South Florida, parts of Texas and Hawaii have iguana issues. While teaching a class in West Palm Beach last fall I could not…

• Indian Pipes, Gold, and Emily Dickinson  (8)
  Monotropa is almost a monotypic genus. Instead of having one species in the genus there are two: Monotropa uniflora and Monotropa hypopithys.Most…

• Indian Strawberry  (5)

  Potentilla indica: Mistaken Identity
  One of the first things my uncle’s second wife said to me when I moved from Maine to Florida was “they have strawberri…

• Ipomoea: Water, Land & See in Gardens

  Glorifying Morning Glories
  Three of the pictures below are are not of the same Ipomoea. It’s three different species, but that should tell you something.…

• Is This Plant Edible?
  For a surprisingly simple question there is often a complicated answer. If it’s sea kale, then the answer is yes, top to bottom. It is edible. It is…

• Is wild taro in Florida edible?  (10)

  IS WILD TARO IN FLORIDA EDIBLE?
  “Wild Taro.” My research to date (fall, 2011)

  Is the wild taro in Florida edible? In one word, no. In two… may……

• It’s About Time  (1)

  I spend a lot of times in the woods, and also afloat. Three things you should always know in such environments are the cardinal directions, time of day, and…

• Ivy Gourd, Scarlet Gourd, Tindora  (2)

  Coccinia grandis: Cucumber’s Versatile Kin
  I was riding my motorcycle one day when I rumbled over a raised railroad track in an industrial area and to my…

• Jabuticaba: In it’s native Brazil the Jabuticaba is by far the most popular fruit.
• Jack-in-the-Pulpit, and Jill

  Arisaema triphyllum: Jack and Jill and No Hill
  For a little plant there’s a lot to write about with the Jack-In-The-Pulpit. Where does one start? What does…

• Jambul  (1)Syzygium: A Jumble of Jambul
  The Jambul tree makes you wonder what people were thinking.For a half a century or so the United States Department of…

• Japanese Knotweed: Dreadable Edible  (9)Japanese Knotweed gets no respect. Nearly everywhere it grows it’s listed as a prolific, noxious, invasive, dangerous bad-for-the-world,…

• Jelly Palm, Pindo’s Alter Ego  (4)

  Pindo Palm: Jelly, Wine and Good Eats

  Soon it will be time to go to the cemeteries. My visits are not memorial but rather culinary: I’ve got…

• Jellyfish

Stomolophus meleagris: Edible Jellyfish
“Music to the teeth” is what the Malaysians call them.Americans may not eat jellyfish, but the…

• Jerusalem Artichoke: Root Them Out  (5)
  There used to be a huge patch of Jerusalem Artichokes here in Central Florida beside the Interstate. Now they’re under a new exit ramp, and that was the…

• Jerusalem Thorn, Paloverde

  Parkensonia aculeata’s Thorny Past
  As foragers we are indebted to past writers and at the same time constrained by them.

  People who chronicled how Native…

• Jujube TreeZiziphus zizyphys: The Misspelled Jujube
  If you don’t find the Jujube tree, it will find you. The Jujube is covered with long, sharp thorns. They…

• Jumbie Bean, White Lead Tree  (2)

  Leucaena leucocephala: Food and Fodder
  Professor Julia Morton, the grand dame of toxic and edible plants in Florida, had this to say about the Jumbie…

• Juneberry

  Amelanchier arborea: Busting Out All Over
  Juneberries are as American as apple pie. In fact, they are more American than apples.

• Junipers:  In the cobweb recesses of my mind I have two memories of junipers

• Katuk Kontroversy  (2)

  Edible Katuk: Sauropus androgynus

  Katuk grows reluctantly in my yard. It likes truly tropical climes and I am on the subtropical/temperate line. But it’s…

• Kochia
  Immigration brought weeds from around the old world to the new world. Quite a few of them came from southern Russia — the grassy steppes — to the…

• Kousa Dogwood  (2)
  Cornus kousa: A Dog-gone-good Dogwood

The Kousa Dogwood is one of those plants that makes you ask: What is it?Its large, bumpy, red fruit looks like a…

• Kudzu Quickie  (4)Kudzu: Pueraria montana var. lobataThe government tells me that what grows up the street isn’t there.It’s kudzu, you know, the plant that…

• 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…

• Language of Flowers: A flower is a flower is a flower. But in Victorian England, one of the most self-repressed societies in modern times, the practice of using flowers to communicate was developed.

• Lantana  (3)

  Lantana camara: Much Maligned Nibble

  Ask anyone who has heard of the Lantana camara and they will tell you it is poisonous. And they are right. Unripe…

• Lawn Garden

  Can you have a “garden” that you ignore?

  I don’t see why not.
  Is That A Garden?
  Indeed, some might argue that is what my front lawn currently is. I really…

• Lemon Bacopa: Let’s Call It Lime Instead
  Lemon Bacopa, a misnamed edible nativeCall me cranky, but I think Lemon Bacopa has the wrong name.And, since it is wrongly named and no one comments on…

• Lemon Grass

  Cymbopogon citratus: A Real Lemon
  Technically Lemon Grass is naturalized in only one county in Florida, but you can find it in many yards and landscaping, and…

• Less Was Far More  (4)
  West of New Smyrna Beach, Florida, I stopped today and collected some thistle and took a few pictures. More than 50 years ago I marveled at the same plant…
• Lettuce Labyrinth  (9)

  Sorting Out Species
  Sorting out wild lettuce is one of the more difficult foraging tasks and may require you to watch a plant all season.

• Lion’s Mane

          I see Lion’s Mane (Hericium erinaceus) on the same oak log every fall at the same time to the day.

• Litchi Tomato

Foraging is a treasure hunt because with perhaps 6,000 edible species in North America there is always a surprise now and then such as the Litchi Tomato.

