"Whether the weather be fine
Or whether the weather be not,
Whether the weather be cold
Or whether the weather be hot,
We'll weather the weather
Whatever the weather,
Whether we like it or not." –Anon
Spring on the Palouse is an unsettling series of steps and missteps, mixed in with a lot of winter, which, we pray, will eventually lead us to summer. The arrival and readiness of our wild spring greens is less a calendarial matter and more an event determined by weather, erratic and labile. The key to getting your spring greens is to wander outside, keep your eyes open, and pay attention to the earth beneath your feet.
Because you will not want to eat dandelion greens too late in the spring, I'll tell you about them first: Dandelions are the iconic, quintessential hippy edible green; the emblem, the family crest, of the VW bus, bell-bottomed set.
Identification review:
"do-you-like-butter?" yellow flowers, one tops each stem, during the warmer half of the year.
Break the stem and in-edibly vile white milk flows: a rumored wart remedy, applied topically.
Leaves, lobed like a variety of ocean waves: sharp teeth, deep curves, no curves. Hairless under-leaf, except for the spine, which is (depending on which source you turn to) either hairy or hairless.
You may have tried dandelion greens before and tasted something like you'd imagined poison: satanic bitterness. Whereas, they Are considered a bitter green, the key to getting your dandelion greens is to get them early and to use a flavorful salad dressing. The greens of dandelions are offensively bitter once the plant flowers. When you get used to the ferocious taste of Dandy-Lion greens, you'll know exactly when their bite is too harsh.
Dandelions should not be hard to find, despite civilization's best efforts at eradication. You will not need to go on safari in your hunt for these lions, just check in alleys, gardens, and yards. In early spring their yellow, lions-mane flowers are not yet out, so look for a circular spread of leaves in the grass. As always, identify your prey with certainty. Not all green growing things are edible.
Collect them by the handful from relatively clean places. If they look funky or diseased, don't pick them. One lawn expert recently told me that Round-Up was so safe, he could drink the stuff, and I thought maybe he should. Lesson: herbicides are an entrenched institution so keep an eye out, okay? At any rate, wash your healthy looking collection. Dry in a salad spinner. In the alternative, wrap in a dish-towel, go outside, swing your arm in a circle like a cartoon winding up for a pitch: the human salad spinner. Not only is it showy, it's also works! Sort out the yellow leaves and the grass.
Dandelion greens are perfect in a salad, mixed with other wild greens, spinach, or grocery greens and a honey mustard dressing. They are a good spinach substitute in pasta sauce, pasta noodles, green curry, lasagna, soups, etc., etc. They can be wildly bitter, especially in recipes calling for greens by the pound, so mix them with milder greens. You can store them in your fridge for a few days. Don't bother drying them.
Dandelion greens are considered very high in Vitamin A, Vitamin C, potassium and calcium. They are high in iron, B-vitamins, thiamine, niacin, and liver-lover choline. The leaves are also a filling 19-32% protein(Healing Wise by Susun S. Weed).
Susun Weed quotes William E. Dodge from 1870 noting that the Digger and Apache "scour the country for many days' journey in search of sufficient to appease their appetites. So great is their love for the plant (dandelion leaves), that the quantity consumed by a single individual exceeds belief."
I can't say I'm as madly in love with dandelion greens as the Digger and Apache supposedly were, but I do regard them with high esteem and reverence, devouring exhilarating quantities each spring. I'll be in my Birkenstocks, going no further than my neighborhood-nuisance lawn, gathering bowl-fulls of bracingly healthy dandelion greens, and thanking the earth for her persistent, under-appreciated Dandy-Lions.
Curly Dock
As snowflakes pile around my door today, my house is warm and my tea is hot. I should be happy, but you are not here. I should curl up in a blanket, read a book. Yet I pace the floors, thinking only of you. My heart pounding, my blood racing, as I imagine our spring reunion.
You'd hate it in here, inside, so hot and soft. You are happy beneath your frozen snow, wedged between jagged rocks, and sleeping along roadsides. When the time is right, you will rise up. Soon we shall be together again. But I miss you now.
How blind I was when we were first introduced! I saw you around town and took you for decorations, adding your rusty red seed stalks to fall bouquets. I heard gossip that your long, lance-shaped, rough, wavey-edged leaves were edible. How I laughed, fool that I was!
Secretly, I tried one. I knew it was you, Curly Dock, by your stalk of rattling old seed pods, brick red, and rising 2-4 feet tall. You were on a city trail, behind warehouses, along railroad tracks. Do you remember? I took one of your alternating leaves straight from the stalk. No branches interfered. But you were tough, and ridiculously bitter. "Maybe, if it were the last food on earth!" I ignorantly laughed.
