Wild Edible Plants

[Artashes]

Re: Wild Edible Plants

Have friend with computer next to me now.
I have ipad3 he has computer.
He says: iPad not intuitive to him(me neither).
He is playing hell right now attempting to transfer image to hye-c ?
Artashes

[jgk3]

Re: Wild Edible Plants

Have friend with computer next to me now.
I have ipad3 he has computer.
He says: iPad not intuitive to him(me neither).
He is playing hell right now attempting to transfer image to hye-c ?
Artashes

If you're having trouble, you can also upload it on a different website, and just copy paste the url of the picture here. Write (img), then enter your URL, then write (/img). In both instances where you write your img tags, instead of using round brackets (), use square brackets [].

[jgk3]

Re: Wild Edible Plants

Strawberries (Fragaria vesca):


These red babies are found everywhere in grassy fields, perhaps even in your lawn during the month of June. They're about the size of raspberries, except they taste like strawberries, because they indeed are strawberries! They're smaller, and more juicy. A caution, don't harvest them if they're been sprayed by pesticides. Collect them en masse, and if you want to keep them for a while, I recommend storing in the freezer, they'll eventually go bad if kept over a week in the fridge. Or, you can make an excellent jam with them, maybe even just use them as they are in a fruity sauce to pour over a refreshing dessert, yum...


In may, you'll find these white flowers on them, which will develop into juicy strawberries. While you wait for this tasty transformation to come about though, you can collect the green leaves and use them fresh or dried to make a tea (maybe you're noticing a pattern with most of my posts... you can make a tea using just about any edible plant :P). It has diuretic properties , which can help ease some digestive troubles you may be having. Like with any diuretic, make sure you have no medical conditions or are taking medications where its consumption can pose a health risk.


Though the vines (or suckers) are not edible, they are useful cord which I like to use to tie garden plants to stakes. You can gently and loosely knot two or more lengths of these vines together to make one long enough to completely go around the plant and the stake you're tying while leaving space for your vegetable to grow taller. The vine hardens maybe a day or so after it's been plucked from the ground, so it keeps the vegetables you tied them with secure, promoting them to grow in the direction of your stake. You can also use any other rope for this job, I just like using strawberry vines since they grow into my garden and are right next to me there.

[ArmSurvival]

Re: Wild Edible Plants

Great thread. This reminds me of an episode of Bizarre Foods that I saw where they spent some time with a professional forager. Its amazing how much good food you can get if you know what to look for.

[jgk3]

Re: Wild Edible Plants

excellent video. I've never had what he calls frog's belly (sedum purpereum) before, I'll look out for it.


I've had ramps, or wild leek (Allium tricoccum) before once in a forest, it's not so common anymore because its population has declined due to loss of habitat and over-collecting by humans. If you find ramps, don't hoard away their entire colony to your kitchen, take a few but make sure you leave enough for them to regenerate for next year. If you want to try some, make sure it smells onion/garlicky, otherwise it's certainly a toxic lookalike (such as young wild iris) that can cause sever vomiting and illness if ingested.


Cattails (Typha)are delicious, especially the starchy roots after boiling. It is a unique flavour as the guy says. Unfortunately, the roots can also be the most contaminated part of the plant if it's growing out of waste water areas. It's hard to find places near your home in the city with water systems pristine enough to not have contaminated cattails. These plants are prodigious in absorbing phosphorus from water systems, and help to filter water systems (whether by accident or by deliberate human aquatic cleanup programs) that suffer from agricultural, industrial or urban contamination. Needless to say, you should be especially picky about the location you harvest these plants. Native Americans didn't have to worry about this before colonization began, and enjoyed Cattail as a delicious staple food available year-round. I might soon write an in-depth entry on this plant and all its edible parts and material uses.


Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica)... I love this stuff, haha. I deliberately stung my girlfriend with it just to "explain" it's properties :P I even eat it without crushing the leaves, experiencing the full sting in my mouth... Though it tastes better cooked (eating too much raw doesn't taste very good, by it's nice to taste a leaf or two while on the trail), I must admit. The sting is actually said to relieve arthritis pains, at first it painfully excites the nerves to the sting but later on this gets replaced by a cool, semi-numb sensation.


Jewelweed (Impatiens), I actually introduced this to my girlfriend the other day, it relieves pain from stringing nettle, bees and bug bites, and prevents skin contact with poison ivy from developing into rashes if you rub it on the affected area right away afterwards. The mature seedpods are the namesake for its other nickname, "Touch me not", because if you do, it's probably gonna explode and eject its seeds, which if you collect are apparently a nice treat (I'll have to try it this fall). The trumpet-shaped, spotted orange flowers are also edible, and the underside of the leaves apparently sparkle under water, and drops of water on the surface form an almost gem-like round shape and shine, probably the namesake of "jewelweed".

[jgk3]

Re: Wild Edible Plants

Btw Kanadahye, your first picture of purslane reminds me of the creeping veins from the remake of War of the Worlds, which when snapped jet out blood, which the main character later finds out is human blood sucked by the aliens

[jgk3]

Re: Wild Edible Plants

Wild Parsnip: (Pastinaca sativa)

Wild parsnip: It's everywhere and it's delicious.

Last week's article in the Recorder and Times about the abundance of parsnips, Pastinaca sativa, along Highway 401, omits many of the circumstances around the recent increase in concern over the menace posed by this species.

"Wild" or "poison" parsnip is the same species as the cultivated vegetable. Parsnips are biennials, growing for one year, and storing reserves in the carrot-like taproot. In their second summer, they bloom with yellow flowers in flat umbels on a tall stalk, and then die after setting seed.

It seems that over the past 30 years these escaped descendants of the garden vegetable have become more widespread in Ontario. In many summers, the roadsides of eastern Ontario are overrun with their yellow blooms, though there's a sudden cut-off along many roads when they enter the Shield bedrock of the Frontenac Axis.

The sap of parsnips can cause what is termed "phyto-photo-dermatitis" if it gets on tender skin which is subsequently exposed to the sun. This can look like a bad case of poison ivy, with severe rash and blisters -quite painful, although not itchy. These blisters are much longer-lasting than those of poison ivy, and the scars last for years.

It's likely that the combined increase in feral populations of parsnip, the modern preference for running about half-clad, and the recent prevalence of vegetation-shredding machinery have increased the rate at which sensitive skin simultaneously comes in contact with parsnip sap and sunlight.

I've only been nailed by it once -on the inside of my elbow when I was cutting plants for chicken feed. The blister lasted for a couple of months, and the scar for a few years. The sap of many other plants in this family, including carrots, can also cause phyto-photo-dermatitis.

Parsnip flowers are a wonderful nectar source for flies and other small insects, and parsnips are a host plant for gorgeous black swallowtail caterpillars, which mature as one of our handsomest butterflies.



Their main pest is parsnip webworms, Depressaria pastinacella, which blanket the heads with webby silk, and feed on the seeds. The toxins that cause the phytophoto- dermatitis are furanocoumarins, which serve the plant as a defence against the webworms. I became aware of the webworms in the mid-1990s when they blighted parsnips I was trying to raise for seed, and I began to wonder about the invasiveness and increased abundance of the species along highways at the same time.

And here's where things get interesting. In 2005, A.R. Zangerl and M.R. Berenbaum reported that after Parsnips had escaped from cultivation in the 1620s they lived in North America without webworms for roughly 250 years, and evolved low levels of the furanocoumarins, which weren't necessary in the absence of the webworms. In 1869, webworms were found in Ontario, and gradually spread. Over the course of the 20th century, natural selection gradually increased the parsnips' levels of furanocoumarins to the same levels seen in Europe.

