Bradford Angier - Field guide to edible wild plants

Copyright 2008 by Stackpole Books
Copyright 1974 by Bradford Angier
Illustrations Copyright by Arthur J. Anderson

Published by
STACKPOLE BOOKS
5067 Ritter Road
Mechanicsburg, PA 17055
www.stackpolebooks.com

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Stackpole Books, 5067 Ritter Road, Mechanicsburg, PA 17055.

Printed in China

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Second edition

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Angier, Bradford.
Field guide to edible wild plants / Bradford Angier ; revisions by David K. Foster ; illustrations by Arthur J. Anderson ; additional illustrations by Jacqueline Mahannah, Michelle L. Meneghini, and Kristen E. Workman. 2nd ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8117-3447-9
ISBN-10: 0-8117-3447-1
1. Wild plants, EdibleIdentification. I. Foster, David K. II. Title.

QK98.5.A1A53 2008
581.6'32dc22
2007040125

eBook ISBN 978-0-8117-4044-9

For Carol Gooderham,
my prettiest editor, who thought of it.
B. A.

And,
for Meg, Danika, and Jon,
my favorite foraging companions.
D. K. F.

NOTE TO THE READER

T he identification, selection, and processing of any wild plant for use as food requires reasonable care and attention to details since, as indicated in the text, certain parts of some plants are wholly unsuitable for use and, in some instances, are even toxic. Consistent with the capabilities of modern printing technology, every effort has been made to illustrate each plant with utmost fidelity of color and hue; nevertheless, some variations in their actual appearance may be encountered in the field stemming from seasonal and/or geographic factors. Because attempts to use any wild plants for food depend on various factors controllable by the reader, the publisher assumes no responsibility whatsoever for adverse health effects of such failures as might be encountered in the individual case.

INTRODUCTION

P lants played a principal role in the diets of Native Americans and Canadian First Peoples when Columbus rediscovered the New World. They regularly supplemented meat and fish with wild fruits, nuts, roots, tubers, greens, seeds, beverages, and the like, which were gathered from the land around them. Indeed, their health was so much improved by this food over the European diet that native peoples of the New World are often described as being much taller than the explorers journaling about them. And, in many cases, the original inhabitants specifically manipulated the landscape to increase the growth of the most beneficial of these plants. We can still have the satisfaction of doing that today.

You neednt be any kind of an expert, even in this day of space travel and atomic power, to begin eating wild foods, unspoiled and free. If you will positively identify everything before you gather itmade easy by this field guide with its detailed descriptions and its illustrations in full coloryou will never have any trouble. In particular, this guide groups species together that are closely related and used the same way. It is unique in its breadth of coverage of more than 150 species across North America, from the swamps of Florida to the tundra of the North Slope.

Wild foods have long been important on this young continent. Acorns probably rated the top position on the long list of edible wild vegetation depended on by Native Americans, acorn soup or mush being the chief daily food of more than three-fourths of the native Californians. When Cortez and his conquistadors advanced through the dry, open Southwest, they found the peoples of that region using the tiny brown, gray, and white seeds of the chia for food, a teaspoon being regarded as sufficient to maintain a warrior for a day on a forced march.

Native peoples of the Americas have long used the seeds of the lambs quarter, 75,000 of which have been counted on a single plant, for cereal and for grinding into meal. Although the purslane that today grows wild from coast to coast does not become quite so large (52,300 seeds have been found on a single plant), the tribes of the American Southwest used these for making bread and mush. They also made a nutritious meal from the roasted seeds of the shepherds purse. Incidentally, the green leaves of all three of these plants are delectable.

If youve ever sat down to a well-prepared meal that included wild vegetables, maybe youve noticed that many of them seemed to taste better than domesticated varieties from the store. Ill let you in on a trade secret: they are better.

Green leafy vegetables, to give just one example, deteriorate very rapidly. Even when purchased as fresh as possible from the finest nearby supermarket, theyve already lost a sizeable portion of their vitamins. Some of the food values of greens diminish as much as one-third during the first hour after picking. But gather them fresh from natures own garden and eat them while theyre at their tastiest, and youll enjoy the best they have to offer.

When the Forty-Niners stampeded up Californias streams and into the deserts and mountains for gold, a lack of market produce and their agnosticism of natures bounty brought crippling and killing scurvy to many of the camps. The natives helped some of these argonauts cure the vitamin-deficiency disease by introducing them to the succulencies of miners lettuce. The more than a dozen species of dock plants thriving on this continent from the Arctic Coast southward throughout the United States provide hearty greens that were widely eaten by the natives, some of whom also used the abundant seeds by grinding them into meal.

Native Americans used the slippery elm bark for food, sometimes boiling it with tallow they rendered from buffalo fat. They used to preserve serviceberries by drying them by the thousands of bushels, spreading them in the sun, and later beating them into a mash that was molded into cakes and dried like fruit leather. Mulberries, which can be gathered by the gallon just by shaking a heavily laden branch over an outspread cloth, were also a staple.

Instead of potatoes, carrots, radishes, parsnips, beets, and turnips as we know them, natives often relied on wild roots and tubers, especially in those parts of the arid West where lack of rainfall made any vegetable raising virtually impossible. When pioneers, prospectors, and others later began daring the plains and deserts, many of them starved to death amid abundance because they didnt know what to eat or how to prepare it.

The prairie turnip, for example, was a mainstay of such tribes as the Sioux. Tribes from the Atlantic to the Pacific ate the potato-like roots of the arrowhead, usually either boiling them or roasting them in the hot ashes. Jerusalem artichokesdistinctively flavored tubers of a native sunflowerwere also relished. Tribes along the eastern seaboard relied on the potato-like groundnut. After the tribes showed these groundnuts to the Pilgrims, the latter relied on them heavily to survive their first winter at Plymouth.

Wild onions, including the leeks, chives, and garlics, grow wild all over North America except in the far northern regions. Natives used them extensively, not only for the provocative taste they impart to blander foods, but also as a main part of the meal. Some tribes used wild ginger roots as seasoning. Many peoples also relied on the dried and powdered root of the jack-in-the-pulpit for flour.