All over the Inland Northwest, plants hibernated for winter, but along the
When I opened my eyes again, I saw you there, nestled by my side. Yellow green, the gold sun shone through your newest leaves. For the first time, I saw you, really saw you. You were young and fresh, soft and juicy.
I look your tender leaf into my mouth. And the two became one. You were lemony and light, the flavor of sunshine, with a refreshing bitterness, like the cold of early spring .
That day gleams bright in my memory. The day I first loved you for who you are: a beautiful, wild soul, sweet and sharp all at once. Cities and roads make you intolerably tough, but this is where you shine, in the wild.
Surprisingly, we have similarities: both European introductions, long since naturalized.
You're wealthy with protein, calcium, iron and potassium. With more vitamin C than oranges, more Vitamin A than carrots, I've found a diamond in the rough. Rumors has it you're good for liver, blood, lymph nodes, sores, and joints. Some say you are anti-bacterial and anti-fungal (Edible and Medicinal Plants of the
More adventures await we two! Member of the Buckwheat family, your seeds could be boiled for a thrilling mush or ground to deeply satisfying flour.
We might even boil you large leaves, changing the hot water as we steam the kitchen.
This is what makes winters so hard: being without you, unable to reach you, and waiting, waiting for early spring to find you. You won't make me wait long, though. I can trust that. You'll be easy to spot too, because last years seed stalk will still be tall and red.
I've noticed your cousins, Sheep and Mountain Sorrels, almost mistaking them for you. They're fine, but what an embarrassing faux pas that would be! Before I pluck you again, I will know that you are none other than Rumex crispus.
When I am finally plucked from this world, I vow to return to you the nourishment and sustenance you have given me. That is love: giving and receiving.
It sounds trite and simplistic, but it's the only way I know how to express it: I love you, Curly Dock. Happy Valentine's Day.
Shepherd's Purse
Well, let us ask the crystal snow globe. I have to turn her upside down, see, so that the snow comes off the bottom. What do I see? Hummmm. I hum a while, it will appear in the swirling snow.
I see a boy, a young boy in wool and fur. He is near a ditch, or maybe an empty lot; rocks, lots of rocks. A gravel driveway? No, but that does not make sense, because I see sheep, lots of sheep, grazing on patches of green between piles of the snow. In the city!
Oh, I must shake it again. There, now the boy and the sheep are leaving, but the boy drops something. Let me see: it is tiny, very tiny, and looks like a tiny bag, or purse. Very very tiny! If this is his money bag, he is a poor shepherd indeed.
The snow is settling again, I must shake. On the ground, among rocks or a ditch maybe, I see a rosette of leaves. They are random: some lobed like dandelion leaves, others oblong like chicory. But they are smaller. The difficulty would be to identify this plant now, but before the seeds come is the best time to eat these greens, I think. But you need to be very sure before you eat a plant, check the manual or expert.
Ah, the snow is disappearing and the stems are growing 3-12" tall. Along the stems are a few more leaves, oblong and narrow like blades of grass. Ah, and here come the small white snow-flake-like flowers, always staying at the tip of the stem, and leaving behind heart-shaped Valentine seed pods along the stem. It's March now it seems, and this plant is telling me it will stick around through June or so.
I'm getting flavor now: mustard greens mixed with turnips mixed with cabbage. Oh! So much more than bitter spinach, and it seems a good substitute: young leaves in salads and older leaves in soups. I see a Chinese woman in this Crystal snow globe telling me they are good in dumplings. She is saying something about gathering these with her mother in China when she was a child, and now she gathers them in here, in Eastern Washington.
I taste ginger now. But I am looking at the roots here. I see fresh roots and dried ones in carrot soup.
I also see a Native American woman, winnowing chaff from the peppery seeds and grinding the seeds between stones for flour. But this plant seems European in origin. (Edible and Medicinal Plants of The Rockies by Linda Kershaw.)
Oh! here's something terrible! I see the pregnant woman, sick and ailing. No, it does not look good. Ah! Now I see the woman in labor drinking tea. Now she is with a newborn in her hands and she is drinking a strong tea from the herb, and there is not too much blood. Oh, I see many people drinking the tea made from the dried stems and leaves: people with headaches, and stomach aches, and the hemorrhoids. Oh, dear! I did not want to see that!
Does the term Capsella bursa-pastoris mean something to you? I keep hearing the words: Box, purse, pastor. Do you recognize? There is only one species, I think.
Ah! So you do! Tell me what is this plant?
Shepherd's purse. I see. It does all make sense, doesn't it? Madame Sauvage Farouche see's the truth, does she not?
