Eat the Weeds
Stinging Nettles
Stinging Nettles Know How
I was hiking one day when I saw what I thought was a mint I had not seen before. I picked a leaf and it bit me, badly. Welcome to the world of stinging nettles.
Florida’s Heartleaf Nettle
As luck would have it, I also picked the North American nettle that stings the worse, Urtica chamaedryoides (UR-tee-ka kam-ee-dree-OY-deez) which is a combination of Dead Latin and Living Greek that means “burning dwarf.” Modern Greeks call the nettle Tsouknida.
Humanity has been using the nettles for thousands of years. Not only are they an excellent source of food but also cordage. They also seem to be an element of grade-school torture, judging by all the videos on the Internet involving kids and nettles.
From the nutrition point of view, they pack a wallop as well. Stinging Nettles are rich in vitamins A, C, D, iron, potassium, manganese, and calcium. They are also high in protein and when cooked are very mild, tasting similar to spinach but slightly rougher.
Indeed, soaking, cooking, refrigerating, wilting or drying neutralizes the plant’s sting. Good as the plant is it should not be eaten after flowering. It reportedly can irritate the urinary tract, which makes some sense as it is a diuretic as well. It also gets stringy as it ages. Cooked nettles can be used in a wide variety of recipes from polenta to pesto to soup. There is a recipe below. The water you cook the nettles in can be kept for tea or as a soup base. You can also dry the leaves and use them for tea as well.
The stems of the nettles contain bast fiber and have been used the same way as flax, Caesar weed, Spanish Moss, and retted similarly. (Retting is a means of rotting off the non-fiber material of the plant. ) The fiber is more coarse than cotton, closer to burlap. Clothes have been made out of it and it was a fashion style recently.
As for stinging… I have been stung by a spurge called Cnidoscolus stimulosus and this stinging nettle (Urtica chamaedryoides.) While both bites are different I think the Urtica wins, so to speak. With me the Cnidoscolus‘ contact begins to burn slowly and intensifies over an hour or so and then goes away completely by two hours. The Urtica hits, as Shakespeare said, like a “hotspur” throbs, then lessens in an hour but stays painfully sore as a welt for several days especially after contact with water. The juice of a jewelweed or dock is reportedly a good treatment of the Urtica sting. Didn’t work. The juice of a chewed leaf is also supposed to bring relief but I can say that absolutely does not work with me. Nor plantagos or urine. A paste of baking soda did bring some relief.
There are some look-alike plants to the beginner. Two are the Pilea pumila and a new weed, the Fatoua villosa. Neither sting. It is that simple. A third plant that does not really look like the Urticas but does sting is the aforementioned Cnidoscolus stimulosus. It has deeply palmate leaves and large white flowers, at least a half inch or more across. You can see a picture of the Fatoua on the UFO page. The article on the Spurge Nettle is here.
One last word before the recipe. While folks can be allergic to stinging nettles they are also used to treat certain allergies particularly hay fever. Around the world nettles have been used for at least centuries to treat nasal and respiratory issues such as coughs, runny nose, chest congestion, asthma, whooping cough and in some cases tuberculosis. The roots are used as well as dried leaves. Apparently freeze dried leaves are the best.
Nettle Pesto
Ingredients
6 cups fresh nettle, blanched in boiling water for a minute, drained and roughly chopped, 2 cloves of garlic finely chopped, 1/3 cup pine nuts, 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, 1/3 cup olive oil, salt and pepper to taste.
Directions
Place the blanched nettle, pine nuts, Parmesan, a little salt and pepper, in a food processor. Blend the mixture until the mixture is smooth, or reduce by hand. While the motor is running, or mixing by hand, gradually pour in the olive oil until well distributed.
Green Deane’s :”Itemized” Plant Profile: Stinging NettlesIDENTIFICATION: Urtica chamaedryoides: An unbranched weed one to several feet high, small inconspicuous flowers, fine bristly hairs all over the stem, leafstalks and underside of leaves. Very obvious. The bristles sting greatly when gently touched. Manhandling the plant reduces the chance of being stung as it breaks the hairs before they sting.
TIME OF YEAR: Spring and fall, depending upon the climate, during Florida’s winter into spring.
ENVIRONMENT: Moist areas, along streams and woodlands, nettles are found around the world.
METHOD OF PREPARATION: Leaves raw or cooked but eating raw requires much skill to reduce stinging. Usually young shoots and leaves are boiled 10 to 15 minutes. Reserve the resulting water for nettle tea. Once cooked use like spinach or basil. Very nutritious. The cooking water is good as a tea or soup base. Dried leaves can be used to make tea. If you are an the trail you can use an alternative method of preparing nettles used by Ray Mears, and English wild food expert. He places the entire plant near a fire for a few minutes until it completely wilts, and that stops it from stinging. Mature stems can be used for cordage.
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Does Anyone Know What Time It Is?
G.V. Hudson is to blame
It is time for my semi-annual rant and wish that G.V. Hudson had a different hobby. Hudson, a New Zealander, collected insects and was a shift worker. In 1895 he proposed Daylight Savings Time so he could collect insects after work in daylight. The world rightly ignored his idea but it was also championed by a golfer William Willett in 1907. He fought for it tirelessly and the world rightfully ignored him as well. But, to save energy during WWI, Germany adopted Daylight Saving Time and soon other countries in the conflict followed. The time pox has been on humanity since. In the fall Americans set their clocks back to standard time, or what I call solar time. In the spring they go back on artificial time.
Golfer William Willett had the same bad idea
As I have mentioned before I stopped changing my clocks many years ago. I absolutely refuse to go on “daylight savings time.” The entire idea strikes me a silly particularly when one considers there is a fixed amount of daylight no matter how we set our clocks. It is rightfully called “daylight slaving time.” Only the government would cut the top foot off a blanket, sew it on the bottom, and then argue the blanket is longer.
What really got to me was the seasonal flipping, springing forward, falling back. It always left me out of sorts for weeks. Now I don’t flip. I don’t change when I get up, when I eat, when I go to bed or when I feed the animals. This family stays on solar time. I just recognize that for half the year the rest of the country thinks it is ahead of me by one hour.
Semi-annual nonsense
Fortunately nature is not so wrong headed. Animals and plants ignore the time change. Cows get milked at the same time no matter what hour it is. Plants grow the same while we pretend there is more light in the evenings during summer. (Though as a kid I remember marveling that at 9 p.m. it was still light outside.)
There is also a philosophical reasons. So much of our lives is artificial. And artificial “daylight savings” time is but one more thing to knock us out of sync with the world around us. I spend a lot of time with Mother Nature and I prefer her time to man’s. And grumpy me, I like to use my watches (12 and 24-hour) as compasses, and that’s easier if one stays on solar time. Thus I do. And more than one study shows it actually cost more to go on Daylight Savings Time than not.