• Living off the Foraged Land

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

  That said, I know many survivalists. They tend…

• Locusberry

  Byrsonima lucida: Food and Medicine

  The Locusberry rises to the occasion. When the soil is poor it is a foot-high tree. When the soil is good, it can be…

• Looking for Lettuce
  I like my 14,000 subscribers, and the email I get. Many of the questions I can answer or I can refer the writer to where the answer can be found. But….…

• Loquat: Getting A Grip on Grappa  (2)
  Lovin’ Loquats: Eriobotryae Japonicae
  Long before there were couch potatoes there were couch Loquats.Loquats are homebodies. Most people who live beyond…

• Madeira Vine, Lamb’s Tail, Mignonette Vine  (1)

  Anredera cordifolia: Pest or Food Crop?
  The Madeira Vine is a love/hate relationship. You will either hate it — as many land owners and governments do — or…

• Mahoe, Sea Hibiscus

  Hibiscus tiliaceus: Edible Chameleon
  It’s difficult to find a hibiscus you don’t like, including the Mahoe.

  In fact, to this writer’s knowledge all…

• Mahonia Malange: When I first heard of the Mahonias it was a bit irritating. They’re widespread shrubs in the western United States and here I was in Florida. But as time revealed, we have a Mahonia here, just not a native.

• 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…
• Mallow Madness  (2)
  Lunch Landscaping: HibiscusMy mother’s favorite flower is the Rose of Sharon, which of course didn’t even go in one of my ears and out the…
• Mangrove Mystery  (1)

  Mangroves: Marvelous Muck Masters

  I did an unknown favor years ago that may stump some stuffy botanist in the near or distant future, and a mangrove…

• Maple Manna  (1)

  Maples: How Sweet It Is
  Maple Walnut Ice Cream. It’s amazing what you can do with two trees and a cow. It was the prime ice cream of choice when I was young.…

• Marijuana Machinations: You can’t rummage around the woods as a forager without running into someone’s marijuana patch.
• Marlberries and Ardisias kin

  Ardisias: Berries on the cusp of edible
  The Ardisias are a confusing family in Florida.

  There is the native Marlberry (Ardisia escallonioides) that has…

• Mayapple, Mandrake  (2)

  Podophyllum peltatum: Forgotten Fruit
  The first time I saw a mayapple I was certain something that strange had to be toxic, and it is, unless totally…

• Mayflowers, Trailing Arbutus

  Epigaea repens: Spring Sentinel and Nibble
  It was an annual family ritual. Every spring when the snow had finally melted we’d go through the low Maine…

• Maypops Mania  (6)

  Maypops: Food, Fun, Medicine
  As popular as they are, Maypops get stepped on a lot, but that doesn’t keep them down.

  They are one of five hundred kin in…

• Media Interviews With Green Deane

  This is Green Deane being interview for the local PBS station for Thanksgiving, 2009. This show was voted their best episode of the year. http://www.wmfe.org/au…

• Melaleuca, Tea Tree, Sweetener, Pharmacy
  The Melaleuca tree is the most invasive “weed” in the state of Florida, quite a feat when you consider there are…

• Mesquite  (1)

  Mesquite’s More Than Flavoring: It’s Food
  If Euell Gibbons was still around he might ask, “have you ever eaten a Mesquite tree?” rather than his famous…

• Milkweed Vine, Latexplant, Strangler Vine  (13)

  Morrenia odorata: Menace or Manna?
  One spring I was looking for poke weed when I spied a liana I had not seen before. It had a large fruit that looked…

• Milkweed, Common  (3)

  Asclepias: Some like it hot, some like it cold
  The question is to boil or not to boil.

  Actually that’s not quite accurate. There is general agreement…

• Milo, Portia Tree, Seaside Mahoe  (2)

  Thespesia populnea: Coastal Cuisine
  One of my uncles had the type of personality that where ever he hung his hat, that was home. The Milo is much the same…

• Mimosa Silk Tree  (7)

  Albizia julibrissin: Tripinnated Lunch
  I was drinking “Mimosas” — orange juice and champagne — about 20 years before I discovered the Mimosa tree was…

• Mole Crabs  (8)

  Emerita: Mole Crab Munchy Crunchies
  Mole crabs are probably the most common ugly food there is, though most people don’t know they’re edible.

  Fishermen…

• Mole Crickets and Lawns

  The name of my website is “Eat The Weeds (and other things too.)” If you wander around the long index — or click on the category “critter cuisine” — you…

• Mole Crickets, Kamaro  (1)

  Mole Crickets: Digging Your Lunch
  Nearly everyone knows crickets are edible — cooked — but few ever mention the ugliest of them all, the mole cricket.

• Monkey’s Apple: Monkey’s Apple is proof kids will eat anything.
• Monkey Puzzle Tree

  Lunch Drops In

  My good friend Saul is a luthier. He repairs premium wooden instruments. It is not unusual for him to be working on a Stradivarius or a…

• Monkeys and Weeds
  Put five monkeys in a large cage. Then put a step ladder in the cage with a banana on top. Soon the monkeys learn to go up the step ladder and get the…
• Moringa, More Than You Can Handle  (6)

  Moringa oleifera ….Monster…. Almost
  If you have a warm back yard, think twice before you plant a Moringa tree.

• Morels are perhaps the most foraged and prized fungi in North America.
• Motorcyclists and Mushroomists. I used to have a friend named Randy Armentrout. He died about 20 years ago of a brain tumor. We knew each other well and attended many a social function…
• Mountain Ash, Rowan: Long before Henry Potter Rowanwood wands were popular  ancients carried talismans of the tree to ward off evil and ate the fruit.
• Mugwort  (3)
  Like some other plants with famous relatives Mugwort gets lost in the negative publicity.Mugwort, Artemisia vulgaris, is completely over shadowed…
• Mulberry Express

  Mulberries: Glucose-controlling hallucinogen

  I used to get a lot of dates using mulberries.

  Not to sound sexist, but women like sweet food. And when…

• Musseling In:  His name was Hap Davis, gardener, woodsman, hunter, fisherman, teller of tall tales.
• Mustard, Wild, Tender And Tough  (2)

  Cutting the Wild Mustard: Brassica & Sinapis
  Lorenzo’s Oil and Canola, Too
  If you can’t find a wild mustard growing near you, you must be living in…

• Mustards, The Little
  Coronopus, Descurainia, Cardamine, Erucastrum & Sibara
  There are numerous “little mustards” that show up seasonally, to populate lawns and local…
• Nagi Tree, Japan’s Calm Tree

  Nageia nagi: Forgotten Landscape Edible

  I discovered the Nagi tree quite by accident, and added another edible to the list. I was in Mead Gardens in Winter…

• Nandina Not Bamboo

  Not So Heavenly Bamboo: Nandina
  It’s not heavenly nor is it a bamboo, but Heavenly Bamboo is an edible, barely.

