Lol, that is the case with a lot of the plants I’ve tried. And I love dandelion greens.
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iNat is for doing citizen science, right? So as long as I do my research ahead of time and don’t poison myself, I’m experimenting.
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I also love the Texas Persimmon berries. And honey mesquite beans, (even made a syrup out of 'em a week ago. Tastes pretty good.), agarita berries, green condalia berries, and a million other things.
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Exactly! Although I did try a very poisonous plant, (coyotillo) multiple times before a friend told me it was poisonous. I had confused it w/ another plant. Now I study twice as hard. Luckily, I suffered no side affects at all. It was supposed to have paralyzed me. :-O
Look near rivers, dry creeks, shady places. They are huge, and in flower right now.
I could not convince my housemates of picking up or cooking nettles, but what worked was to dry the whole stalks, and then smash the leaves with my hands in gloves until they were like a dust (don’t use the stalks cause they have too much fiber, only the leaves) and we use them as salt in the food. It works very well and is easy to use and no sting.
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Welcome to the forum! I couldn’t convince my family either, except for my mom. I finally got her to drink a tea from it when she got a sever kidney infection. Dried works well indeed. You can add it to cakes too. Supposed to relieve allergies, haven’t tried that yet, 'cause I don’t have allergies.
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Thanks for the welcome! I am not sure about allergies… It didn’t helped me, and I’m a professional allergic :D
Another nice way to eat nettles is with smashed potatoes!
A nice website for consulting properties of foraging plants is Plants for a Future, has lots of information on each plant: https://pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Urtica+dioica
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Cool, thanks for the link! Too bad it doesn’t work for allergies. :-/ Another use for it is as a diuretic and for arthritis.
Thanks for the link! I always love new info.
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I have some elderberries in my small urban yard and they are very easy to root from cuttings, and they grow lots of suckers too. When I pruned mine back this spring (they don’t grow very tidy) I cut the branches into about 8 inch segments, stuck them in a glass of water until they grew some roots, and then potted them for a school rain garden. I think if there’s some local gardening enthusiast group (or even just a neighborhood/town group) you can ask, I expect you’ll find someone willing to give you elderberry cuttings. I’ve gotten lots of great native plants from plant swaps and asking neighbors.
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It is funny to see so many mentions of stinging nettles, as I have many and they are certainly a staple food of mine! They are wonderful steamed with butter (or hickory nut oil), or cooked into eggs with wild leek leaves. I’ve come to respect them a lot, and find that I hardly ever get stung anymore; and I love having so many red admirals around. I highly recommend harvesting (and caring for) the subspecies native to eastern North America: it is easier to harvest, doesn’t sting as bad, seems to support far many more insects, and is, in my opinion, a superior food than the introduced subspecies. Other plants I frequently find myself foraging for include sugar and red maples (I think we can consider maple sugar foraged if it is done the old-fashioned way), red oak, beech, serviceberry and common milkweed (which is not bitter and does not need to be boiled multiple times, by the way).
Actually, my milkweed took over a large part of my garden and now manages to provide me with more food than the cultivated vegetables that I used to spend so much time and energy tending, and all while providing valuable ecosystem services - what a wonderful plant!
Garlic mustard? Forget about it, I can’t stand that plant; I only want to rid my woods of it!
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I eat lots of mallows in the early Spring, when they are shiny and green, but later on in the year they become too harsh and also full of pests, as it seems humans are not the only animals that eat them.
I simply get the nice tender leaves and use them as spinachs.
But at this time of the year they are too leathery already around here in my area.
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On a related note there are quite a few youtube channels dedicated to gathering wild foods. Catch n’ Cook California is one of my favorites. Smash Fishing is a good one, too (I think that one is based in the Orkneys).
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Can you describe the differences (morphologiclly) between the native subspecies you mention and the common nettle (Urtica dioica)? Do you know the Latin name of that one?
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Nice and lemony
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Agarita berries are tasty too
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The native subspecies (Urtica dioica ssp. gracilis) has both male and female flowers on the same plant, has fewer stinging hairs, and its leaves tend to be longer, narrower with more well-defined veins. I also use color and texture of the leaves to aid in identification: the native subspecies has very green, smooth and deeply veined leaves, while the non-native (Urtica dioica ssp. dioica has bluish-green, fuzzy leaves without the deep veins. Another interesting thing I’ve noticed is that the native plants tend to be covered in insects, while I can find very few on the non-natives. They are very different plants once you become familiar with both.
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