The other night I went to a lecture by
Tim MacWelsh at
Meadowside Nature Center.
I've always been curious about plants you can eat in the wild (besides
the obvious berries like blackberries and such), so when I saw a
Meet-Up about an event about edible plants, I signed up immediately.
MacWelsh has written
several books
about wilderness survival, from hunting and foraging to living off the
grid or in the wilderness in the winter. He also recommended other books
like Peterson's
Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants, which lists more than 400 species! He grew up in Virginia, and teaches
advanced survival training
courses (and does talks like the one I went to). He mentioned the
quote, "In the school of the woods, there is no graduation day," meaning
we are always learning from nature. And of course he puts a big focus
on safety, and always cautions that you should only eat the plants that
you know are safe.
Here are the species he talked about:
White Clover (
Trifolium repens)
You
can eat both the leaves and the flowers, which is true of other
varieties of clover, too. You can cook them with oil, or just eat them
raw. The genus "Trifolium" means "three leaves," so that's an easy way
to identify these plants (unless of course you find the rare four-leaf
clover!).
Plantain (
Plantago major)
I
believe we saw a subspecies of this, but I think you can eat many types
of plantain. A helpful way to identify them is that the veins in the
leaves run parallel to one another, and if you were to rip a rip, the
texture is a bit stringy. There may even be some purple color at the
bottom of the stems. The seed stalk (like in the picture) is also
edible; you can rub the seeds off and mix them with grains like cous
cous and quinoa.
Not only can you eat this plant, but
you can also use it medicinally! If you chew or rip up the leaves, mush
it up, and put it on a burn, bee sting, cut, or rash, it will help stop
the pain or burning sensation.
Stinging Nettle (
Urtica dioica)
We
didn't actually see this plant, but since the previous plant had
medicinal purposes, MacWelsh mentioned this one as well. Stinging nettle
can, well, sting, but it actually can act as its own antodote, too! And
you can eat it, but only if it's cooked, and it's best in the early
spring.
Wineberry (
Rubus phoenicolasius)
The berries were gone when we looked at the plant, but I've seen (and
eaten) these before! They are very yummy, and related to blackberries
and raspberries. You can eat pretty much anything in the
Rubus
genus. Other animals eat these berries, too. But MacWelsh did point out
that you should NOT watch what other animals eat and assume that the
food is safe for humans, too. Birds eat a lot of berries that are
poisonous to people, so only eat what you know for sure is safe!
Sassafras
(
Sassafras albidum)
I already knew how to identify a sassafra tree with its three different
shaped leaves (The tree also has crooked, winding branches, which can
help with IDing, too), and I had heard of sassafras tea. If you dry the
leaves, you can add them to a gumbo or jambalaya for a citrus taste; it
also acts like corn starch in that it thickens soups. You can use the
twigs and/or roots to make tea, and you only need a piece about the size
of a pencil. You steep it in water, and then you've got tea; you can
even use the same twig/root four times! Some people say that sassafras
is carcinogenic, but MacWelsh says you would need to drink 40 gallons of
tea a day in order for it to be really dangerous, so you're safe!
And
don't feel bad about cutting the roots of the tree. Sassafras grown
clonally, meaning that another plant will start growing from where you
cut that root. So you're actually helping the species by doing that!
Oaks (Genus
Quercus; specifically talking about acorns)
Acorns
are a good source of protein, and each pound of them can give you 2,000
calories! But you can't eat acorns raw. They need to be processed to
get rid of the tanic acids (which can cause dry mouth and nausea). You
do that by cracking the outer shell off (which is waterproof) and then
soaking the nut pieces in water for several hours or even days (tossing
out the water and refreshing it regularly) until the bitterness in the
nuts is gone.
Of course you can eat them as nuts, but
you can also grind them into flour and use that to make cookies,
porridge, crackers, and things like that (but not fluffy things like
cake or bread; more crumbly things). MacWelsh even suggested putting
sassafras tea in a recipe like this instead of water to add even more
flavor; what a good idea!
