Wild Edibles

Being an outdoors person and a scholar of the natural sciences, I naturally find myself drawn to the study of wild edibles. Oh, and I enjoy camp cookery a lot. :) I intend in my life to learn all that I can about wild plants, herbs, and mushrooms so that I can put them to good use in my own camp recipes. I own a few field guides on the subject, and try to use them as much as possible when I go out. I will concentrate mostly on wild edibles of the Southeastern United States as its where I live and spend most of my time. The Southeast seems like a good place to look for wild foods and I’m always finding something new. Last spring, (2001) I discovered some Solomon’s Seal on a backpacking trip and forced my friends to all try some. Boy was that good! Well, it was interesting, anyway. I hope to post some information on this page regarding some of my finds in the wild. I’d also like to post any recipes I concoct for my various edible plants. Spring is coming soon, so I should have some notes to post this summer. In the meantime, if you are interested in wild edibles, I recommend the Peterson field guides. If you are an experienced forager, please contact me with any advice you may have for a beginner. If you live in the Southeast and wouldn’t mind inviting me along when you go hunting for wild fruits, nuts, herbs or mushrooms, let me know.

I went out to the Chickamauga Battlefield yesterday (3/16/2002) to do a bit of foraging. It was a moist, dark spring day. I was hoping I might find a few mushrooms, but the only fungi I found were shelf fungi growing on dead logs. None that I found were marked edible in my field guide. I did find some good edible plants, however. I found quite a patch of spring beauties. They have a small 5-petaled white flower with pink streaks. They have a small corm that very much resembles a small potato. According to my field guide, they can be prepared as potatoes by boiling them for 15-20 minutes and then discarding the tough skins. You can serve with butter and salt. I’m afraid, however, that you would have to collect quite a number of them to get any useful serving, so only collect them when they are plentiful. Anyway, yesterday I had a good time looking for wild foods and maybe next time I’ll find more mushrooms. In the meantime, I will add Spring Beauties to my list of positively-identified plants.

Last Sabbath (see religious beliefs under “About me”), 3/23/2002, I did some more foraging. I was visiting my family and fortunately for me my folks had decided to let the yard go a little longer than usual. As a result, I found a few interesting things. There were quite a few patches of wild onions and the back yard was covered with some type of bittercress, I believe it was hairy bittercress. Bittercress can be added to salads and of course the wild onions can be used as normal onions. I left the Bittercress, but I grabbed several bunches of wild onions. It took some time to clean them all, but on Monday I put them to good use. I sauteed them in olive oil and added cubed tofu and fried it all up with breading. I was pleased at how well it turned out. Now I’ve got two more plants to add to my list!

About two weeks ago now, (today is 4/23/2002) I took a Spring backpacking trip with several of my close friends. We went out to the Big Frog Wilderness which is just North of the Cohutta Wilderness on the GA-TN border. It was a great weekend and we certainly had a great time. As usual, I was excited at what wild plants I might find. It didn’t take long to find a plant I recognized pretty quickly. The field where we decided to make camp was full of Field Garlic. For our Friday night supper all of us ended up having fresh Field Garlic with either soup, noodles, or cous-cous. I don’t know, however, if it was the Field Garlic or not, but I was nauseous for the rest of the trip. I’ll give Field Garlic another try, but I’ll be wary when I do. On our hike the next day, I identified quite a number of wild edible plants. I can only remember a few of them now, as I did not write them down as soon as possible, but here are some I remember. I picked a little bit of Birdfoot Violet. Birdfoot Violet is a member of the Violet family with leaves shaped very much like a bird’s foot. I and my friends had to look at our field guide for a long time to be sure it was not Monkshood, a similar plant that is poisonous. The leaves of the Birdfoot Violet can apparently be used as cooked greens, salad greens, or dried and used in tea. I chose to dry the leaves and attempt a tea sometime. I have yet to try it, but I’ll post information here when I do. There were a couple other plants that I identified, but more exciting than those plants I can’t remember, I found my first real wild mushrooms! The first mushroom I found had an large, orange cap, thick stem and seemed a little old as it was rather dry. The second species of mushroom I discovered was one growing in a cluster together in the leaves and dead wood surrounding fallen logs on the side of Big Frog Mountain. These mushrooms were gray, tall and skinny with conic caps. I was unable to positively identify either species as I did not do a spore print and other distinguishing characteristics were not clear. Besides, I’m very cautious when it comes to wild mushrooms. I would like very much to be able to follow an expert mushroom hunter around for a weekend in the wilderness before I feel too brave about eating wild mushrooms. Anyway, it was a fruitful weekend and I now have a few more plants to add to my list!

Edibles Log

The above link will take you to my new and improved wild edibles log.

Wild Edibles Links

The Mycological Society of San Francisco has
lots of great mushroom information as well as a great
cookbook!

Tao Herb Farms has a
this great index of wild herbs, their uses and recipes.