From a factual point of view, the majority of people on earth do NOT go on daylight savings time. How sensible. Asia doesn’t nor does Africa. Most equatorial countries don’t. Great Britain and Ireland tried staying on DST permanently from 1968 to 1971 but went back because it was unpopular. Most of Arizona does not go on DST either. Lead the way Arizona. Daylight Savings Time is a bad idea that needs to go away.
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Seminole Pumpkin
Seminole Pumpkins lite. They can also be dark green
Cucurbita muschata: Seminole PumpkinUnlike watermelons which are from Africa, pumpkins and their kin are North American natives. When Panfilo de Narvaez was on an expedition in 1528 near what is now Tallahassee, Fl., he saw Seminole Pumpkins under cultivation. They still grow in the wild in many states, Florida north to Pennsylvania. They might have even been in Massachusetts when the Pilgrims arrived.
Let me quote Dr. Julia Morton, the larger-than-life grand dame of edible and poisonous plants in the southeastern US:
“A mainstay of Florida Indians and early settlers, the Seminole pumpkin is botanically identified as a form of Cucurbita moschata Poir., the species embracing the Cushaw or winter Crookneck squashes. It will spread over the ground, drape a fence or climb trees; needs to be fertilized only at planting time; requires no protection from insects. The fruit, variable in form and size, is hard-shelled when mature and keeps at room temperature for months, is excellent baked, steamed or made into pie. The Indians sliced, sun-dried and stored surplus pumpkins. Very young, tender fruits are delicious boiled and mashed; the male flowers excellent dipped in batter and fried as fritters. Thus, the vine produces three totally different vegetables. This is an ideal crop for the home gardener. The portion of the vine which has borne will die back but vigorous runners, which root at the nodes, will keep on growing, flowering and fruiting, yielding a continuous supply.”
The Indians not only cleared land for agriculture but they took advantage of the Seminole Pumpkin, which is a vigorous climber. They would plant it as the base of a dead oak tree and let the vine climb the tree and fruit off the ground. The plant would then grow all over the hammock reseeding itself. The natives were, actually, more ingenious than that. A hammock is a hardwood island in a swampy area. They would girdle the trees on the inner part of the island killing them but turning the inner part into a small field protected by a wind break and prying eyes. Getting the pumpkins down was no issue with a lot of young braves wanting to prove themselves. Uninjured, a Seminole Pumpkin will store for several months even in hot weather if it has good ventilation.
The pumpkin is round, lightly ribbed, around three pounds with tan skin or mottled and green. The sweet flesh is deep orange and dry. Highly productive, it is resistant to insects and disease. The fruit is actually more closely related to butternut and calabaza than the common Halloween pumpkin.
The botanical name, Cucubita moschata (kew-KUR-bi-ta MOSS-kuh-tuh) means Musk-scented Bottle Gourd. Moschata is also where we get the word “musk” from. Cucubita was what the Romans called the bottle gourd.
Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant ProfileGreen Seminole Pumpkins
IDENTIFICATION: Vine, soft-hairy, creeping, leaves ovate or nearly round or sometimes triangularly lobed, toothed, six inches to a foot long, soft, limp. Flowers funnel-shaped, crinkly, yellow, five lobes, three to four inches wide. Fruit comes in many forms, round, oblate, pear-shaped, short-necked, ribbed, orange when ripe with orange-yellow flesh, central cavity more or less filled with soft, fibrous pulp and flat, elliptic, white seeds, to three quarters of an inch long.
TIME OF YEAR: Fall and winter
ENVIRONMENT: Hammocks, everglades, abandoned camps
METHOD OF PREPARATION: Numerous: Boiled or baked, used as a vegetable, dried and ground into a flour for bread, young shoots and leaves cooked as greens, flowers with pistils removed cooked and eaten. They can also be stuffed. Seeds edible, can be roasted or hulled and ground into a gruel.
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Peppergrass: Potent Pipsqueak
There are two ways of thinking about peppergrass, either as a real neat wild treat, or an obnoxious weed. Regardless of your world view — or weed view — peppergrass is a survivor and part of man’s diet for many thousands of years. As far back as 300 BC Pliny was writing about the Lepidium, and more than a thousand years before that the Incas were cultivating it.
Used in the kitchen and flower arranging
There are about 175 different Lepidiums, no doubt some native to your area and some imported. Growers dislike them because raw they can flavor milk and are herbicide resistant. (Fermented peppergrass, however, is an excellent silage feed for cattle. ) Pictured is “Poor-Man’s-Pepper” Lepidium virginicum (leh-PID-ee-um vir-GIN-i-kum). Virginicum means “North American” and Lepidium is dead Latin’s bastardization of Greek for little fish scale, Lepidion. And indeed, with a little imagination the notched seed pods of the Lepidium can look like little fish scales, some say little purses, I think flat, tiny lentils. Modern Greeks call this (and the related Shepherd’s Purse) kardamo whicm means cress.
A bottle brush of seeds helps identify it
While in many places Lepidium is a winter and spring visitor, it is a year round plant here in Florida though it is most noticeable and happiest in winter here. The young leaves can be added to salads or soups — they are peppery. The seed pods can be used like pepper. The root, ground and mixed with vinegar is a good substitute for horseradish. I like them as a trail side nibble. The leaves contain protein, vitamin A and are rich in Vitamin C. There are no poisonous look-alikes.
As with all mustards, it has a tiny four-petal flower, whitish-yellow with two stamen. Bees like them. The flowers are on elongated racemes, which lends them to the classic description of looking like a small bottle brush. The leaves are deeply toothed. First the plant produces a low rosette of deeply cut basal leaves, then vertical growth and seeding. Some species in some places are biennial, rosetting one year, growing up and seeding the next.There are actually four very common Lepidiums and variations in all of North America. The leaves and seeds tell them apart but their use is the same. The shape of the seeds spell T.H.O.R. and that is how I remember them.
Peppergrass in the fall
The Cow-cress, Lepidium campesire, has basal leaves that embrace the stem — making them rise up — and a seed pod shaped like a front Tooth, with a tiny nick at the end. A close relative, the Shepherd’s Purse, Capsella bursa-pastoris, below, resembles “Poor Mans” but its seed pods are Heart-shaped. “Poor-Man’s Pepper” has deeply toothed leaves and an Ovalish seed pod with a small notch at the end. Pennycress resembles “Poor Man’s” as well, but the seed pods are Round and deeply notched. The common horseradish, that the sauce of the same name is made from, is a relative though it is much larger and has tiny egg-shaped seed pods. That the family is nutritious is just the beginning of the story. There are medical uses, some proven. The L. virginicum is antiamoebic, for example.