He recommends the acorns of the White Oak (
Quercus alba) best, but says those of the Chestnut Oak (
Quercus montana)
are good, too. He says late September is a good time to gather acorns.
You can simply lay a tarp under an Oak tree and wait for the acorns to
fall. You can also easily freeze them, which helps kill any bugs that
might be in/on the nuts. Sounds pretty easy!
Queen Anne's Lace (
Daucus carota)
This
is what we call it in North America, but this plant is more commonly
known as Wild Carrot. And it's called that because the roots look like
small, white carrots, and that's the part you can eat. To ID this plant,
the stem should have little hairs on it, and the brachs underneath
(like in the second picture) should have three toes on each of them. If
you don't see both of those clues, don't eat it! You might confuse this
plant with Poison Hemlock (
Conium maculatum) or Fool's Parsley (
Aethusa cynapium),
so you want to be really sure it's Wild Carrot before you eat it. The
seeds of the Wild Carrot are slightly toxic, and historically were used
like a "morning after" pill. But MacWelsh doesn't recommend this as an
effective birth control method, so don't gather up a bunch of seeds for
that!
The root is better to eat on the first year of
this biennial plant (raw or cooked), since the meat is more tender, but
the plant can be harder to ID in its first year because it hasn't
flowered yet. In the second year, the root is good for flavor, like for
putting in a soup, but it's too fibrous to actually eat. This plant is
where our own regular carrots came from, so there is a relationship
there.
Black Walnut (
Juglans nigra)
I've
definitely seen these fall from a tree before, but I've never eaten
them. You want to take the green outside off, let the nuts dry, and then
you can crack them open to get to the nut meat, which you can eat raw.
These nuts have 180 calories per ounce, so definitely good foraging
food.
Dandelions (
Taraxacum)
You
can eat every part of this plant, from the flowers to the stems to the
leaves, raw or cooked. MacWelsh says he likes to make dandelion
fritters; he coats the flowers in cornmeal batter and then fries them in
oil. The leaves are a little bitter, but if you chop them up, sauté
them in oil, and mix them with grains like rice or something like that,
they're pretty good. Even the root can be roasted like a vegetable, or
can be used to make a coffee-like drink (NOT for serious coffee snobs,
though!).
Redbud (
Cercis canadensis)
I
already knew the flowers were edible, but he recommended putting them
raw into a white cake mix to add some color. What a fun idea! I mainly
asked him about this plant because I was curious about their seed pods,
which look a lot like pea pods. He recommends only eating them when they
are no longer than two inches (one inch is best), and boiling them in
water to cook them.
Milkweed (
Asclepias)
 |
| Image found here (along with how to cook them) |
You can only eat the immature pods. But I personally would say don't eat them: save them for the endangered
monarch butterfly!
Notice
that I didn't list any mushrooms. Someone in the group asked about
foraging for mushrooms, but he believes doing that isn't worth the risk
(since so many are poisonous), and the amount of work for positively
IDing a mushroom to be safe for eating isn't worth the few calories you
get out of it. He says that the Hen of the Woods (
Grifola frondosa) and morel mushrooms (
Morchella) are the only ones he feels safe eating.
He also talked about
jewelweed,
not because it's edible, but because the juice from the stem can be
used to counteract the toxins in poison ivy. But you have to be fast for
it to work!
Here are some final tips:
-To
find a good place to forage, try to go where a truck can't get to; that
means it's unlikely that the area has been sprayed with pesticides. You
should also forage uphill, since that means less pollution runoff. Also
stay away from power lines and train tracks; those also get a lot of
traffic.
-For washing plants, usually water is fine. But if you
want to be more thorough, you can mix lemon juice with salt in water to
make a cleaning mixture. A little bit of iodine can help, too. But, if
you're cooking what you've foraged, you're probably okay, because the
heat will kill any of those bad, dirty things you don't want to eat.
MacWelsh
is so knowledgeable, and really funny! I greatly enjoyed this talk, so if you're in the DC/MD/VA area, I recommend trying
to make it to one of his classes/talks!