  Naturalized in many part of the world…

• Nasturtiums: Nature’s Nose Nabber
  Peppery Nasturtiums Natives of Peru. Do the peppery nasturtiums make your nose twitch? Then you know how they got their common name. “Nasturtium” means…
• Natal Plums Num Num  (4)

  Natal Plum: Incredible Edible Landscaping

  A good reputation is hard to maintain when your closest relative has a reputation for killing people. That’s…

• New Jersey Tea

  Ceanothus americanus: Revolutionary Tea
  New Jersey Tea wasn’t always called that. It was Red Root Tea until the Boston Tea Party. With no tea from China…

• Non-Green Environmentalism  (1)
  Early on I developed two interests. One was foraging for wild plants. It assured me food where ever I went. The other was watching clouds, one of the few…

• Nostoc Num Nums

  Nostoc: Nasal Nostalgia and Edible, Too
  My website is “Eat The Weeds and other things, too.” Well this one of those other things. While I have put seaweed…

• Nutria, Coypu  (1)
• I have a close friend who’s Cajun. He said his family was so poor growing up in the bayou that if it moved they cooked it and threw it on rice. That…

• Nutrition or Food?

  The 20th century was a hundred years of significant changes in what we eat. In 1900 food was … well… food, and real. No food pretended to be something it…

• Oaxaca lemon verbena

  Lippia alba: Oaxaca lemon verbena
  It all started with a little tour of his back yard.

  He’s an aging Greek professor and doesn’t like lawn, so his back yard…

• Only Plant In Its Genus  (16)
  Call it an occupational hazard but I began to wonder one day how many genera were unique, that is, they had just one edible species in them, the so called…

• Osage Orange  (13)

  Maclura pomifera: The Edible Inedible
  Sometimes everybody is almost wrong.

  If you google “Osage Orange” or “Maclura pomifera” (mak-LOOR-uh pom-EE-fer-uh…

• Oxalis: How To Drown Your Sorrels  (2)
  Sorrels are like McDonald’s restaurants: No matter where you are on earth there’s one nearby.That’s because the sorrels, properly…

• Palmer Amaranth  (1)
  A farmer’s headache is not necessarily a forager’s delight.Palmer Amaranth (Amaranthus Palmeri) has been a foraged food for a long time. It was used…

• Palmetto Weevil Grub: Grugru

  Rhynchophorus cruentatus: Raw or Fried?
  Here’s what you’re looking for: A palm or plametto that is dying. The growing tip is dead, bent or otherwise…

• Pandanus: During several visits over the course of a year it looked like a large berm of tall grass, about the size and height of a one-story house.

• Papaya Proliferation

  Carica papaya: Survivalist plant

  Papaya comes from the grocery store, unless you live where it seldom freezes. Then it is another wild edible, naturalized in…

• Paper Mulberry  (2)

  Broussonetia papyrifera: Paper Chase
  If you are a forager, you will be told two things constantly: One is that the plant of your admiration is “poisonous.”…

• Partridgeberry: Split personality  (1)
  Mitchella repens: Madder BerryThe Partridgeberry will not save you from starving but it can make your salad prettier and might keep you alive or ease…

• Pawpaw picking up is rare  (8)

  Pawpaw Panache

  Finding your first pawpaw is a thrilling moment.

  I can remember exactly where it happened and when. It was the summer of 1987 in…

• Pellitory, Up Against The Wall Weed

  Pellitory: Parietaria is a Whiz
  Finding greens locally in the cooler months isn’t much of a challenge unless you’re looking for Pellitory . It likes to hid…

• Pennyroyal Florida Style  (2)

  Florida Pennyroyal: Piloblephis Rigida
  You will thoroughly enjoy tea made by Florida’s native pennyroyal, or maybe even a Mint Julep Floridana.

  An…

• Pennyworts Making Sense  (12)

  A Pennywort For Your Thoughts
  It’s one of those practices of civilization that plants with little flavor or calories — lettuce for example — are…

• Peperomia:  I went to college in Maine where winter lasts from about November 1st to October 31st.

• Peppergrass: Potent Pipsqueak  (3)

  Lepidium Virginicum: Bottlebrush Peppergrass

  There are two ways of thinking about peppergrass, either as a real neat wild treat, or an obnoxious, noxious…

• Perilla, Shiso   (2)
  The first Perilla I ever had came from a can, just like the kind sardines snuggle in. The leaves were very spicy and were used that way, as a spice. Later…

• Persimmon Provisions  (3)

  Persimmons: Pure Pucker Power
  About the only bad thing you can say about a persimmon tree is that it has pucker power, if you pick it at the wrong time.

• Pick Of The Littering

  If flowers could think they would view man as an errand boy. That floral perspective would also explain one of man’s more annoying habits.

  Scientist who…

• Pickerel Weed

  Pontederia cordata: In a PR Pickerel
  Pickerel Weed Primer
  If the Pickerelweed could commiserate, it would find a friend with the Natal Plum. The Natal…

• Pigeon Plums, Dove Plums, Pigeon Seagrape, Tie-TongueCoccoloba diversifolia: Seagrape Sibling
  The first time you see a Pigeon Plum it will look familiar. In the same genus as the Seagrape it shares a…

• Pigweed Potpourri  (7)

  Chenopodium album: Getting Goosed!
  My first recollection of Chenopodium album, pigweed, came around 1960 via a neighbor named Bill Gowan.

  Mr. Gowan was…

• Pillbugs, Woodlice, Roly Pollies  (4)
  Armadillidium vulgare: Land Shrimp
  What shall we call them? Roly Pollies? Pill Bugs? Woodlice? Sowbugs, or a half a dozen other names?They are…

• Pineapple Weed

  Matricaria matricarioides for Your Tea & Salad
  A hard-packed gravel driveway is the last place you would expect to find a delicate plant that makes an…

• Pining for You  (5)

  Pines: Not just for breakfast anymore
  Euell Gibbons became famous for asking, “have you ever eaten a pine tree?”

  A lot of folks had a laugh over…

• Plant An Alarm Clock

  I don’t need an alarm clock. I have a cardinal.

