Lamb's Quarters

"Like a true nature's child,
We were born, born to be wild." -Steppenwolf

Some plants bore cultivation like a cross, domesticity like a burden. When their captors attentions and fancies turned to more trendy foods and flowers, some, like Lamb's Quarters, jumped the garden fence and took off for parts unknown. Wild at heart, Lamb's Quarters set its gaze on the horizon and never looked back.

A hardy weed with cunning survival strategies, it naturalized it's way across the globe to pop up year after year in my old potato patch, thousands of miles from it's European origins.

When fully grown, this adventurous, sprawling annual can be 3 feet tall. However the leaves are best when the young plant is just a few inches high. The diamond or arrow shaped leaves shimmer with a green/blue velveteen that feels like fine dust. When very young the leaves may have only one or two teeth near the base, but, like us, grow more teeth as they age.

Consume these leaves raw or boiled. Lamb's Quarters, like plantain and violet, was a precursor to domestic spinach and can be a modern "substitute". Lamb's Quarters provides more Vitamin A and C than spinach, however it also contains a similar quantity of a calcium absorption inhibitor: oxalates (Eating Wild Plants by Kim Williams). Which means moderation and separation from your calcium supplement.

Poultices of bruised leaves have been used on burns, wounds, inflamed eyes, headaches, and heat stroke victims. Additionally, a chewing of leaves is a reputed tooth ache reliever.

A tea of this plant has been recommended for stomach aches and joint pains.

Later in the summer tiny gray-green flowers will pop up like a blight on the branch ends. These are also edible, good for salads or, apparently, as cold cereal with milk!(Edible and Medicinal Plants of the Rockies by Linda Kershaw)

These inconspicuous flowers give way to an astonishing 50,000 to 70,000 black poppy-esc seeds, which could be roasted and ground for coffee or flour, or whole in muffins or porridge.

Evidently, Napoleon relied heavily on these for making a black bread for his troops (Plants of the Southern Interior by Lone Pine). I can see him now: in thin woods, apron tied in a bow, cookbook lays open, one hand kneads dough, the other tucks securely into his shirt, the edges of a checkered tabled cloth flutters in the breeze, a bird chirps above him and a sense of domestic tranquility rests on his face, while the sounds of raging battle clang up from the valley below. The angry army fueled by his coal colored biscuits. I wonder if he then, gently placed poultices of Lamb's Quarters upon the wounds of his men. Perhaps he first washed their wounds with Lamb's Quarters roots, a soap substitute. (Kershaw).

Similar to the plant and perhaps even Napoleon himself, local native Americans also made use of what fate and nature provided them. Not being native-plant-purists, the Stl'atl'imx, Okanogan, Secwepemc, Flathead and Cheyenne all welcomed Lamb's Quarters into their routines. (Food Plants of Interior First Peoples by Nancy J. Turner)

The name Lamb's Quarters caught the attention of this mostly vegetarian writer, not only because it conjured images of slain baby sheep but also because the name causes subject/verb agreement issues. "Lamb's Quarters" is perhaps based on some sort of harvest festival, or confusion with another plant. The scientific Chenopodium album is the only name with any sense, meaning goose foot, as the leaves appear to be shaped like goose feet (Lone Pine). This is even less appetizing than Lamb's Quarters.

Think of the adventures this humble weed has been on! Ancient harvest festivals, war with Napoleon, unwelcome "transitions" with the Okanogan, and a quiet regularity on Cleveland Street. And all because it took a leap of faith from the garden row, lo, these thousands of years ago. Where the winds would blow it, it knew not. What soft or inhospitable landing it may have, it knew not.

God grant us such hardy versatility on our own journeys. When I eat these wild things, I hope to inherit their will to thrive in whatever rocky or lush soils fate should plant me.

Day Lily

        life is but a day;
A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way
From a tree’s summit;
-John Keats Sleep and Poetry

The poetry of the earth is never dead.
-John Keats On the Grasshopper and the Cricket

If you had one day to live, what would you do? It's a cliché "Youth Group" question, yes. But what Would you do? Not that you should live every day like that, especially if you want to make it to 90, healthy and wealthy. Yet the question intrigues.

Would you settle yourself down among tall grassy leaves? Would the clump be in your garden, or along the wayside, an emancipated feral? In the new morning, would you rise up from the center of the lush 1-2' tall, sword-shaped leaves? And like a butterfly from its chrysalis, would you crack open your green shell, letting the light soar in? Would you unfurl your magnificent six tepals (three petals, three sepals: wikipedia.com) and your six burgeoning stamens? What fantastic color would your tepals be? Would you be lemon yellow, vanilla, saffron, peach, or merlot? With tepals arched back, would you offer yourself to the brilliant generosity of the sun, to the seduction of the humming bee, to the play of a Palouse breeze, to the cleansing shimmer of rain, and to the joys and sorrows of being? Would you offer yourself to the magic of a day? Yes?

Then, you and I and the Daylily are kindred spirits. Daylily, the most popular, adaptable, hybridized, hardy perennial in America? Yes! And it's Edible!

The young green leaves can be consumed, raw or cooked. They are inoffensively mild and tasty. Be sure that you Know it's a Daylily, as green grassy shoots of everything look alike. If you planted it and have seen it bloom, you're probably in the clear, but don't quote me on your deathbed.