Chickweed
She will be around in February, barring major snow accumulation. Chickweed is always small, but especially so in February. However, picking off the tops will give you more tops to pick off later. I have not needed to venture any further than out my back door to find chickweed. She loves shady, wet, and protected areas. In my old alley, she grows around the water main, on a very old compost pile and under a hedge of lilacs. In your days as an undereducated fool, you may have chucked her from your garden. She would have been the one that was easy to uproot.
Late spring, chickweed will be a 12" tall spindly mat of tan colored twine topped with incredibly green, little leaves and a constellation of small white asterisks. Currently, the chickweed is about 4" tall. Like myself, chickweed is Not a morning person, so her five, white, dual-lobed petals don't open until afternoons. The leaves are the most encouraging green, ½" long usually, and shaped like shovels, but pointier at the ends. There are two at a time from the same place on the stem. With good eyesight, you can see one tiny, shifting line of hairs on the stem.
What to do with chickweed? Eat the green tops by the bucket load, fresh. There is a chamber of my heart dedicated to loving every moment I have spent eating chickweed. It is the sweetest wild green I have ever tasted. Add some wild to a tame leaf lettuce salad. Temper the bitter greens that we'll gather later this year. Munch as you hike. You could also substitute it for spinach in a sauté, casserole or soup. There is no need to dry or cook it, though some experts encourage this.
According Susun Weed (author of Healing Wise), chickweed is very high in copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, silicon and zinc. It is high in calcium, chlorophyll, phosphorus, potassium, protein, Vitamin A, and fat. And it is a good source of Vitamin C, riboflavin, niacin, thiamine, and plant sodium.
Certainly, we can be sure that the FDA has never investigated or verified the healing power of chickweed poultices. However, Susun Weed advocates chickweed poultices be applied to every possible injury. Anecdotally, I have used chickweed poultices to rapidly clear up physician-diagnosed pink-eye that would not respond to eye drops. Here's how you make a chickweed poultice: fill a small jar with chickweed. Pour boiling water over it. Pull the chickweed out shortly thereafter, place on a very clean, thin clothe. When cool enough to handle, but still quite warm, place it on area of ailment until cool. This whole process is rather hot. Please be sure to not burn or scald anyone. You could also drink the nutritious green water left in the jar. Repeat it every few hours for success.Warnings: Identify with 100% certainty. As it is low growing, you will want to beware of animal excretions. I am careful to not pick chickweed growing near poisonous mushrooms. In Herbal Medications, D.G. Spoerke wonders if large amounts of chickweed infusion might have been responsible for a temporary paralysis. He then assures us, "There is no recent evidence to indicate that chickweed presents a toxic hazard."
Therefore, it is my pleasure to crown her Miss Wild Edible! Here she comes! Waving her princess wave. Down the red carpet. Into your heart and belly.
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.
POISON
In the past (perhaps as little as 12 months ago) I have made resolutions of improbable achievement. Later, I tell myself that I didn't necessarily resolve to Do the splits, but resolved to contemplate them. But this year, I am going to give you my own new and improved resolution, hoping these things bare no resemblance to birthday wishes which will not come true if you tell them.
I resolve to NOT eat any poisonous plants this year.
To aid in this serious endeavor, requiring all the resolve I can usually muster for these formulaic promises, let us look as some local plants of detriment. We have already examined Indian hellebore, poison and water hemlocks, and snowberries.
This year, I begin with the most Goth plant ever; clusters of deep purple star flowers with gold stamen cones, slender vine, and deceptive, cheery red berries make Bittersweet Nightshade (Solanum dulcamara). The dark green, purplish leaves (1-4") sometimes have extra "lobes" near the base. When picked or crushed, Bittersweet nightshade exudes a horrific "green" smell, which should ward off any human predators. This prolific vine chokes streams and plants with smothering mats.
Screaming was the inarticulate yet appropriate way my mother responded when I handed her an enchanting bouquet of these flowers which had filled my young self with awe, adoration and some bewilderment at the stench. Her response was based upon information. Mine was based upon appearances.