  I don’t know exactly which cardinal it is, and if I did I might be tempted to shoot him. Cardinals are early…

• Plants Can’t Run  (1)

  Plants can’t run. That’s why the vast majority of them are unpalatable or lethal. Guesstimates range from 5 to 10 percent of plants are edible. Let’s split the…

• Podocarpus macrophyllus  (4)Podocarpus: Your Own Hedge Fund
  One can’t learn everything at once, and so I came to know the Podocarpus macrophyllus late in my foraging…

• Poison Ivy Ponderings  (28)
  I did something this past week I have not done in some twenty years. I got poison ivy.Given what I do for a living, running around the wild all the…

• Poisonous and Irritating Plants of Florida  (4)

  Below is a circular published by the state of Florida in 1978. I think it is no longer in print though I have a hard copy. It is reproduced below. Visual…

• Pokeweed: Prime Potherb  (11)

  Can Be Deadly But Oh So Delicious: Pokeweed
  Poke weed will challenge your commitment to foraging.

  It is not the most commonly eaten food from a poisonous…

• Pony Foot: Are they edible? That is often asked about a little lawn plant called Pony Foot, or Dichondra carolinensis.
• Poplars and Aspens

  Populus deltoides: Popular Poplars and Aspens

  I know where there is one (1) Eastern Conttonwood. For a popular Poplar it is not common locally. Fortunately…

• Practicing Homelessness

  There are less Christmas parties this year than in the past, with economic conditions reducing the usual yuletide cheer. Still, there are some traditions.…

• Prepared for Life  (2)

  We met by accident in the woods. I had hiked for a few miles already and he had just entered the trail.

  When ever I go into the woods, or on water, I am…

• Prickly Apple, Apple Cactus, Fragrant Apple Cactus

  Harrisia Trio: Endangered Edibles All

  Just as it is important to know what to eat, it’s as important to know what not to eat, or if you do, how to do it…

• Puffballs, Small and Gigantic  (2)

  Lycoperdon perlatum: Edible Puffballs
  I avoided mushrooms for a long time, and with good reasons. Some of them are on par with cyanide and arsenic and…

• Purslane: Omega 3 Fatty Weed  (8)

  Purslane: Any Portulaca In A Storm

  Her name was Zona. She was a grand friend-in-law

  She had been a friend of the family for about a century. To be…

• Pyracantha Jelly and Santa’s Belly

  Firethorn: Pyracantha Coccinea
  I don’t think it is a coincidence that “ho ho ho bellies and Pyracantha jelly jiggle into the season just before…

• Pyrrolizidine on my Mind  (4)
  How much pyrrolizidine is too much? Or perhaps the better question is how little is too much?First, what is pyrrolizindine? Pyrrolizidine (pie-row-L…

• Quack Grass  (4)
  Plants of little use often have only one common name, or not even that. Plants that are valued or are a pest usually have too many names such Quack…

• QueenPalm: The Queen Palm and I got off on the wrong frond. Before I met one I had read it was toxic. There are a few toxic palms but the Queen Palm is not one of them.

• Radish, Mustard’s Wild Rough Cousin  (7)   Raphanus Raphanistrum: Radical Radis. The Wild Radish has an identity problem. It looks similar to it’s equally peppery cousin, the wild mustard. In…

• Ragweed: Some 18 generations ago — 600 years ago give or take a few centuries — some Natives Americans stopped cultivating a particular crop and may have moved on to maize. About 150 years ago — five generations — American farmers were raising crabgrass for grain when they, too, moved on to corn, the descendant of maize. So what crop did the Indians stop growing? Ragweed, the most hay-fever causing plant in the world.
• Raspberry Razz  (3)

  Rubus ideaus: Delicate Raspberry. Raspberries were the first wild fruit I noticed on my own and ate as a kid.

• Ravishing Radish Greens  (2)

  I didn’t cut the mustard this morning. I cut the radish… radish greens to be specific, Raphanus raphanistrum, said RA-fa-nus raf-an-ISS-trum.

  The only bad…

• Real Food Rules!  (3)

  This blog all started with hot dog relish.

  I happen to like sardines on whole wheat toast with onions and mustard. (Regardless of what you think of…

• Red Bay for all seasonings
  Persea borbonia, palustris, humilis, and americana, too

  Having a famous relative can make one grow in the shadows, as three Perseas know too well.There…

• Redflower Ragweed: The first time I saw Redflower Ragweed I thought I was seeing two species at once some weird combination of Tassel Flower and Fireweed. It’s way too big and has the wrong leaves to be a Tassel Flower but the blossoms remind one of a Tassel Flower but the rests of the plant looks life Fireweed/Burnweed.
• Reindeer Moss  (1)

  Edible Cladonia: What’s not to Lichen?
  Lichen can be harder to tell apart than twins in the dark. My guess my picture above is of Cladonia Evanii…

• Resources
  The quickest and safest way to learn foraging is with a local expert. You not only learn what there is to know but do not spend time learning things you…
• Ringless Honey Mushrooms: The first time I thought I saw the Ringless Honey Mushroom was on my neighbor’s lawn.
• Root Beer Rat Killer  (1)

  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.

• Rose Apple: The apple is in the Rose family but the Rose Apple is not though it can sometime taste like rose water… and watermelon… but not apples.
• Roses
  I’m not sure I found wild roses or they found me.I grew up in Maine. The local soil was usually either ground-up glacial sand, clay, which is decomposed…
• Rumex Ruminations  (1)
  Mainer Merritt Fernald, who was the Harvard wunderkind of botany from around 1900 to 1950, said all of the 17 native Rumex species in North America…
• Russian Thistle, Tumbleweed

  Salsola kali: Noxious Weed, Nibble & Green
  When you first encounter a Russian Thistle it is the very last plant you would consider edible. Wiry, tough,…

• Saffron Plum

  Sideroxylon: Chewy Ironwood
  The Saffron Plum is not yellow or a plum, that is, it is not a Prunus. And it is called a Buckthorn but it isn’t one of those…

• Saltwort, Turtle Weed and Reef Banana

  Batis Maritima: Salt of the Earth
  It has a dozen or more names, but no one is quite sure about its scientific name, Batis maritima, (BAT-is mar-IT-i-ma.)

  Fora…

• Sandspurs: Sandlot Sadists  (2)

  Sandspurs: Cenchrus’ Secret

  If I were ever to invent a torture it would be dragging someone naked through a field of sandspurs.