Shepherd’s Purse is a Winter Annual
In a 2001 study looking for antiprotozoal agents from plants researchers found “a crude extract from the roots of Lepidium virginicum exhibited antiprotozoal activity against Entamoeba histolytica trophozoites,” one nasty bug. “The results support the anecdotal reports for the traditional use of L. virginicum roots in the control of diarrhea and dysentery in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico.”
Perhaps the most famous Lepidium, however, is Lepidium peruvianum, also know as Maca. It grows a tuber that has been used to “enhance” fertility in man and beast. Research shows it also relieves stress.
Maca, the most famous Lepidium
Maca is hardy, being cultivated high in the Andes at altitudes from 8,000 to 14,500 feet. It has the highest frost tolerances of all plants and takes seven to nine months to produce a root, which can be eaten fresh or dried. They can be stored dry for as long as seven years. L. peruvianum roots have a tangy, sweet taste similar to butterscotch. In Peru they are eaten as is or made into jam, pudding, porridge, soda even a fermented drink called Maca Chicha.
There is a debate whether the Maca sold today is L. peruvianum or Lepidium meyenii, with the latest opinion favoring peruvianum. Called the “natural viagra” Maca has caught the attention of the non-Peruvian world: In 1994 less than 50 hectares were used in the commercial cultivation of maca; by 1999 over 1200 hectares were under production. It now exceeds 2000 hectares.
Those 2000 hectacres are found high in the Andes, an inhospitable place of intense sunlight, violent winds, and below-freezing weather. With such extreme condition and poor, rocky soil, the area is among the world’s worst farmland. However, Maca evolved to live under those conditions as have most mustards. They can be found growing in Greenland and the Arctic circle. The Incas domesticated Maca about 2,000 years ago, and primitive versions of Maca — early cultivars — have been found in archaeological sites dating back nearly 4,000 years.
Lastly, if you’re not inclined to eat the peppergrass, then there is another use: the dried seed stems make a great addition to dried arrangements and wreaths. They are showy, sturdy, and last for a long time.
Here’s a recipe from Leda Meredith who forages in New York City .
Peppergrass Chermoula
Chermoula is a North African marinade that is usually used with seafood. It is also wonderful on steamed vegetables and mixed into whole grain salads.
1 large clove garlic, peeled OR several underground field garlic bulbs
1 tablespoon fresh green peppergrass seedpod discs
1 small hot pepper
1/2 cup fresh cilantro (coriander) leaves
1/4 – 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1. Place the garlic, peppergrass, chile pepper, and cilantro in a food processor and pulse to finely chop. Scrape down the sides of the food processor bowl with a spatula and pulse again (repeat a few times to end up with a more or less evenly minced mixture).
Alternatively, finely chop the garlic, chile and cilantro. Pound them together with the peppergrass with a mortar and pestle.
2. Add the salt and 1/4 cup of the olive oil and blend. You want to have a slightly liquid paste. Add more olive oil if needed.
Chermoula will keep in the refrigerator for up to 2 months.
Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant ProfileIDENTIFICATION: Flower: Four petals, two stamen. Fruit: See seed. Leaves: Lobbed, toothed, varies, long to lance shape. Stem: Erect. Seed: Seed pods vary in shape round the stem. Root: Tap root vertical
TIME OF YEAR: Springtime into summer
ENVIRONMENT: Well-drained soil, sandy to rich, old pastures, gardens, lawns, roadside, nearly any sunny spot
METHOD OR PREPARATION: Leaves as potherb, seeds for spice or pepper flavoring, can use flowers to flavor vinegar. Some young leaves can be used raw in salads. Try a little first. Can blanch leaves then saute.
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Smartweed: Nature’s Pepper and Pharmacy
Look for Smartweed in low damp areas such as clean ditches. Photo by Green Deane
Polygonum punctatum: SmartweedThe blossoms are hot and bitter. Photo by Green Deane
I can remember my first taste of a smartweed leaf… kind of like trying a piece of burning paper. Indeed, a lot of plants resemble smartweed but one quick taste and you’ll know if you’ve got the right plant: If it isn’t very peppery, you picked wrong. Actually, the burn is not immediate. It takes a few seconds to kick in and then it intensifies. And about the time you wish it would stop intensifying it’s just getting started. Word to the wise, use sparingly and try only a very small piece to start with chewing between teeth and tongue.
It’s a little hard to stuff inside the head, but the smartweed, Polygonum punctatum, (pol-IG-on-um punk-TAY-tum) is in the the buckwheat family, but you would never use it on morning pancakes. It’s for seasoning, soups, and perhaps salads. Not only is it burning hot but some varieties, especially P. hydropiperoides, (hye-dro-pie-per-OY-dees) are also vasoconstrictors. So if you have high blood pressure, go easy on those species. It’s all right as a spice, a bit much as a pot herb.
The Smartweed is common throughout North American and nearly year round in the southern range. Actually it is easy to identify even when brown dead and is still peppery. It has freely branching stems and a lot of joints which gives the plant its name. Polygonum is Greek for many knees. Punctatum means dotted, referring to dots on the tepals, and indeed it is also called Dotted Smartweed. It’s a fine plant for seasoning while camp cooking, but can overwhelm like cayenne pepper. Also be careful because some people can develop dermatitis from it.
Blossoms can be be pink or white depending on the species. Photo by Green Deane
There are three species locally, all useable: The P. punctatum as well as P. densifolrum (compactly flowered) and the aforementioned P. hydropiperoides (water pepper.) P. hydropiperoides has tannins, rutin (3% in leaves) quercitin, kaempferol and some protein. It is considered a diuretic and has been used to stop intestinal and uterine bleeding, hasten menstruation and to treat hemorrhoids. It has many more applications as well. The Indians also cooked the leaves of the trio and ate of them sparingly. It’s also a common waterfowl food. If you crush a bunch and put it in a small body of water it will force the fish to float to the top by interrupting with their oxygen uptake (as does American Beautyberry.)
I saw some P. hydropiperoides in Mead Gardens, Winter Park, Fla., the day I originally wrote this article. It was flowering and taking on a bit of fall red. It had been a while since I had seen the P. hydropiperoides, the P. punctatum being the one my path crosses most often. Soooo, I tried a good part of a leaf…. the hole in my tongue should heal in a few days. The blossoms are hot as well but are also bitter.
Some Polygonums have edible roots, perhaps the best know is P. bistorta, a Eurasian import. The roots are first soaked in water then cooked in embers. Or it can be chopped up, soaked in many changes of water, then passed through a mill to make a puree. The bulbs of the P. viviparum have been eaten raw but they are better roasted. The roots of the Polygonum multiflorum are also edible raw or cooked as are the roots of the Polygonum bistortoides The seeds of the Polygonum douglassii, Polygonum aviculare and the European Polygonum convolvulus have been eaten since mesolithic times.
