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

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

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

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

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

Landmarks — accomplishments — are like a melody. Regardless of your taste in music, music is more than organized sound. Music firmly places you in time. When a melody starts, that is now. After a note or two you have a now and a past. And when you anticipate where the melody is going, you have a past, a present and a future. A melody fixes you in time. So do landmarks.

Your first day in school is like the beginning of a melody, each passing year gives you a present and a past and the next grade a future. It’s the same thing with traveling. You leave to visit a country, travel there, visit and know you will come home. It is also the same with building a website.

the fall of 2008 I started writing articles about wild plants on a MAC blog format, which explains some of strange ways I had things organized then.  In the spring of 2009 I started making related videos and posting them on You Tube. In that first year I wrote about more than 100 plants, and made 46 videos. A year later it was close 400 plants — counting related species — and 100 videos. Now, as three full years are about to close it is over 800 plants and 133 videos. It is also some 1.2 million video views and 14,ooo subscribers. this month a new landmark was made, a new website. Nearly everything on the old site is now on the new site save for one article, which has been written but not posted yet. Unlike the original site, this new website is a team effort.

The landmarks are more than just videos or plants covered. Its learning the video software, adding titles, finding a format and sticking to it.  It’s coping with weather, seasonal plants, and noise pollution. It’s adjusting to a new platform and all the features it offers. It’s been quite the three years. What next? More site features, more videos, more plants, perhaps  DVDs and a televison show.

There are some 4,000 edible species of plants in North America. I will be busy. The melody has started, the only question is where it will go and when will it end.

It’s not smart or nice to lie about plants. It can get someone hurt. But the truth can sometimes be elusive, even with plants.

This week’s featured video is about the sassafras. And of course when you mention the sassafras as among the edibles there is always someone who hopes to throw a bucket of informed reality on that notion by saying it will cause cancer. Oh really?  The sassafras is a prime example that the truth can often be an excuse to do something else.

The oil in sassafras in high amounts can induce abortions. The oil in sassafras can be used to make a popular illegal drug. Now, could those be reasons to ban sassafras oil? Certainly, but those truths were not useable in the ’50s and ’60s. Abortion and dangerous drugs weren’t talked about much. So the powers that be fell back on the old stand by: Cancer. They fed rats sassafras oil that was like us drinking water from a blasting fire hose. And guess what? The lab rats — who have to be the most cancer susceptible creatures alive — got liver cancer. The next step was easy: Assume people can get liver cancer from drinking root beer (If you drank some 9,000 gallons of it in a year.)  The sassafras oil had to go.

The truth is the sassafras oil in the original root beer was 1/13 as cancer-causing as the alcohol in a can of regular beer.  One thirteenth. That’s not too life threatening… not exactly a significant carcinogen. Alcohol-filled chocolate cherries are more dangerous than that, but they ain’t banned.  Heck, the sugar in the root beer is more life threatening than the sassafras oil. However taken to its extreme limits sassafras oil might cause cancer in humans. That skinny truth was the excuse to get it banned. It was also the sole source of the cancer scare over sassafras.

That distortion has become medical dogma and most now sites sternly warn you to avoid “cancer-causing” sassafras. I’m sure that’s good news for the Sassafras but it shouldn’t dissuade us foragers now and then from enjoying  one of the tasty trees of the forest.

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.

When foraging is a hobby, the issue of calories in or out takes second place to the fun and the learning. But in a survival situation the caloric compensation has to be taken into consideration. Too much out and not enough in means illness and starvation. I took a five mile walk today in upland scrub (read no ponds) to see how I would do, food wise.

Dioscorea alata, the winged yam

Two choice finds would have left me in good stead for the day, or more. First I found a patch of winged yams. While under cultivation they can grow to well over 100 pounds, locally in the wild they range from a half a pound to eight pounds, still that’s a lot of potato-like starch and food for more than one meal and one day.  It requires cooking so I’d also have to have a camp fire and boiling is the preferred method of preparation, though they can also be carefully roasted.

Acorns have to be leached

My second good find was an acorn-dropping oak tree. Better still, it was a Live Oak and one with sweet acorns. I could nibble some on the spot. They barely need leaching, so not too many calories will be involved in bringing that food to the table. And a good thing: Acorns are high in carbs and fats, two things you need to keep going. Still, they require some wholesome water for leaching but there was one brook along the trail. I didn’t venture off to see what I could find there. I also saw a hickory tree but its nuts are not ready yet.

Wild Persommons

As for fruits there were two, beautyberries and persimmons, the former about to go out of season and the latter not quite in season, but I managed to find a lot of beauty berries and a few sweet persimmons.  There were also some elder blows and arils of the ripe bitter gourd, no calories in the latter but a good source of lycopene.

In terms of greenery, there was a lot of choice… some wood sorrel, smilax, pennywort, young maple leaves, and young summer grape leaves. On the “edible but…” side were  Caesar Weed and Spanish needles. Other items included saw palmetto berries, nutritious but extremely intense in taste, green bitter gourds and leaves, lichen, and panic grass seeds.

Elderblow for tea and fritters

For tea I had the choice of sumac berries, blackberry leaves, pine needles, spotted bee balm or the elder blows. The persimmon seeds can be used to make a black coffee-like drink as can blackened acorns.  Spices were bay leafs, wax myrtle leaves, smart grass and possibly Hercules Club seeds ground as pepper… sparingly… ditto some Brazilian Pepper seeds.

Part of the original Brunswick Stew

Normally on such forays I see a land turtle, which of course, is a huge boon of protein in one spot for several meals. Today I did not see one. However, I did run into a two-foot copperhead right in the middle of the trail. If it had been more aggressive and I more hungry it, too, would have been dinner. (Peel the skin back like a sock, clean, then fill will wild greens, roll the skin back, and roast it in the dirt by the fire.) If I had a .22 with me and was living off the land at least one of the squirrels would not have gotten away. They are far more tasty than the copperhead. In fact, authentic Brunswick Stew is made with squirrel.

Ray Mears

All in all…. I would have had to have cooked some things twice to make them palatable, but on the second boil it would have been quite a soup/stew. The only problem is unless you go to a different terrain your next meal is going to taste the same, and the meal after that as well. Variety in the wild is seasonal. Here in Florida the Indians used to winter in the middle of the state and summer on the shore. No doubt there were climatic and insect reasons for that. But another is a welcome change of diet, so welcome they left behind sea shell piles over 50 feet high.

Copperhead

Bushcrafter Ray Mears summarized it best when he said that survival includes taking advantage of every food opportunity, no matter how meager.  He is absolutely right. Not one can be passed up. Fortunately we’re just having a good time outside. But, it is good to train your eye to find the food should you need to. And sometimes, like the copperhead, the food finds you.