•  Sargassum Sea Vegetable  (1)

Sargassum: Not Just for Breakfast Any More
Sargassum — Gulf weed — comprises a huge number of seaweeds in all oceans, both bottom dwelling and free…

• Sassafras: Root Beer Rat Killer  (7)

  Sassafras Albidum: Beaux Gumbo

  Bet your sweet sassafras: If you’re on the young side ask anyone not on the young side: Root beer used to taste a lot…

• Satinleaf, Olive Plum

  Chrysophyllum oliviforme: “Chewy Olives”

  “Turn left at the Satinleaf.”

  That’s not an unusual direction in an area where Satinleafs grow, they are that…

• Saw Palmetto Saga  (4)

  Serenoa Repens: Weed to Wonder Drug
  Rotten cheese steeped in tobacco juice
  That’s how starving shipwrecked Quakers described the flavor of the saw palmetto…

• Sawgrass, A Cut Below The Rest  (1)

  Cladium jamaicense: Water finder

  In Wekiva Springs state park in Florida there is a high and dry stretch of scrub pine and palmetto bushes, and oddly,…

• Scarlet Runner Bean

  Two beans are grown for beauty, the Hyacinth Bean, edible with precautions, and the Scarlet Runner Bean, also edible.
  Humming Bird at “Emperor” Blossom
  It’s…

• Scorpions  (1)

  Southern Fried Scorpions
  If I were going to rely on scorpions in Florida for sustenance, I would starve to death.

  In over 30 years of rummaging…

• Sea Blite, Seepweed

  Suaeda linearis, maritima: Edible Blite

  While most people find Sea Blite next to the sea, I find Sea Blite on the other side of the barrier…

• Sea Buckthorn, SallowberrySea Buckthorn: Sour Source of Vitamin C
  If you are collecting Sea Buckthorn you’re probably cold.Just as some edibles are found only in tropical…

• Sea Club Rush  (2)

  Scirpus maritimus: a Tough Root to Crack
  If you mention Sea Club Rush among foragers they give you a very blank stare. Understandably so. It was a fall-back…

• Sea Kale
  Sea kale is nearly the perfect primitive food. It’s difficult to imagine it not being on primitive man’s menu.We know from middens that seafood was…

• Sea Lettuce, UlvaUlva: Sea Soup & Salad
  Ulva is the greenest seaweed you will ever see from shore, or in the sea for that matter.Ten species, all edible, are…

• Sea Oats

  Uniola paniculata: Feeling your sea oats
  Opinions vary on Sea Oats. Not on flavor. They taste good. The questions are, are they endangered or not, and which…

• Sea Oxeye: There are edible plants, and there are inedible plants. Then there are those that sit on the cusp of edibility: Edible but not tasty, edible in small quantities, edible but with a horrible texture, edible but strong-flavored.
• Sea Purslane, Salty Nibble, Potherb

  Sesuvium portulacastrum: Maritime Munch

  It looks like garden purslane on steriods growing in sand. And it grows all over the local beach, and other beaches…

• Sea Rocket Siblings

  The Cakile Clan: Seaside Edibles

  Food is where the water is, be it fresh or salt, and one of the waterway foods of North America is Sea Rocket. There are at…

• Sea-Grapes: Maritime Marvels  (4)

  Sea-Grapes: Costal Caterer

  A lifetime ago I spent many a night on a dark Florida beach near the Space Center sleeping out under Sea-Grapes.…

• Seminole Pumpkin

Cucurbita muschata: Seminole Edible
Unlike watermelons which are from Africa, pumpkins and their kin are North American. When Panfilo de Narvaez was…

• Seminole Wekiva Trail

  Seven-Mile Appetizer
  The squirrels are in hog heaven, if you’ll pardon the menagerie metaphor.

  It’s Thanksgiving, 2007, in central Florida and I…

• Sesbania Grandiflora  (1)
  Any plant called the Vegetable Hummingbird has to be written about.Sesbania grandiflora, has managed to work its way into warmer areas of the world…

• Seven Year Apple

  Genipa clusiifolia: An Acquired Taste

  Like a Suriname Cherry, you’ll either find the Seven Year Apple edible or disgusting. In fact, a lot of folks can’t…

• Sida, Wireweed  (5)
  Sida is barely edible. A member of the Mallow mob it’s an object de interest because it is also a significant herbal medication, of which I am totally…

• Silverhead, Beach Carpet  (1)

  Blutaparon vermiculare: Beach Potherb
  My first thought on seeing Silverweed “was what is clover doing growing on the beach.” Well, Silverweed isn’t a clover…

• Simpson Stopper

  Myricanthes fragrans: Nakedwood Twinberry
  I took me about a year to know the Simpson Stopper.

  While most people think of Florida as flat there’s actually…

• Skunk Vine

  Paederia foetida: Much Maligned Skunk Vine
  Sometimes botanists go a little too far, or at least Carl Linnaeus did when he named a particular vine Paederia…

• Slugs, Snails and Fresh Water Mollusks  (1)

  Are Slugs edible? What about Snails?
  There is only one rule you have to remember: When it comes to land snails, land slugs, and fresh water mollusks you must…

•   Smartweed 
  Polygonum punctatum: Smartweed. I can remember my first taste of a smartweed leaf… kind of like trying a piece of burning paper. Indeed,…

• Smilax: A Brier And That’s No Bull  (40)

  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…

• Snakewood, Nakedwood, Mauby  (1)

  Colubrina elliptica: Mauby has Moxie
  First there was Moxie, then Mauby… actually it was historically the other way around though few until now would know…

• Society Garlic  (3)
  Because I am asked about it all the time I decided to do an article on it: Yes, you can eat Society Garlic… well… most of it, maybe all of it.The…

• Solar Cooking

  Solar cooking. Something new under the sun
  Once you cook your first solar meal, you’re hooked.
  Does it cost less than conventional methods? It can, but…

• Sorrel: Not A Sheepish Rumex
  Of all the Rumex that grow in the South, Rumex hastatulus is probably the most pleasing. The tart-tasting intensely green leaves are hard…

• Sourwood:  Sourwood honey is considered by some to be the best-flavored honey in North America, perhaps the world.