Birds eat the berries with impunity, spreading their seeds as nature intended. But Bittersweet Nightshade is responsible for the deaths of livestock and children via the green-potato-toxin solanine and dulcamarine. The leaves and green berries are the most poisonous. But the red berries could turn you inside out as well, depending on the soil they sprout from. Should you not keep our New Years Resolution this is how you might feel: irritated skin, abdominal pain, tired yet restless, headache, difficulty breathing, low body temperature, dilated pupils, diarrhea, paralysis, convulsion, and then possibly death (www.metrokc.gov
Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) is found along roadsides and is overwhelming my neighbor's garden. It grows 2-3' tall, with fragrant lacey leaves, and golden button-like flower clusters topping the stems. Edible and Medicinal Plants of the Rockies by Linda Kershaw gave Tansy a long list of medicinal uses such as last ditch efforts at fighting parasites, fungi, bacteria and tumors. And then this Warning: "volatile oils of these plants are poisonous – a small quantity can kill in 2-4 hours." Edible Indeed! In minute quantities, Tansy once flavored Easter cakes in
Groundsels are another roadside attraction teetering on the fence between sustenance and death. Common groundsels (Senecio vulgaris) could be mistaken as a "type" of dandelion or sow thistle. The leaves are shaped like deeply lobed dandelion leaves, but are thick and shiny and grow from the stem. The flowers are yellow and look like closed dandelion flowers, then turn white and fly away with their seeds. Western groundsels (Senecio intergerrimus) are tall with up-pointing thick leaves and bunches of yellow, raggedy, daisy looking flowers at the top. Both of these groundsels would gladly deliver to your liver alkaloids which would cause permanent damage before you ever felt a thing. Once you started feeling, hope would vanish with the onset of bloody diarrhea, sleepiness, weakness, staggering, jaundice and death. Groundsel contaminated flour and honey can cause similar pains. Arrow-leaved groundsel (Senecio triangularis) is considered an Wild Edible when young, but with the aforementioned relatives, I'd just as soon keep my distance.
Girded with these warnings (which are Not exhaustive) I hope we can all make it safely to 2008. Lets leave the bloody diarrhea and convulsions for another year.
DEATH
The dead of winter seems like an appropriate time to discuss Poisonous Plants. When I am in April, filled by a wild salad, and in August, with berry juice running down my arms, I feel a satisfying sensation that the earth loves me and wants me to thrive. But in January, I have my doubts. Now is as good a time as ever to look at the wild and free ways that the earth would like to kill us all. One such way is through poisonous plants, many of which grow abundantly around here.
These are important plants for every wild forager to know well. Use a reliable identifier. I recommend Plants of the Southern Interior British Colombia and the Inland Northwest, published by Lone Pine.
Water-Hemlock (Cicuta Douglasii) is perhaps the most deadly plant in these parts. This is not to be confused with the nutritious conifers Western and Mountain Hemlocks. Water-Hemlock is a water-loving, parsley-family perennial which grows along rivers and streams. The parsley family, not unlike my own, contains both beneficial and toxic members, most appearing similar to the Water-Hemlock. According to Plants of the Southern Interior…, the powdered roots were used by the Okanogan as arrow poison. Water-Hemlock grows 3-6 feet tall and has a thick, sometimes purpley stem. The leaves are compound, divided, oblong with toothy sided leaflets that some say look like marijuana leaves. The peculiar, defining features are that the leaf veins end in notches between the teeth and that the base of the stalk is chambered. It has greenish-white lacey flowers in the summer. Its poison is an oily fluid permeating every part of the plant. The roots contain the most oil, and are therefore the most deadly part (one bite is enough). Immediately wash your hands or tools if they touch this plant. The gruesome death you could expect Water-Hemlock to produce would be theatrical with a quick succession of vomiting, staggering, violent convulsions, paralysis and finally, failure to breath = death.
Poison Hemlock (Conium maculatum), the infamous accomplice to the death of the iconoclastic and heroic Socrates, can be found in these parts as well. It enjoys the same watery ditches and creeks as Water-Hemlock, and is equally deadly. Poison-Hemlock is taller, 2-8 feet, with summer, Queen-Anne's-lace-like flowers. Plants of the Southern… describes it as a "course, freely branching biennial from a stout taproot, with highly dissected, feathery leaves and purple-spotted stems."
Indian Hellebore (Varatrum viride) is my kid's favorite poisonous plant. She points it out, yelling to us to make sure we don't touch it. This plant looks like a mix between a lily, skunk cabbage and corn. The leaves are large, oblong and ribbed with a hairy underside (though I've never inspected it that closely). At their bases, the leaves wrap themselves around the thick stalk. The flowers are green "drooping tassels." (Plants of the Southern…). I've spotted this throughout the woods at Idler's Rest and Kamiak Butte. Drinking water from nearby a Hellebore is said to cause stomach cramps. Eating a hellebore may not cause death, though you may wish for it as you writhe, vomit, foam at the mouth, can't see and experience "lock-jaw". Native Americans recognized it as a remedy for advanced stages of cancer and tuberculosis.
Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus) is another toxic local plant, growing within city limits, Field Springs Park
This is not a complete list of the common and native poisonous plants, but they are my favorites. Luckily, I have no first hand Cautionary Tales regarding these wild and free in-edibles.
I am left pondering until spring if the earth loves me. She loves me not. She loves me. She loves me not…
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