Peas and Butter O'DEATH

The English language wallows in a mire of obfuscation and fraudulence.  Knot only our are spellings laughably perverse, add homonyms, and mix with terms like Greenland, buttercups and sweet peas for a deadly cocktail of confusion.  With the whole world careening into this one language, global tragedies must ensue, mark my words!

In the ethos of "Think Globally, Act Locally,"  let's resolve this year to prevent global calamity by straitening out a few linguistic kinks in the local Wild Edible realm. As has become my New Year's tradition, I commence upon this newest addition with a study of Wild In-Edibles as a vital counterpoint to Wild Edible practice.     

Buttercups are Not made of butter.  English's "Buttercup" is the mangy mutt bastard of French's "Button d'or," (Golden Button) and Anglo-Saxon's "cop" (head).  Somewhere along this twisted family tree Buttercup meant "Golden Button Head,"  which sounds like something to choke on rather than a fattening dairy creation.  (Plants of the Southern Interior from Lone Pine).

Buttercups grow tall or short, creeping or upright, margarine gold or fresh butter mellow.  Their green leaves are usually deeply lobed into three, sometimes two, sections of often frilly points.  Their shiny, five-petaled simple flowers, cheery yellow cup'o'toxins, spring up early in the year. 

Do Not pat these upon your morning toast, for all buttercups will bring you are the blisters and burns of poisonous alkaloid compounds.  They do not taste like butter, but are so bitter that before ingesting too much of it we tend to notice that something is seriously amiss.  Reportedly, buttercups pose greatest risk to dozy-eyed cows.  However this does not bear out with personal experience, not because I am a cow, but because my first 15 years were shared with steers who Never ate the buttercups carpeting our field.

             

This hurtful and useless plant's legends are thickly spread across the globe.  The nearby Nlaka'pmx (now there's a language!) poisoned arrowheads with it.  Okanogan's warned children to not touch it.  (Plants of the Southern...)  The English believed the smell could drive one to madness.  Beggars, following buttercup's lead of deception, slathered themselves in its blistering juices to gain sympathy (hey, everybody's got to make a living!).  Roman scholar Pliny "noted" that buttercups induced maniacal laughter ending in death (Edible and Medicinal Plants of the Rockies by Linda Kershaw).  On May Day, Irish farmer's rubbed the flowers on cows' udders to increase milk production (or was that puss?).  Buttercups have also historically soothed the rheumatism, arthritis, and neuralgias of the desperate. 

Soon we will marvel at this bright flower's chutzpah as the Sagebrush Buttercup is among the first natives to shrug off the Palouse winter.  Despite your admiration, do not bring them home.  Do not drink from this cup.  Do not melt them upon the following Peas.

            

 The pea family creates confusion via appearance, classification, and nomenclature.  Some wild peas are edible, some are deadly poisonous.  In the Pea family are these poisonous relatives:  lupines, goldenbeans, locoweeds (no confusion there), timber milk-vetches (churned into buttercups, no doubt), pea-vines and American vetch.  This family grows garden-pea-like flowers giving way to pea pods which look like something to pop open and eat as impromptu trail-mix.  A more experienced Wild Eater could select peas that won't leave you vomiting or paralyzed.  But I will not take my slim chances.

            

Example: Timber milk-vetch, a pine-forest-loving perennial, upright, clumping, white or lilac pea-flowers, thin pods. This vetch's milk collects selenium, causing its digesters depression, diarrhea, balding, and heart and lung failure (AKA: death), molybdenum for poor growth, brittle bones and anemia, locoine alkaloids for locoism (which is apparently English for Spanish for Insanity) and last but not least, miserotoxin, a well christened poison causing either rapid or slow-acting deaths from nerve damage, brain bleeding and lack of breath (L. Kershaw). I do not believe you get to take your pick from the miserotoxin's bag of goodies.  As my young daughter says, "You get what you get and you don't make a fuss." 

            

 Above are several of our language's more unpalatable fibs.  If you do get served a nasty dish of Milk-vetch peas and buttercups in the 12 months looming ahead, don't make a fuss, and better luck next year.

Bellyaching aside, Sarajoy does love her native tongue.