And while the Smartweed is called “many knees” at one time its name was arsesmart. I have never found any reference to what chemical(s) make the species peppery. Lastly, I have a video on the Smartweed on You Tube… made it in the rain… dedicated I am…
Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant ProfileIDENTIFICATION: P. punctatum: Alternate leaves are smooth-edged, lance shaped, willow-like, one to six inches long, leaf base forms sheath around stem. Young leaves flat, older leave can be wavy, The stems are often reddish, flowers are small, pink or white in dense clusters from the leaf joints or stem apices. It can grow to four feet or more but is usually smaller.
TIME OF YEAR: Year round in Florida, seasonal elsewhere, blooms July to first frost.
ENVIRONMENT: It likes moist areas. I often find it in the center part of old woods roads where they dip down and collect water or stay moist.
METHOD OF PREPARATION: In Asia the seedlings (sprouts) are collected and used like spicy radish sprouts for a hot flavor. Mature leaves and stems chopped up and used sparingly as pepper, leaves and stems boils in soups, again sparingly. Numerous herbal applications. The roots of some species are edible cooked, some require a little cooking, others require much cooking. The seeds of some are also edible. Check with a local expert about your local Polygonum.
HERB BLURBA Mem-Inst-Oswaldo-Cruz. 2001 Aug; 96(6): 831-3. Abstract:Polygonum punctatum (Polygonaceae) is an herb known in some regions of Brazil as “erva-de-bicho” and is used to treat intestinal disorders. The dichloromethane extract of the aerial parts of this plant showed strong activity in a bioautographic assay with the fungus Cladosporium sphaerospermum. The bioassay-guided chemical fractionation of this extract afforded the sesquiterpene dialdehyde polygodial as the active constituent. The presence of this compound with antibiotic, anti-inflammatory and anti-hyperalgesic properties in “erva-de-bicho” may account for the effects attributed by folk medicine to this plant species.
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Kangaroo… Australus
Kangaroo meat is nutritious but Australians don’t like it because it’s their national animal.
Kangaroo meat is so good it makes one wonder why the Aussies ever imported beef.
Kangaroo meat likes slow cooking and added fat
If you follow the Paleo lifestyle, as this writer has for some 12 years, Kangaroo meat is just about perfect: High quality protein, 2% fat, the best known animal source of Conjugated Linoleic Acid (helps you take off body fat) as well as high in iron and zinc. It does us modern cavemen proud. Kangaroos used for food are free-ranging and don’t contribute to greenhouse gasses. Even some vegetarians are eating kangaroo meat under an ethical view called Kangatarianism. I just call it tasty. How do you get it? You can order Kangaroo from several companies that will ship it to you packed in dry ice. Or, in larger cities you can find it in local markets and restaurants. Like other meats you can get various cuts and forms, medalions to ground. As a lean meat it does not over cook well and benefits from added fat in various dishes (as does horse meat.)
This account is from a 1948 expedition to Arnhem Land, a remote part of the northern Australia the size of Ireland set aside for Aboriginals who want to persue the hunter/gatherer lifestyle. It’s how to cook and eat a wallaby indigenous style.
“A large fire was made in a depression in the sand, and stones and shells were heated. Small green branches were placed on top of the stones and the wallaby was flung on these. After 5-10 minutes it was taken off the fire, placed on a layer of green leaves, and the singed fur was removed with a tomahawk. [Just the fur, not the skin.] Although the women sometimes did this preliminary treatment, a man always did the subsequent cutting up, which was done with a metal spear blade.
Kangaroo provides a variety of cuts for cooking.
The first cut was made horizontally on the ventral [belly] surface at the level of the anus, and next on the dorsal [back] surface along both sides to sever the leg muscles. Another cut was then made from the anus to the neck. The viscera were pulled out; and the kidneys, liver, heart and lungs, and the omental and mesenteric fat [the fat surrounding the intestines] were separated from the rest, and cooked on the hot stones and coals for 5 minutes. The cooked lungs were used to soak up the blood inside the carcass and then eaten. The offal was regarded as a delicacy by everybody and a certain amount of squabbling always followed its distribution.
The tail was cut off, and during the cooking was put on or alongside the body. The carcass was laid flat, dorsal side downwards, on the hot stones and ashes and the body cavity was filled with hot stones. Sheets of paperbark formed a cover over the animal, and sand was scooped out to make an oven. Wallabies weighing 15-20 pounds were cooked for 25-35 minutes. Everything edible was eaten except the stomach and intestines. The skull was cracked open to get the brain, and the bones were broken to extract the marrow.”
Wallabies are edible, too.
Kangaroos themselves are something of a problem in Australia. There were 27 million in 2010. By 2016 that number was 45 million. Blame rainy conditions that produce a lot of kangaroo food thus a lot of kangaroo babies. It seems to be a case of either humans start eating them or the kangaroos are going to starve to death by the millions. It’s a hard choice for many Aussies who think of “Skippy The Kangaroo” as many Americans think of “Bambi” a non-edible edible. By the way, as a meat animal kangaroos are very environmentally friendly… unless you have a few million carcasses lying around…
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Tallow Plum
Ripe Tallow Plums are tangy and a delightful trailside nibble. Photo by Green Deane
Ximenia americana: Known by Many NamesIf I listed this edible under its botanical name few would find it. On the other hand it has some three dozen commons names in several languages. So which one does one choose? In English, Tallow Plum is the most accurate.
Tart Tallow Plums, Photo by Green Deane
It has also been called the American plum, blue sour plum, monkey plum, mountain plum, seaside plum, Spanish plum, wild plum, hog plum, and yellow plum though it is not a plum but its leaves can be bluish. Other names include pepenance, coastal prune, spiny prune, Brazilian apricot, spiny apricot, wild apricot, little apricot and little wild apricot though it is not a prune nor an apricot. Then there is ocean cherry, wild cherry and cherry — no, it is not a cherry either; sea lemon, seaside lemon, wild orange, and wild lime…and no it is not a citrus. Others prefer devil’s apple, fiddle apple, little apple and wild quince. Yes, you guessed it again: It is not an apple or any apple relative. Some even call it the Wild Olive. No, it is not related to the olive but it is in the Olax family. Olive/olax… tenuous at best. There is also a darker side with names like purge-nut, cagalera (diarrhea) and fransman moppe (Frenchman’s complaint) a reference to what too many of the seeds can do.
It got the name Tallow Plum because of the waxy texture of the fruit. Botanically it is Ximenia americana (that’s hem-MAY-nee-uh a-mer-ih-KAY-na.) It was named for the Spanish monk Francisco Ximenez, a native of Luna in the Kingdom of Aragon. Americana means of the Americas.
Green they were used to numb gums.
Found in Florida and south, locally it likes dry scrub areas. The picture above came from the southwest side of the entrance road to Haulover Canal parking lot on the north end of Kennedy Space Center. Tallow Plums here in Florida range from a few feet tall to sprawling shrubs five or six feet tall. In southern hammocks, however, which are islands of hardwoods in wet areas, it can grow to 35 feet. I’ve been able to look over every Tallow Plum I have ever found.
