'Wild' Food Plants

[philagardener]

I know someone who dried the leaves and then used them for tea, but I didn't taste the product. Sounds worth a try. The leaves on mine are still green. I'll be interested to hear how it tastes!

[blackox]

I haven't tried making the tea, but I've tried some that I got from a small herbal/medicinal shop and it was great! I haven't had any recently so couldn't quite describe the flavor, but I definitely recommend trying it.

[blackox]

As for all of the wild food plants that we have here - there are way too many to list from the top of my head. I'd say that there would be enough to feed the entire local population providing that they'd eat it.

[mariemorris]

I am a daily, year round forage of edible wild plants and mushrooms here in Southeastern Tennessee. I was hoping to find this an active forum for wild food plants, but don't see any posts past 2014.

Some of my favorite foods are wild plants growing in my yard. I've been cooking with some delicious wild onions and wild garlic for the past few weeks as they appear to be growing in spited of it being winter (Feb. 27, 2017). My transplanted from FL, Florida betony is up and doing well. Yes, it's quite invasive but I have a pretty good time eating my way through them in my yard.

I have wild mustard, "bastard" cabbage, and sow thistle already up. I'm waiting for my sochan aka green headed cone flower to appear. Oh, and some poke "salat" greens too.

Holler back and let me know if anyone's foraging wild plants now and what you are finding.

Thanks,
Marie in TN

[mariemorris]

I'm trying to figure out how to add images so if this doesn't work, back to the drawing board.

I'm trying to post a photo of my favorite wild fruit, paw paws or is it pawpaws?

[farmermike]

That photo looks great! Sadly I've never tasted a pawpaw. I ordered a little tree from Edible Landscaping a couple years ago, but it didn't last long in our hot dry weather. I'll have to try again sometime.

I've mostly been eating wild mustard (rapini), and miner's lettuce this time of year.

Welcome to the forum Marie!

[steev]

You're lucky to have paw paws. I'm another NorCali that's never tasted one; oddly enough,there has been a fair amount of breeding done on them here, but they seem to want more coddling to establish than I've felt I could currently provide; another of those projects for when I stop working in town for money and "retire" to the farm to work for fun.

I seem to have largely eradicated wild mustard from the farm, unfortunately, it being a fav since I was a kid foraging with my Grandad; it still grows in the tree-lanes, but I've been rooting it out of my planting lanes; I must be more tolerant, as the "broccoli" is superb, not to disparage the greens, braised with bacon grease and onion. I've also tried to eradicate sour dock, since I have Patience dock, which is much better. When a neighbor saw me, wandering around on my pastured acres with a shovel, and asked what I was doing, I said I was digging for clams, which were very rare, but that the few I found were exquisitely tasty; of course, having had the joke, I told him I was rooting out sour dock. I mean no disparagement of sour dock; that's what Grandad taught me to forage, but Patience dock is less astringent and more productive, as the Brits who brought it to the Colonies in Pre-Revolutionary times knew.

I've still not learned what to do with tumbleweed (Russian thistle), though it was apparently commonly used on the Great Plains (maybe as a tisane, for vitamins?); I really like it; it's very pretty while young, although a tad "Mars-ish".

Looks like a bumper year for manzanita berries; I should take a shot at using them.

Miner's lettuce didn't cut it on the arid farm, but it's unprecedently primo in the East Bay this year.

[walt]

By late March I'm usually throwing wild mustard and Dandilions in my stir frys.  This year I expect them to be even earlier than usual.  Maybe I should look for some today.

[SteveB]

Stumbled upon a pure white violet today. All the others are a standard purple/ blue. Is this common?

[SteveB]

I actually found a few by the river at the edge of my property. I'd assume it's not an anomaly.

[philagardener]

A common mutation. Violets are like lilacs, they tend to be lasting markers of past gardeners and you find them by cellar holes and other signs of old settlements. There are a lot of variations from white to purple in the common species, and they mix and remix with each generation.

We also have a really neat native here in PA that is yellow (Viola pensylvanica). It is a real show stopper when you see it for the first time!
florapittsburghensis.wordpress.com/2015/04/26/smooth-yellow-violet-viola-pensylvanica/

[SteveB]

Wow thanks for the info. I hope to stumble upon a yellow some day!
Thanks again,
Steve

[blueadzuki]

Though for what it is worth, pure white is not all that common, at least in wild populations (there are of course ones bred to be all that). One more often finds what is known as "Confederate" violets, white with a purple center (No, I don't know why they are called that. I have heard they reminded people of the worn out uniforms of the returning Confederate soldiers except 1. being a variant of the blue violet, you don't normally find them as far south as the area Confederate soldiers would have been returning to and 2. They're white and purple, not grey.)

I'm not sure it has to be from a homestead. Viola soraria is pretty close to native wild, you pretty much find it EVERYWHERE

besides those, there is also Delft white with purple specks.

Oddly while common blue and Confederates grow like crazy around here, any nursery selections (like white or delft) never seem to establish (I mean they're the same species, so why won't they take?)

[steev]

One could surmise that those returning Confederate soldiers were white, and having been bruised, somewhat purple.

[blueadzuki]

And come to think of it, since the purple patch is always in the center, there is a certain resemblance to a white guy who has been given a black eye.

But again, it'd have to be allegorical as most of the places the violets grow are too far north to be seen by people who had met Confederates, at least, until post-Civil War. Maybe I need to try and find out WHEN the name became common.