• Sow Thistle, Prickly, Common, Field  (4)

  Sonchus: Sow Thistle, In A Pig’s Eye
  As I write it is in mid-January in Florida two of three local species of sow thistles are invading my lawn in great…

• Spanish Moss  (3)
  Spanish Moss is not edible. Well, barely an edible. The bottom of the growing tips (pictured above) provide about one eight of an inch of almost tasteless…

• Spanish Needles, Pitchfork Weed  (13)
  Bidens Alba: Medical Beggar Ticks
  Some plants just don’t get any respect. If there were a contest for under appreciated plants, Bidens alba , above…

• Spiderwisp, Cat’s Whiskers, Spider Flower  (6)
  The spiderwisp looks like a mustard that lost its way or got some psychedelic-laced fertilizer. It has four-petaled flowers as the mustards do, seed pods…

• Spiderwort: Pocahontas and Gamma Rays  (4)
  There are 404 years, as of Dec 20th, 2012, between the sailing of John Smith to the New World and spiderwort gamma rays, but they are…

• Spinach Vine  (1)
  I like to think of myself as biclimatic, living part of my life (thus far) in a cold climate and  part in a warm climate.

• Spring Beauty  (2)The Spring Beauty is aptly named.Actually there are several “Spring Beauties” and most of them are edible in similar ways. We’ll focus on…

• Spurge Nettle: The Nettle With The Mettle  (15)
  Cnidolscolus Stimulosus: It’s The Real Sting
  This is how to not dig up a spurge nettle root: Take a shovel, find a plant, and start digging.When…

• Stinging Nettles

  Urtica chamaedryoides: Nettle Knowledge
  Stinging Nettles Know How
  I was hiking one day when I saw what I thought was a mint I had not seen before. I…

• Stork’s Bill, Cranesbill

  Erodium circutarium, Geranium carolinianum: Two Bills You Want to Get

  Stork’s Bill is one of those little plants that’s not supposed to grow locally…

• Strawberries of Spring  (1)

  Fragaria virginiana: Be A Strawberry Sleuth
  Fragaria don’t like Florida. Only one northern county in the state reports having wild strawberries. But that’s…

• Strawberry GuavaPsidium littorale var. cattleianum: Strawberry Guava
  One man’s fruit tree is another man’s weed. My one Strawberry Guava tree is a fruiting…

• Strawberry Tree Curse

  Strawberry Tree, Koumaria, Koumara, Pacific Madrone, Madrona
  Any plant called “strawberry” other than a strawberry is doomed. Strawberries pack a lot of…

• Strongback  Not strong bark Bourreria succulenta: Soapy Fruit and Viagra
  Botanists are feisty in their own way. The Strongback is a good example. Is it B. succulenta or B. ovata? One…

• Sugar Cane on The Run  (4)

  Saccharum officinarum: Sweet Wild Weed
  Among the edible wild plants on this site are a few escaped fruit trees and ornamentals that have become naturalized.…

• Sugarberries & Hackberries  (3)

  Sugarberries are Hackberries with a Southern Accent
  Sugarberries like to be near water and that’s why it caught my eye as I coasted by: It was growing on top…

• Sumac: More Than Just Native Lemonade  (4)

  Sumac, Rhus Juice, Quallah: Good Drink
  Sumacs look edible and toxic at the same time, and with good reason: They’re in a family that has plants we eat and…

• Sunflowers: Seeds and More

  Sunflowers: Sun Sentinels

  His name was Bob Davis and he grew sunflowers some 15-feet high. I dated his niece, Edie May. I remember her and the…

• Sunny Savage

  I had the pleasure this past week of having the well-know forager Sunny Savage visit two of my classes here in Florida (If you think she is attractive on TV…

• Surinam Cherry: Only Ripe Need Apply  (18)

  Surinam Cherries: You’ll love ‘em or hate ‘em

  The Surinam cherry is not a cherry nor is it exclusively from Surinam. It’s also not from…

• Swamp Lilly Wrap

  Thalia geniculata: Swamp Wrap
  You won’t find the “swamp lilly” in many foraging books. For a big plant it receives little attention.

  Thalia geniculata…

• Sweet Clover

  Melitotus: Condiment to Tea to Blood Thinner
  When I was growing up we owned horses. Lots of horses. And they eat a lot of hay in the winter. Lots of hay.…

• Sweet Gum Tree  (4)
  The Sweet Gum tree is the sand spur of the forest. You painfully find them with your feet. The vicious seed pods have impaled many a forager and has done…

• Sweetbay MagnoliaMagnolia viginiana: How Sweet It Is
  Let’s say you want or need to trap a beaver. First you need a trap, but then you need to bait the trap. And…

• Swinecress, Wart Cress: Micro MustardsCoronopus didymus/squamatus: Smelly Pot Herbs?
  Opinions are mixed on Swinecress. I think it’s a nice walkabout nibble and pot herb. Others…

• Sword Fern’s Secret

  Nephrolepis cordifolia: Edible Watery Tubers
  Edibles are often right under your feet, or my feet as it were.

  I had a yard of non-edible ferns. If you like…

• Sycamores Get No RespectSycamores: Not Just Another Plane Tree
  Sycamore trees are not high on the edible list, unless you’re in need.Actually, sycamores, Platanus occidental…

• Take Things Lying Down
  Early in life I settled on a hobby I can do on a summer’s day, in a hammock, on my back….. No, it’s not napping. I watch clouds. Call it reclining…
• Tallow Plum

  Ximenia americana: Known by Many Names
  If I listed this edible under its botanical name few would find it. On the other hand it has some three dozen commons…

• Tamarind: I drove past a dozen Tamarind trees for a decade or so until I looked up one day. The lumpy brown pods on pretty trees had finally caught my attention.
• Tansy Mustard, Western

Descurainia pinnata: Abandoned Seed
What shall we call this little member of the Brassica family? Western Tansy Mustard or Tansy Mustard? We could always…

• Tape Seagrass  (3)
  It is said that all seaweed is edible but that’s not true. There’s at least one species that is not, Desmarestia ligulata. Why? Because it is laced…

• Tar Vine, Red SpiderlingBoerhavia diffusa: Catchy Edible
  Some times you just can’t identify a plant. Some times you’re frustrated for a few days, other times for a few…

• Tassel, Musk and Grape Hyacinths  (2)
  There are dozens of edible species that are wild in Europe and cultivated or escaped in North America. Three related species with a multitude of names are…