Apparently, if you have too many Daylilies (?!) and are beyond desperate for food, you can eat the long, teardrop shaped tubers: raw, steamed or boiled (www.survivaliq.com). I have no experience in the matter. Even if I and the rest of this beloved planet had but one day left I would not prey upon the bulbs, on the off chance that the world went on for one more day.

And the flowers, yes, the fleeting moment of their lives ends in just one day. That is why I like to eat them for dinner, at the end of the day. Whereas eating the roots translates to No more Daylily ever, eating the flower merely deprives you of one flower for the rest of the day. Some recommend steaming the flower buds for 10 minutes, then frying (www.indiansummerherbs.com), however that would also deprived everyone from beauty of the flowers.

The flowers seem to vary in flavor by color, perhaps only by subliminal suggestion. The white might taste of vanilla. Some yellow Daylilies are actually called Lemon Lilies, both for color and flavor, I'm sure.

Daylily fritters and sautés seem popular, as does a BleuCheese Daylily recipe floating around the worldwideweb. I have never wanted to put much labor into my Daylily consumption. I simply pick a flower, remove any earwigs (perhaps they are edible too, I don't care), and toss the tepals in my salad. The richest kings and queens have never eaten a salad more enchanting than one with Daylilies.

Originally from China and Japan, Daylilies contribute to Chinese cooking and are rumored to be of medicinal value, though no one specifies what that means. Sold as "Golden Needles", they appear in Hot and Sour Soup and Buddha's Delight (I don't know what that is either, but I'll take it!) (Wikipedia).

The Latin genus for Daylily is Hemerocallis, based perfectly on the Greek for "Day" and "Beauty." Daylilies are not true lilies, not members of the Lilium genus. It will be important, if you Want to live longer than a day, that you not eat Liliums. Make sure your Daylily's long grass-like leaves grow straight from the ground, Not along a stem, and that the Daylily on your lips doesn't have spots. And if you want tomorrow to be free from diarrhea, don't gorge on the Daylilies.

Wild Strawberries

These are the gems of wild foraging: berries. I hesitate to write of them for two reasons.
1) They are so easy to spot and love that a forager barely needs encouragement or identification assistance. Wild berries are obviously enticing, radioing their bright red signals: "Berry! Yummy! Earth to Earthlings: pick me!" And
2) I'd like to keep them all to myself. But Wild Strawberries are a deeply delicious generosity of Nature that I cannot, in the end, in good conscience, hoard.

Latin: fragaria virginiana. The "fragaria" part I get. Just one of these tiny strawberries, whether fully ripened to red or still mostly white, has more flavor than a pound of store bought strawberries originated in California or Chile. The "virginiana" part could confuse as this wild berry is the original parent for 9/10s of all cultivated varieties of strawberries (Plants of the Southern Interior of British Columbia and the Inland Northwest, published by Lone Pine). Doesn't sound like she's been all that chaste to me. Perhaps virginiana is meant to indicate a wild, uncivilized purity of being, it's origins in the imaginative mechanisms of Nature, uncorrupted by the lesser imaginations of humankind whose only quest seems to be for bigger fruits with longer shelf-life's, irregardless of flavor and nutrition.

Locate: Admittedly wild strawberries are tiny and challenging to spot. They can be found in dappled shade, or shady sun in wet and dry areas alike. Secret (until now):  Field Springs Park, near Anatone, in June.  Small children will walk 3 miles or more to the lookout and back, without complaint, in the hunt for wild strawberries.

Identify: For those of you who have spent most of your lives on other planets, strawberries are the fruit of a low growing plant. The leaves, perky as wild virgins, stand about 6-10" tall, and are divided into three, green, toothy leaflets atop one stem. The berries are tiny, barely visible from under the stem-cap, and any where from unripe white (though perfectly delicious and edible) to red/fuscia (even more delicious) , and brown, if past it's prime. The berries of fragaria virginiana, and their accompanying white blossoms, grow in clusters lower than the leaves. The Wood Strawberry, fragaria vesca, of Field Springs Park, grows on a stem that is higher than the leaves. One berry usually tops each stem which leans over like a street lamp, and can be hard to spot from above.

There Are poisonous berries, however this edible berry is so distinctive that mis-identification is unlikely. Some suggest that Poison Ivy and Hookers Fairy Bells could be mistaken for strawberries. However, I doubt any person with 200/200 vision or better could mistake them. I suppose I should remind you, though, to identify your edibles with 100% certainty before devouring. You'll recall that strawberries have their seeds on the outside of the berry. This fact should help prevent you from making a stupid mistake.

If you've ever eaten a wild strawberry, you won't be surprised that they were a prized find among Native Interior people, who ate them fresh from the stem, as do we. Only very rarely did they dry them in cakes for later use.

Dried strawberry leaves make a good tea for relieving diarrhea and stomach aches (Eating Wild Plants by Kim Williams). You could combine it with mint for flavor and additional stomach ease.

Many wild edibles are difficult for our Western, corn-syruppy palates to appreciate. Wild Strawberries will not be. Your tongue will welcome them with songs and poems of praise and glory. These berries are an invitation to one of the most divine revel-ations this earth can minister to our senses. Welcome to the Church of the Wild Strawberry.