Zangerl and Berenbaum based this conclusion on measuring the chemicals, and noting the presence of webworms, in museum specimens of Parsnips. "None of the specimens collected between 1889 and 1909 showed evidence of webworm activity. After that, a significant increase in webworm attacks was observed. Furanocoumarin content of seeds increased dramatically with the appearance of webworms. ... On reassociation with its nemesis, parsnips evolved increased furanocoumarin content." (Increase in toxicity of an invasive weed after reassociation with its coevolved herbivore. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 102:15529-15132).

So, maybe the increased notice Ontarians are taking of the phyto-photo-dermatitis from parsnips isn't only because people are more scantily clad than in previous decades, but also because the plants are somewhat more toxic, though this doesn't compromise the edibility of the roots.

Anecdotally, it seems that for the past three summers (2007-2009) there have been many fewer webworms on parsnips along eastern Ontario roadsides than was usual in the 1990s. It's not possible to say whether the recent dry springs and cool summers have obstructed some part of the webworms' life cycle, or if the parsnips have "gotten ahead of" the webworms in their evolutionary race, but the small numbers of the most important seed predator must contribute to increased populations.

If it's necessary to remove parsnips from an area, the plants can be pulled up in the evening or on an overcast day while wearing clothes.

I've managed parsnip in neglected gardens which were yellow with parsnip bloom by working after dark, wearing gloves, and piling the pulled plants so the seed heads are off the ground. If the seed can't fall down onto bare soil it won't (in my experience) germinate. It's the combination of sap+sun that's the problem.

One parsnip plant isn't a threat, as one poison ivy plant might be, because the dermatitis isn't contact dermatitis, it's due to the sap from broken stems and leaves, and the threat comes in hacking away a large stands and getting smeared or sprayed with the sap.

The tastiest way to diminish any threat from the sap of the tall second-year plants is to dig and eat the roots of the first-year plants after frost. These are just as edible as their domesticated cousins, though our daughter's infant name for them -"Rattails" -suggests their average size, and it's important not to eat any of the related poisonous species, such as water hemlock (an Internet search, or any edible plant guide will give the identifying characters).



As with domestic parsnips, the roots are sweeter after frost and they are also edible in the spring, though a little softer and more fibrous than in the fall. Even in late May, as the stalks are beginning to elongate, the roots can be cooked up, though at this season they're rugged with tough fibres. (Note on May 28, the tops from this recent harvest were fed to caged rabbits without any harm).

Frederick W. Schueler, PhD, research curator,

Bishops Mills Natural History Centre

Parsnips also are a bigger source of polyacetylenes than carrots, which have been shown to produce significant cancer-preventive, anti-fungal and anti-bacterial effects. Overconsumption of polyacetylenes is usually accompanied with a bitter taste signal, so you'll know when to stop. Here's the article I'm getting this from: http://myelomic.blogspot.ca/2005/06/...y-parsnip.html

[Artashes]

Re: Wild Edible Plants

Great input guys! I'm pleased to see this thread growing. I'll be adding more soon. Btw, purslane grows great in gardens, let them grow as weeds if they're present, and then harvest them for a salad.

Artashes, you can post pictures using google, saving the url of the image, and inputting it using our image feature on the forums. Morels should be fun to read up on, so give it a shot

I must be(obviously) missing something. How or where do I find the"image features" of this forum?
Artashes

[Artashes]

Re: Wild Edible Plants

Also --- I'm thinking I can take pictures of my(yeah)Morels and then post those but am inept at then getting that picture(s) from my I pad photo app to this particular(or any) sight on the forum.
Artashes

[jgk3]

Re: Wild Edible Plants

in the feature bar above the box where you write your response, where there's a B I U (for bold, italic and underlined), then font, size, etc...

as you go to the right, there's eventually an icon of a picture with a tree inside. Click this.

Click select files at the bottom center of the window that opens up.

Then browse your computer for the picture file you wish to upload, when you've selected your picture, it will upload it.

Then click ok, and it will be registered in your response in this thread and should appear in your message. Hope it works!