Tallow Plum is gangly and has small thorns.
The yellow fruit, sometimes orange/red particularly when dropped off the tree, is edible raw or cooked. It can range from a bitter-almond in flavor to sweet. The flesh is somewhat astringent and sticky. There is no particular aroma of the fruit but the flowers have an intense lilac aroma. Young leaves, which have a strong aroma of almonds, can also be well-boiled then eaten in small amounts. Think famine food. Do not eat them raw. They contain cyanide.
The oil of the seed is also edible and used for cooking. It has 10 fatty acids, seven unsaturated yielding a total unsaturation of 92.42%. The oil contained essential fatty acids of Linoleic (1.34%), Linolenic (10.31%), Arachidonic (0.60%) and varying levels of unsaturated higher fatty acids, specifically Eicosatrienoic (3.39%), Erucic (3.46%) and Nervonic (1.23%) acids. The level of Oleic acid is 72.09%.
The pulp of the seed itself is purgative raw. A few can be eaten after cooking but if too many cooked ones are consumed, like the raw ones, they becomes a most efficient laxative. The fruit is known to quench thirst, is used as a drink and in making jams and jellies. In Tazania the Sandawe (Bushmen) rely on the fruit as a staple.
Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant ProfileIDENTIFICATION: A shrub to a small tree, branches long, zig-zaggy, vine-like, semi-climbing, thorny; leaves alternate, yellowish-green in the scrub, darker green in hammocks, oblong or elliptic, rounded or notched at the apex, or spine tipped, one to three inches long, some times in clusters of three. Flowers yellowish, four petals, 3/8 inch wide, hairy within, very fragrant, similar to lilac, in small clusters. Fruit a broad oval or nearly round, to 1.5 inches long, skin smooth, bright yellow to orange red, flesh yellow, bitter almond to sweet flavor, sub acid to acid. Seed large, oval, buff-colored with white nut like kernel. The wood is very dense and the plant can be parasitic.
TIME OF YEAR: Spring and fall
ENVIRONMENT: Dry scrub lands to hardwood hammocks. For several decades I only found them in coastal areas. But this past year I found one under a pine west of Orlando, mid-state.
METHOD OF PREPARATION: Fruit edible raw or cooked, used for juice, jelly, jam and wine. Kernel roasted but in limited quantities, seed oil is edible and can also be used in making soap, lubrication and a vegetable butter. Young leaves can be boiled and eaten sparingly. Raw fruit picked when unripe. The fruit is high in Vitamin C and oil that has been used externally on hair and as a skin softener.
HERB BLURBThe bark, fruit, and leaves have several medicinal uses. Leaves and twigs are used to treat fever, colds, as a laxative and an eye lotion. Leaves are used for headaches, angina, and a poison antidote. Roots are used for skin problems, headaches, venereal disease, sleeping sickness, and water retention. The fruit has been used for constipation. The bark has been used for febrile headaches, bath water for sick children, for kidney and heart complaints, and applied to skin ulcers. Stem bark methanolic and water extracts of showed a spectrum of activity against E coli, P. vulgaris, S. aureus, P. aeruginosa and B. subtilis.
Coral Vine
Coral Vine is not a slow creeper.
Antigonon leptopus: Creeping CuisineThe Antigonon leptopus ( an-TIG-oh-non LEP-toh-puss) inspires local names everywhere it grows: Tallahassee Vine, Honolulu Creeper, the Christmas Island Crawler, as well as Confederate Vine, Mexican Coral Vine, Mexican Creeper, Chinese Love Vine, Chain of Love, Queen’s Jewels, Desert Bleeding Heart, and Queen’s Wreath. Other names include: Kadena de Amor, Flor de San Diego, Rosa de Mayo, Corona de Reina, Hierba de Santa Rosa, San Miguelito, and Fulmina. Natives called it Coamecate, Coamecatl, Chak lol makal, Cuamécatl, Gui-bakushu, Mamasa-sai and Tunuc. It’s also called the Rose of Montana, but does not grow there. In most countries where bellies are full, it’s called an invasive weed.
Related to the seagrape and in the buckwheat family, the Coral Vine is a native of Mexico and is widely cultivated in South America. In other pan tropical places it is an escaped ornamental. It tolerates poor soil and a variety of light conditions. While a hungry man would view that as a reliable food source, most first-world governments think of it as difficult to eradicate. In Florida, where it is naturalized, it is considered a Category II invasive exotic (I have often wondered why they don’t think the same way about non-native citrus.)
A fast-growing climber, the Coral Vine grabs via tendrils and can reach 40 feet in length in old age. Its leaves are heart shaped, sometimes triangular, crinkly edged, with reticulated veins (looks wrinkled.) They are officially around one three inches long though I think they grow larger. The flowers are arranged in panicles, pink to white, blooming from spring to fall, many times year around. It is an evergreen in some climates or looses its leaves for a little while in other areas.
Coral Vine Roots: Photo by Marabou Thomas
The Coral Vine is well-equipped to proliferate itself. It produces a huge amount of seeds, which also float. The edible seeds, and or other parts of the vine, are favored by birds, raccoon, deer, pigs and sheep. Bees and butterflies like it because least least 41.6% of its flowers are open at a given time. The plant can also reproduce via its edible tuber which grows larger with age. It likes pinewoods, fence rows, yards, disturbed ground even marshy areas. Climbing by tendrils, it tends to smother what it ascends.
Least you think the Coral Vine is just another pretty invader it’s medicinal as well. An extract of its leaves and flowers inhibit lipid peroxidation. It’s an antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and analgesic. A hot tea made from the ariel parts is used to relieve symptoms of the cold and flu. A leaf tea is also made to treat diabetes and high blood pressure. In the kitchen the cooked roots are nutty, and the leaves and flowers are dipped in flour, fried and served with pasta. The flowers are also mixed into omelet. The seeds can be roasted, winnowed, then ground and used like flour.
Antigonon is from Greek and means opposite angle, think elbow, a reference to the blossom arrangement. Leptopus is a Greek/Latin mess that comes from the Greek word Leptos meaning thin or delicate. Lepta is pocket change and lepto is a moment. If you prefer the Greek the pronunciation would be LEP-toh-puss (as in cat.) The Latin would favor lep-TOE-puss. There are four to eight species of Antigonon — depending on who is counting. A second one grows in south Florida, A. guatemalense. It has larger leaves and hairy stems. Its edibility is unknown to me.
The vine is found throughout the southern United States, Central America and South America. It is also found on Africa — it got to Egypt by 1805 — and 98% of the Pacific Islands including American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, French Polynesia, Galapagos Islands, Guam, Hawai‘i, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Midway Island, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Pitcairn Island, Samoa, Tonga, the Philippines. It is also found on most islands in the Caribbean. It can be grown as an annual or a container plant at least as far north as St. Louis. It is also found in India, Australia, and England, and is known to grow in southern California but not blossom there.
Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant ProfileIDENTIFICATION: A twining vine, clings and climbs with curled tendrils to 40 feet. Leaves: ovate, heart-shaped, soft, pronounced veins on underside, reticulated on top. Flowers: on branch terminals, reddish or light pink, or white. Petioles 2cm or longer, whereas on the A. guatemalense they are 1 cm or shorter.
TIME OF YEAR: Roots anytime they are large enough to harvest, often deep. Blossom when in season, in warm areas nearly year round, in cooler areas until frost.
ENVIRONMENT: Nearly any environment will do. Flourishes with good water and plenty of sun
METHOD OF PREPARATION: Roots cooked — some say raw, I do not personally know that — seeds roasted and winnowed. Flowers and leaves cooked.
HERB BLURBTea prepared from the aerial parts of Antigonon leptopus is used as a remedy for cold and pain relief in many countries. In this study, A. leptopus tea, prepared from the dried aerial parts, was evaluated for lipid peroxidation (LPO) and cyclooxygenase (COX-1 and COX-2) enzyme inhibitory activities. The tea as a dried extract inhibited LPO, COX-1 and COX-2 enzymes by 78%, 38% and 89%, respectively, at 100 microg/ml. Bioassay-guided fractionation of the extract yielded a selective COX-2 enzyme inhibitory phenolic aldehyde, 2,3,4-trihydroxy benzaldehyde. Also, it showed LPO inhibitory activity by 68.3% at 6.25 microg/ml. Therefore, we have studied other hydroxy benzaldehydes and their methoxy analogs for LPO, COX-1 and COX-2 enzymes inhibitory activities and found that compound 1 gave the highest COX-2 enzyme inhibitory activity as indicated by a 50% inhibitory concentration (IC(50)) at 9.7 microg/ml. The analogs showed only marginal LPO activity at 6.25 microg/ml. The hydroxy analogs 6, 7 and 9 showed 55%, 61% and 43% of COX-2 inhibition at 100 microg/ml. However, hydroxy benzaldehydes 3 and 12 showed selective COX-1 inhibition while compounds 4 and 10 gave little or no COX-2 enzyme inhibition at 100 microg/ml. At the same concentration, compounds 14, 21 and 22 inhibited COX-1 by 83, 85 and 70%, respectively. Similarly, compounds 18, 19 and 23 inhibited COX-2 by 68%, 72% and 70%, at 100 microg/ml. This is the first report on the isolation of compound 1 from A. leptopus tea with selective COX-2 enzyme and LPO inhibitory activities.
Bioactive Natural Products and Phytoceuticals, 173 National Food Safety and Toxicology Center, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA. nairm@msu.edu.
Ti, Good Luck Plant
Ti was once raised for food, now it is a common ornamental.
Cordyline fruticosa: Food, Foliage, BoozeSimply called Ti (tee) Cordyline fruticosa spent most of its history with humans as a food, a source of alcohol, or a medicine. Now its foliage is in demand with many showy cultivars. Ti is probably native to southeast Asia and Papua New Guinea. It was carried throughout much of the Pacific by Polynesians who used the starchy rhizomes for food. An outdoor ornamental in warmer areas of the Earth today Ti is found naturalized in eastern Australia and many of the larger tropical Pacific islands including the Hawaii. It’s a common potted plant in cooler climates. The point is you should be able to find it nearly everywhere, often with other people taking care of it for you. And if you are so inclined you can even make a Hula skirt out of it.
“Scarlet Sister” is a popular variety
Boiled roots taste like molasses and were used to make a beer that was reported to cure scurvy (but modern references to its nutrition are scarce.) Some say the Hawaiians learned to distill Ti beer into a stronger brew from convicts in Botany Bay, Australia. Young leaves are used as a potherb. Older leaves are used to wrap food, make clothes, rain capes and for thatch. Ti leaves are to wrap foods for grilling, steaming or baking. Dried leaves should be soaked to soften before using.
One word of caution. Don’t confuse the Ti with the Dracaena. Ti leaves have a petiole (stem) arching out from the trunk or branch. Dracaena leaves clasp the trunk or branch. Dracaena will also burn your mouth and hands.
Two species are regularly reported as food sources. C. fruticosa and C. australis. Cordyline (kor-dih-LYE-nee) means club-like, referring to the look of the roots. Fruticosa (froo-tee-KHO-sah) means fruit. Australis (oss-TRAY-liss) means southern.
Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant ProfileStarcy roots are usually baked
IDENTIFICATION: Cordyline fruticosa is an evergreen shrub with a strong trunk which does not usually branch, 10 feet in height. Also a small house plant with colorful foliage, leaves 15-30 inches long, 4-6 inches wide, varying in color from shiny green to purple, red, yellow, purple and white. In mature plants, the leaves are tuft-like in appearance on the top of the stems, leaves along the stems with young pants. Flower fragrant, usually yellow or red, berry-like red fruit
TIME OF YEAR: Year round
ENVIRONMENT: Partial shade to nearly full sun, moist soil. Like humidity. Prefers water without Fluoride.
METHOD OF PREPARATION: C. australis: Young leaves and shoots eaten raw or roasted. Roots eaten or brewed after cooking. C. fruticosa. Roots cooked for food and brewing, young leaves cooked as a potherb. Also used to wrap food. The roots were slow roasted for days to get a molasses-like syrup which was then used for alcohol production. One way to use the leaf is to wrap food in it then cut the center rib out leaving two smaller wraps then cook (such as steam.)
This original article was first written in July 2011 by Green Deane.
Indian Pipes, Gold, and Emily Dickinson
Waxy White Indian Pipes
Monotropa is almost a monotypic genus. Instead of having one species in the genus there are two: Monotropa uniflora and Monotropa hypopithys.
Most references to the Monotropas are medicinal but Merritt Fernald in his publication “Edible Wild Plants of Eastern North America” mentions the Monotropa uniflora as barely edible. He writes on pages 305-306: “So far as we are informed, the only person who has reported upon it is Prest, who states the fresh plant is almost tasteless but that when parboiled and then boiled or roasted it is ‘comparable to asparagus.’ Our own single experiment was not gratifying in its result.”
