Edible Wild Plants Honor

I am thinking about having the Pathfinders over to my house next month as part of our annual Honor’s Week so they can earn the Edible Wild Plants honor. Because I have been very careful to not turn my yard into a monoculture, I have a wide variety of edible wild plants available here. Many should be available for eating next month too.

One of my favorite edible wild plants is pepperweed (Lepidium virginicum). It does not grow on my property, though it is abundant in other places I frequent. So today I pulled one up near my office thinking I’d sow the seeds somewhere at my house and see what happens. When I pulled it up, the root came with it, so instead of scattering the seed, I just replanted it:

Pepperweed (Lepidium virginicum)

I don’t need this plant in order to teach the honor here, as there are plenty of other plants to choose from. But it is highly flavorful, so I’d like ot have it here.

For the honor, we need to prepare and consume:

• Three berries
• Three beverages
• Three salad plants
• Three potherbs (cooked greens)
• Two tubers

We need to prepare these items by boiling, frying, roasting, and baking. One of the plants has to be either milkweed or daylily, and since I have milkweed, but not daylily, milkweed gets the nod.

I plan to start with a short lecture covering the cardinal edibility rule (don’t eat anything unless you’ve positively identified it, and know what part of it is edible), and poisonous plants (with special attention given to poison ivy – which I do have here). The kids will be roaming around looking for plants, and I want them to know this stuff when they see it.

Then we will set out to do our field work, starting with a visit to the poison ivy patch. I think I will make up a couple of sheets with photos of the target plants and let the kids fan out to find them. They are also supposed to photograph the plants. Here’s what I plan to have them collect:

• Three wild berries: wintergreen, elderberry, and blackberry, and optionally, partridge berry, dewberry, and autumn olive.
• Three beverages: wintergreen, elderberry, sweetfern, and optionally aronia
• Three salad plants: wood sorrel, plantain, violets, and optionally pepperweed, sheep sorrel, and oxeye daisy. Actually, I haven’t seen any sheep sorrel or oxeye daisy here this year, so that depends on whether or not it shows up).
• Three greens: milkweed, dandelion, and white lettuce.
• Two Tubers: Carrot (Queen Anne’s lace), Indian cucumber root, and optionally evening primrose, and ground nut.

We will also collect hazelnuts (they are heavy this year, and they should be ripe by Honors Week). Then back inside to begin cooking stuff up.

We will roast the hazels, fry up some dandelion fritters (from the flower heads), boil the milkweed (in several changes of water), and bake a blackberry pie. That should cover the four cooking methods.

We also need to identify five edible trees and five edible shrubs. For this, I plan to use oak, cherry, beech, white pine, and maple trees, and wintergreen, blackberry, elderberry, hazel, and aronia shrubs.

All of this except the elderberry grows on my property, and the elderberry grows on my neighbor’s place. We’ll use that with permission, of course!

While the stuff is cooking (or while we are eating it), I will lecture a little more on some of the other requirements. That should wrap up the whole honor. I’m trying to decided if I want to do this during a weekday evening (when we will have three hours or so), or save it for Saturday afternoon (we don’t usually have an honor on Saturday during Honors Week).

While I was writing this, I was also finishing off the maple syrup I tapped last spring. I had previously boiled it down by about 15:1, and I needed to get that down to 30:1. I forgot that it was critical to keep a close eye on it in the last stages, and burned the whole batch. Actually, I guess I carmelized most of it. It tastes very much like Sugar Daddies (the candy), but the house smells more liked burned sugar. I added some water back into it to thin it up again, but unfortunately, I don’t think there is a way to unburn it. 😦

 

November Blooms

I went for a walk today during lunch. My main goal was to check out the Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus) patch and maybe collect some seeds. But before I got there, I came across some Virginia pepperweed (Lepidium viginicum). I didn’t nibble on any of it today, but on most other days I certainly would have.

Lepidium virginicum

I was a bit surprised to find any still bearing seeds (most have dropped from the plants by now), much less still in flower. Cool.

The pepperweed was probably less than a hundred feet from the Jerusalem artichoke. When I got to the JA patch, I did manage to find some dried flower heads. I plucked off almost half a dozen, and then photographed this one still hanging on:

Helianthus tuberosus

I plan to plant some of the seeds on the south end of the flower bed along the front of the house this spring. It will only get morning sun there, but maybe that will be good enough. We have a domestic Helianthus cultivar (some showy sunflowers) growing in that vicinity, so perhaps the sunlight will be sufficient. I hope so!

 

October Blooms

Yesterday I took this shot of Penny before I left for work:

Penny

She was waiting for me to kick a ball that didn’t make it into the photo. I did kick it for her, as I do nearly every morning before I go to work. The last kick comes just as Jonathan is pulling into the turn-around spot so I can jump in and make my escape while she chases the ball.

Then at lunch time I took a stroll around my usual route in Concord, camera in hand. I wanted to see what was still in bloom. Here’s what I found:

Oenothera biennis (Evening Primrose)

Linarea vulgaris (Butter-and-eggs)

Hieracium pratense (Yellow Hawkweed, King Devil)

Trifolium pratense (Red Clover)

Erigeron annuus (Daisy Fleabane)

Lepidium virginicum (Virginia Pepperweed)

The pepperweed is one of my favorite wild edibles. It has plenty of flavor. I ate this clump right after taking the photo. The flowers are inconspicuous and can barely be seen up there at the top of the stem. The flowers turn to seed and the stem grows higher with flowers ever-blooming at the top.

Solanum dulcamara (Bittersweet)

I wasn’t expecting to see any bittersweet. I found none the last time I looked here, but I guess I wasn’t looking hard enough. There weren’t many blossoms, but there were a lot of berries (which are poisonous).

Solanum dulcamara (Bittersweet) berries

These are closely related to tomatoes, as both are in the nightshade family. People used to believe tomatoes were poisonous because so many nightshades are. Nobody has qualms about eating tomatoes these days though.

Solidago spp. (Goldenrod)

I don’t know which species of goldenrod this is – there are probably a hundred that grow around here, and they are difficult to distinguish. Almost as difficult as the asters. Most of the goldenrod has gone to seed, but there are still a few of them in bloom.

Helianthus tuberosus (Jerusalem Artichoke)

This Jerusalem Artichoke is from the same stand I blogged about a little while ago. I didn’t dig any more of them up, but I am going to keep an eye on them so I can maybe score some JA seeds for my place. I think I’ve found a place where I can grow them in the front of the house. There might be enough sun there.

 

Spring Peeper

Spring Peeper (Pseudacris crucifer) on WIntergreen (Gaultheria procumbuns)

I saw my first Spring Peeper (Pseudacris crucifer) ever today. These little frogs are loud, so I’ve heard them many times. They are also nocturnal, and as soon as you get close, they shut up. I had seen photos of them before, so when I saw this one on the ground, I recognized it for what it is immediately. I had to chase him around a bit to get his picture. This was the best of three. Now I don’t need to convince the boys to come out to the woods with me after dark and try to triangulate on the peepers with flashlights.

I also got a few nice shots of some Coptis groenlandica, aka goldthread:

Goldthread (Coptis groenlandica)

I took a walk at lunch today and found several other new flowers opening, including some Lepidium virgininicum (Poor man’s pepper). That stuff is great. If you strip the seeds off the stem and eat them, they taste very much like black pepper.