• Thistle: It’s That Spine of Year  (3)

Thistle: Touch me not, but add butter. Thistles, you’re either going to love ’em or hate em. Of course, I think eating them is the sensible…

• Ti, Good Luck Plant

  Cordyline fruticosa: Food, Foliage, Booze
  Simply called Ti (tee) Cordyline fruticosa spent most of its history with humans as a food, a source of alcohol, or…

• Tick Clover  (2)
  Tick Clover barely makes it into our foraging realm.I have found only one reference to its edibility. In the 47th volume of the Journal…

• Tiger Lily
  The word “lily” causes more confusion than four letters ought to be able to make. There are true lilies, usually not edible, some of them quite toxic, a…

• Tomato Tobacco Hornworms  (4)

  Manduca Cuisine: Eating Green Gluttons
  You’re picking tomatoes and suddenly there it is: Big, ugly and green, a tomato hornworm. To which I say, get or the…

• 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…

• Topi Tambo, Leren, Guinea Arrowroot  (2)
  A lifetime ago off the Maine coast at low tide there were many mussel shoals. The vertical tidal change near the rock-bound coast can be measured in…

• Torchwood
  One reason to write about the Torchwood is very few people know about it these days yet it was once an esteemed wood and produces an edible, citrusy…

• Toxic tomatoes: I rarely write  about toxic plants because this site is about edibles. However there are enough prickly nightshades around to justify an article about them and how to identify them even if they aren’t edible.
• Traveler’s Palm Travails

  Ravenala madagascariensis: Palm, NOT!
  The Traveler’s Palm is reportedly known for providing wayfarers water, but it also has some food to offer as well.

• Trilliam Trifecta: Every May Day — the first of May — we kids would hang a May Basket on our teacher Arlene Tryon and disappear off the school grounds.
• Tropical Almond: I went to Ft. Myers one Friday to look at plants on an 11-acre monastery. On the property there was a large tree they didn’t know nor did I. The following Sunday while teaching a class across the state in West Palm Beach two students knew a tree there that I didn’t know. It was the same tree at the Monastery. Small botanical world. The tree was a Tropical Almond.
• Tropical Chestnuts: Pachira aquatica  (1)
  My foraging existence is slightly schizophrenic. I grew up in a northern climate, and I write about many northern plants, or it is accurate to say that…
• Tuberous Pea: Anyone who has mowed fields for hay hates vetch… wild pea.  It binds up the machinery and a lot of livestock won’t eat it. That’s a lose lose all around unless the vetch is Lathyrus tuberosus.
• Tuckahoe, Arrow Arum  (2)Peltandra virginica: Starch Storer
  You wouldn’t think there would be a connection between the United States’ Capital and a toxic bog plant, but…

• Tulip Tree  (9)
  Not every edible plant has to be a nutritional powerhouse. Some are “edible” by the barest of means. A good example is the Tulip Tree, Liriodendron…

• Tulips  (2)

  Tulips: Famine Food, Appetizer Assistant
  Many years ago a social acquaintance upon learning I ate weeds said she and her mother had eaten tulip bulbs. If I…

• Tupelos: Black, Swamp, Bear, Water, OgeecheeNyssus: Tart Botanical Tangles
  The Black Tupelo is an old friend from around ponds where I grew up in Maine to around ponds (called lakes) here in…

• TurtlesThe Shell Game: Eating Turtles
  The evidence is clear: Man has been eating turtle for a long time. But which turtles and how?While land turtles…

• Unresolved Botanical Ponderings  (2)Cnidoscolus stimulosis: Can the leaves be boiled and eaten like other species in the genus? I personally know of two account of…

• Usnea: Likable LichenUSNEA is not an international committee. It’s a likable lichen. In fact all but two of the 20,000 lichen are forager…

• Valuable Viburnums: The only significant problem with Viburnums is choosing which one to use, and which ones to write about.
• Velvet Leaf: Velvet Leaf is a commercial failure but a successful foreign invader.

• Vinegar: Your own unique strain  (5)
  The vinegar mother above —three inches across and a half in thick — was collected from the wild in Lake Mary, Florida, in 1996 and has been making…

• Violets’ Virtues

  Viola affinis: Florida’s Sweet Violet
  My introduction to violets was seeing my mother eat “Piss-a-beds” in the spring (Viola rafinesquii. VYE-oh-lah…

• Wapato: All It’s Quacked Up To Be  (2)

  Sagittaria Lancifolia: Duck Potatoes, Wapato
  Artificial grass is not grass. Non-dairy creamer contains a dairy product. And ducks don’t eat duck potatoes.…

• Water Arum, Water Dragon, Wild Calla: 

  Calla palustris: Missen…Famine Bread. Like so many in the same family the starchy rhizome of the Calla palustris is laced with calcium oxalate crystals…

• Water Chestnut: The Water Chestnut is a plant of contradictions.

• Water Hyacinth Woes
  Water Hyacinth Stir Fry: The state of Florida minces no words about the water hyacinth: “Eichhornia crassipes is one of the worst weeds in the…

• Water Lettuce  (5)
  No one knows if Water Lettuce is native to North America or not. Botanists disagree with some saying it’s from Africa, a few South America. Explorer and…

• Water Shield Salad

  Brasenia schreberi: Palatable Pond Weed
  The Water Shield is edible. The problem is getting it sometimes. It likes water … up to six feet deep. On the good…

• Watercress: Ancient Flavor

  Florida is the Winter Watercress Capital of the U.S.

  Nasturtium officinale (nas-STUR-shum oh-fis-in-AY-lee ) is one of the oldest leaf vegetables…

• Wax Myrtle Jewels  (1)

  Myrica cerifera: A Tree That Makes Scents
  Wax Myrtle was the Indians’ minimart of the forest.

  Need some spice? Drop by the Wax Myrtle tree. How about a…

• Weeds and Wolves  (2)

  I am often invited to see someone’s vegetable garden, and it’s usually growing well. Then I’m asked if I see any edible weeds, and usually there are some. I…

• Weeds of Southern Turfgrasses
  The link to the university’s site to buy the book — I do not get a cut — is here.The list of known edibles in the book is below. Many of…

• Welcome to EatTheWeeds.com  (28)

  No description found for this item.