Professor Merritt Fernald
That’s not promising. Fernald was the main botanical man of his age. Born in Orono, Maine, he was soon at Harvard and never left becoming the expert in eastern North American flora. He published the above book in 1943. Fernald died in 1950 two weeks shy of his 77th birthday. His book was republished in 1958. I own a copy. Nearly 40 years later in 1996 it was reprinted virtually unchanged. In the introduction, written during World War II, Fernald echoed some sentiments now familiar to us: “Nearly everyone has a certain amount of the pagan or gypsy in his nature and occasionally finds satisfaction in living for a time as a primitive man. Among the primitive instincts are the fondness for experimenting with unfamiliar foods and the desire to be independent of the conventional sources of supply. All campers and lovers of out-of-doors life delight to discover some new fruit or herb which it is safe to eat, and in actual camping it is often highly important to be able to recognize and secure fresh vegetables for the camp-diet; while in emergency the ready recognition of possible wild foods might save life. In these days, furthermore, when thoughtful people are wondering about the food-supply of the present and future generations, it is not amiss to assemble what is known of the now neglected but readily available vegetable-foods, some of which may yet come to be of real economic importance.”
The blossoms turn down until seeding
Fernald thought little of the Monotropa uniflora and by accident or intent left out of his book’s bibliography who Prest was. That struck me as a challenge. I accepted. I eventually found a W.H. Prest who was the author of Edible Plants of Nova Scotia circa 1904-1905. He seemed a likely candidate. Experiment Station Record, Volume 23, United States Office of Experiment Stations, Agricultural Research Service, says on page 668 that Prest’s plant list was: “…a popular description of plants which have little commercial value, but which may be used for food in case of necessity.” More digging filled the name out to Walter H. Prest, of Bedford and Halifx, Nova Scotia. And it wasn’t much of a publication, just notes. They were included in the Proccedings of the Nova Scotian Institute of Science, Volume 11. Prest was a dues-paying member and participating fellow. On page 413 Prest gets to the Monotropa in note 67 (of 77) the first and only entry under “Parasitic Plants.” He writes:
Monotropa uniflora L. Indian Pipe, locally “Death-Plant.” White semitransparent stalk 2 1/2 in. to 5 in. high, with highly organized flower of five petals, without smell, stalk with thin transparent scales or leaflets, tender and almost tasteless. Parboil, then boil or roast, comparable to asparagus. In dry or moderately dry soil in thick woods, June to August. Generally distributed and abundant.”
Like Fernald, as far as I can tell Prest’s reference is the only reference to Monotropa uniflora’s edibility and perhaps the original that everyone now quotes via Fernald. At least we know Fernald copied it faithfully.
Prest’s Gold Mining Book
As for Prest, more than a century ago on page 387 of the proceedings introducing his list he wrote: “These notes on edible wild plants of Nova Scotia are the result of my early experience in the backwoods, and are offered with the hope that they may prove of benefit to those whom business or accident may lead temporarily beyond the reach of the resources of civilization. While some of the wild fruits here mentioned, such as the blueberry and cranberry, are of commercial value, others are included because they may assist in sustaining life at a critical time. While lost in the forest persons have perished through a want of knowledge of the resources which nature has bounteously provided in many sections at certain seasons of the year. As these resources are more animal than vegetable, the latter class has been much neglected. Therefore, the result to a lost man, unprovided with weapons or the means of snaring, trapping or catching game of fish, might be perhaps serious. I propose, therefore, to tabulate these edible plants, so far as known to me, and describe as freely and popularly as possible, all that have come under my personal notice….”
That’s another voice reaching across time about food. The next question would be who was Prest and what were his credentials? There might be an answer.
I don’t like articles with “holes” in them, missing bits of information whose absence irritates the reader. Call it the journalist in me but I wanted to know more about our single referencer. As far as I can tell he was Walter Henry Prest, born 1856 in Spry Bay, Nova Scotia, to Edward Isaac Prest and Ann Elizabeth McKinley. He married Maude Tuttle and died in Halifax in 1920. Prest — which is a variation of Priest — got out in the woods because
Eskers were once tunnels rivers flowed through under glaciers
he collected plants and was either a geologist or a gold prospector or both. He’s probably the author of “The Gold Fields of Nova Scotia: A Prospector’s Handbook” Halifax: Industrial Publishing Company, (1915). His original list of plants was published in 1901 in a small 23-page volume shared with another author on a different topic: Phenological observations in Nova Scotia and Canada, 1901 ; 2. Labrador plants (collected by W.H. Prest on the Labrador coast north of Hamilton Inlet, from the 25th of June to the 12th of August, 1901.) As mentioned earlier Prest was a member of the Nova Scotian Institute of Science and a year before he died read at least one paper there on the 12th of May 1919 “On The Nature and Origin of the Eskers of Nova Scotia.” An ekser is a long narrow winding ridge made up of layers of sediment and marks where there used to be a flowing tunnel through a glacier. Some are hundreds of miles long. That’s also where plants grow above the barren rock and where animals den.
Now we have a more complete picture of our forager. Prest had scientific grounding with a foot in geology, a foot in botany and some peer review. And if he knew about prospecting he was also out in the wilds a lot. Whether a long time without asparagus makes Monotropa uniflora as palatable as asparagus is another issue.
Hypopitys lanuginosa aka Monotropa hypopithys, Pinesap
The chlorophyll-less plant is widely distributed throughout most of North American and only absent from the southwest, intermountain west and the central Rocky mountains. Distributed yes but not commonly encountered. I see it now and then and never paid it much attention until I received an inquiry. It lives off fungi that get their energy from trees. Monotropa means “once turned” (the blossom turns before releasing seed) and uniflora means “one flowered.” The entire plant is waxy white. The other species in the genus is a bit of an issue.
Monotropia hypopithys, also called Pinesap, has the same growth pattern but instead of white it is yellow to gold and hairless in the summer, red and hairy in the fall. Dr. François Couplan in his book “The Encyclopedia of Edible Plants of North America” says on page 192 that M. hypopithys “is reported to be edible raw or cooked. It contains two glucosides, one of which yields by hydrolysis an essential oil containing methyl salicylate. The plant is antispasmodic and expectorant.” Sound more like medicine than food to me. It has also been renamed Hypopitys lanuginosa (lan-oo-gih-NO-suh) the latter meaning “wooly” or “downy.”
There is also a spelling issue with it, hypopithys or hypopitys. Books favor with the “H” and the Internet without, which suggests to me the books are right. More so, hypopithys/hypopitys is said to mean “under pines.” Linnaeus, who named the species, always used hypopithys as did Fernald, above, when Fernald rewrote and expanded Gray’s Manuel of Botany, which I have. As mentioned, I think there is something wrong in either the spelling, the translation or both. Then again, timing could also be an issue.