• What’s Green and What’s Not?

  An arctic express of frigid air recently sped down and across the United States. Here in Florida it snowed for the second time in 33 years, delivering a week…

• When Is A Lawn A Lake?  (2)

  It sounds like a trick question, when is a lake a lawn, but there is a non-tricky answer: When it is in Florida.

  Regular followers of this writer know I am…

• When Scholarship Isn’t Enough

  I saw a religion-themed movie once that actually holds an instructive point for us foragers.

  In it a Catholic priest is facing a moral decision that could…

• Where Do You Forage?

  It’s a simple question with a complex answer. When I was younger the 1000 acres behind the house and the 2000 across the road answered that question. Today it…

• Where the Weeds Are

  There is little doubt that man has been foraging for food for a long time. As one might guess, in different places he foraged for different plants. He also…

• White Indigo Berry Has A Dark Side

  Randia aculeata
  The White Indigo Berry is not high on the food list. Dr. Daniel Austin, author of Florida Ethnobotany, has this to say on page 562:

• White man’s Little Foot: Dwarf PlantainWhite man’s Little Foot: Dwarf Plantain
  Plantain, Plantagos To Go
  When I was about 10 a bee stung my hand while I was being a pest in the…

• Who’s Manipulating Whom?
  I don’t care for Salvia coccinea. It’s not edible and it likes to crowd out my herbs. I’m forever removing it from flower pots. The other day I was about…

• Why Forage?  (1)

  Often I am asked “why forage for wild food?” Why that question is asked is probably worthy of an article unto itself. But here let’s focus on one answer (out…

• Wild Carrots and Queen Ann’s LaceDaucus Carota & Pusillus: Edible Wild Carrots
  I’ve never understood the confusion over identifying the Wild Carrot also called Queen Ann’s…

• Wild Citrus, Footloose Plants

  Feral Citrus: Snack, Seasoning and Soap
  Citrus, like apples when left unattended by man, tend to revert to their natural state of being sour and acidic. A lot…

• Wild Coffee But Not Kentucky  (5)

  Psychotria nervosa Florida Style
  Because I am constantly asked about it: Yes, you can eat the pulp off the seeds of the wild coffee, and yes, you can make a…

• Wild Dilly, Wild Sapodilla

  Wild Dilly: Almost Chique
  If the Natal Plum and the Wild Dilly could sit down and have a conversation they would probably agree that having a famous…

• Wild Fennel: One of the outstanding sensory experiences of hiking in Greece is smelling in the wild herbs one usually buys in little plastic containers.

• Wild Flours  (8)
  A wild flour is different than a starchy root. The Spurge Nettle has a starchy root that tastes like pasta but it does not lend itself to being processed…

• Wild Ginger: Wild Ginger is cantharophilic, sometimes myophilic or sapromyophilic.

• Wild Lettuce, Woodland Lettuce

  Lactuca floridana: Let Us Eat Wild Lettuce

  Wild lettuce is not as tame as garden lettuce.

  Garden lettuce is one of those nearly flavorless nearly…

• Wild Onion, Wild Garlic  (2)

  Allium canadense: The Stinking Rose
  Garlic and onions don’t like to set underground bulbs here in hot Florida. I got around it by growing wild onions,…

• Wild Pineapple  (2)

  Bromelia pinguin: Wild Pineapple
  I took the picture directly above while out bicycling on a Christmas Day, 2008. But, didn’t identified the object de green…

• Wild Rice  (4)
  Love and marriage, horse and carriage, Zizania and canoe… not exactly lyrical but you get the idea. If you want Wild Rice you have to go where the Wild…

• Will Bisin Make GMOs Look Good?

  I have long criticized what I call chemists in the kitchen. They brought us such things as cancer-causing additives, artery-damaging trans-fats, insulin-skewing…

• Willow Weep For Me  (1)

  Salix caroliniana: Nothing Would Be Finer
  The willow is not prime eats. It’s not even secondary eats. In fact, it is famine food, but, willow can also cure…

• Winter Foraging:   The thermometer was near zero one day when I was on ice skates collecting frozen cranberries.

• Winter Soul-stice

  On the shortest day of the year one should take a long look around. It’s the inventory time of year, a bit of soul searching. That requires a little looking…

• Wisteria Criteria  (3)Wisteria, Wistaria
  There is a duality to Wisteria, starting with those who think it is an invasive weed and those who like to eat its sweet, fragrant…

• Wood Oats

  Chasmanthium latifolium: Edible Wood Oats
  Most people discover Wood Oats by mistake. They’re traipsing through the forest, come across a plant, and wonder…

• Yacon  (1)
  Is it a Polymnia or a Smallanthus? Botanists took some 70 years to make up their minds. Let’s call it Yacon like the natives.In publications before…

• Yam A: The Alata  (6)

  The Dioscorea Dilemma: Which ones are edible, and what parts?

  One wouldn’t think wild yams would be hard to sort out. It only took me about a dozen…

• Yam B: The Bulbifera  (9)

  The “Cheeky Yam, or Yam on the Lamb
  Yam B, Dioscorea bulbifera, is definitely second best to Yam A, Dioscorea alata. Why is Yam B, the D. bulbifera second…

• Yam C: The Chinese

  Dioscorea Polystachya: Yam C
  Just like Rambo movies, there is Yam A, Yam B and, yes, a Yam C, the Chinese Wild Yam or the Cinnamon Vine yam, either way we…

• Yaupon Holly, Ilex vomitoria  (10)
  History has many layers and shades. It’s not a straight timeline of great clarity but more like a meandering muddy river with much confluence, influence…

• Yellow Pond Lilly: Raising A Wokas

  Picking Pond Lillies: Nuphar Luteum subsp. advena

  Once upon a time there was just one Nuphar luteum… and it was good.

  The yellow pond lilly…

• Yew:  The Yew can kill you.

• You Can Learn To Forage For Wild Edibles

  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…

• Your Choice for a New Vegetable  (2)

  If you could choose one wild plant to become a commercial product, what would it be?

  Many people have tried to make poke weed (Phytolacca americana) a green…

• Yucca’s Not Yucky  (5)Yucca, Yuca: Which is Edible?
  When isn’t a yucca a yucca? When it is spelt with one “C” as in yuca.What’s the difference? A belly ache, maybe…