Boiled 15 minutes and still tasted bad
In Greek, modern or ancient, it is difficult to find the “H” sound associated with pines. Written language, after all, just reflects what people say. In Ancient Greek one word for pine was pitus, PEE-tus and one can see how that could be written in Dead Latin as pitys. No “H” as in hypopitys (high-poh-PIE-tees.) I would agree that means “under pines.” However, there was a wood nymph in Greek mythology named Pithys. Wood nymphs were called that because they stayed in the woods, also where Indians Pipes are found, only in the woods. Hypopithys (high-POH-pith-eez) would mean “under wood nymphs.” Linnaeus knew his Latin and Greek and consistently used the “H” in hypopithys. He was also the original dirty old man with a gutter sense of humor (you should read what naughtisms some of those botanical names translate into.) I suspect hypopithys, under wood nymphs, was the original naming, not as it has become referred to, hypopitys, under pines. Thus I think we had first the right spelling and the wrong translation; hypopithys, under wood nymphs mistranslated as under pines. Now we have the wrong spelling but the right translation of the wrong spelling, hypopitys, under pines and translated as under pines. Having read a lot of and about Linnaeus I think hypopithys, under wood nymphs, was more his frisky style.
Emily Dickenson, age 17
Both species are reported to be edible but because of the rarity of edibility reports and definite glucosides in the second species I would be careful. There might be a reason why only Prest says they are edible though he died nearly 20 years after writing that. If I find some more locally I’ll let you know.
I should also note the pale plant also drew the attention of Emily Dickinson, pale poet and closet romantic. In 1882, four years before Dickinson died, her neighbor, Mabel Loomis Todd, painted a watercolor of Indian Pipes as a gift to Dickinson.
Watercolor to gravestone
In a thank you letter to Mabel, Emily said, “That without suspecting it you should send me the preferred flower of life, seems almost supernatural… I still cherish the clutch with which I bore it from the ground when a wondering child, and unearthly booty, and maturity only enhances the mystery, never decreases it.”
In 1890 the same image of the Indian Pipes appeared on the cover of the first posthumous edition of Dickinson’s poems. The image was also reproduced on Mrs. Todd’s gravestone in Wildwood Cemetery in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant Profile: Indian PipesIDENTIFICATION: Monotropa uniflora: From 10 to 30 centimeters. The entire plant is a translucent, “ghostly” white, sometimes pale pinkish-white and commonly has black flecks. The leaves are scale-like and flecked with black on the flower stalk (peduncle). As the Latin epithet uniflora implies, the stem bears a single flower. Upon emerging from the ground, the flower is pendant (downwardly pointed). As the anthers and stigma mature, the flower is spreading to all most perpendicular to the stem. The fruit is a capsule. As the capsule matures, the flower becomes erect (in line with the stem). Once ripened, seed is released through slits that open from the tip to the base of the capsule. The plant is persistent after seed dispersal.
TIME OF YEAR: Flowers from early summer to early autumn
ENVIRONMENT: Mature, moist, shaded forests in thick leaf litter.
METHOD OF PREPATION: Monotropa uniflora, parboiled, roasted or boiled. Monotropa hypoythis reportedly raw or cooked. Again, be wary of glucosides.
This original article was written by Green Deane in 2011.
Sea Lettuce, Ulva
Sea Lettuce, Ulva lactuca
Ulva: Sea Soup & SaladUlva is the greenest seaweed you will ever see from shore, or in the sea for that matter.
Ten species, all edible, are found around the world in cool water. Ulva (ULL-vah, rhymes with hull) is commonly found on intertidal rocks, in tide pools, on reef flats, growing on shells, piling, pieces of wood, other seaweed or free-floating. It also favors areas of fresh water runoff that are rich in nutrients (particularly nitrogen) such as the mouths of rivers, streams and run-off pipes (the latter not the wisest place to harvest food.) Ulva can grow profusely in those areas and it is one of the most commonly encountered seaweeds. Here in Florida it is most often seen on jetties at low tide. In fact, there has been a decades long breeding program in the state to develop a variety that can be commercially grown in warmer waters.
Despite looking flimsy Ulva is quite strong for leaves only two cells thick. Think if it as wet wax paper with some resistance. Despite that it can easily be harvested, in or out of the water. Its most common use is to add it to soups and salads. Nutritionally Ulva has 87 mg of iron per 100 gram portion and 700 mg calcium per 100 gram serving. U. lactuca is made of 15% protein, 50% sugar and starch, less than 1% fat. It is also high in protein, iodine, aluminum, manganese and nickel and contains Vitamin A, Vitamin B1, Vitamin C, sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, soluble nitrogen, phosphorous, chloride, silicon, rubidium, strontium, barium, radium, cobalt, boron, trace elements, ash, fiber and the kitchen sink…
Ulva intestinalis, also edible.
Commonly called Sea Lettuce or Green Laver, it can also used as a substitute for nori (see Porphyra) a seaweed used in sushi. Ulva should be washed well then use or as an option soak it in water for two hours before using to moderate the flavor. Besides soups and salads it can even be toasted over charcoal. When toasted it add yet another flavor to soups and salads. Ulva can be store for two or three days in the refrigerator or frozen for six months without loss of flavor. Further Ulva can be dried and used as a powder. When its blades (leafs) are dried they darken and are brittle. It should be air-dried or pressed into thin sheets. Drying in the sun is best though you can also use an oven. And in the end, if you don’t like it, Ulva can be used as animal fodder. Personally, I like it. A restaurant in Port Canaveral, Florida, used to serve Ulva fresh in a “seaweed salad” that was quite good. One combination for a seaweed salad is Ulva lactuca, Ulva enteromorpha and Ulva monostroma, known collectively as aonori. In texture and flavor Ulva reminds me of shreaded jelly fish… I know that’s not much of a help but I find it tasty. Ulva is also dried, salted and sold in South America as “cachiyugo.”
The most famous species is Ulva lactuca. In Latin Ulva means “sedge.” In this case Ulva was one of the first plants to get a scientific name and Ulva was used in the sense to mean a swamp grass. As it resembled wild lettuce it got the name given to lettuce, lactuca, which means milk bearing. Wild lettuce on land has a white sap. Generally Ulva is called Sea Lettuce. Avoid any seaweed, Ulva or otherwise, that has blue-green algae on it.
Sea Lettuce Soup
4 cups chicken stock
2 sheets Ulva
2 eggs
Salt and pepper
½ tsp sesame oil
1 or 2 green scallions
Bring stock to a boil. Add sea lettuce and
stir. When sea lettuce is soft, stir in well-
beaten eggs and boil for a few seconds then
remove from heat. Add salt and pepper to
taste. Add sesame oil, garnish with onion,
and serve.
Toasted Sea Lettuce
6 sheets Ulva
½ tsp Salt
1 ½ tablespoon sesame oil
Mix salt and sesame oil and rub a thin coat on sea lettuce. Lay 6 sheets on top of one another, roll them up and let them marinade for 5 minutes. Unroll and cook each sheet separately in a hot pan over low heat until crisp. Cut sheet into smaller pieces and serve with hot rice.
Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant ProfileIDENTIFICATION: Thin, sheet-like, as tufts or solitary blades, shape varies, to one three feet. Blades (leaves) ruffled or flat, small microscopic teeth on edges. Bright green to dark green, gold edges when reproducing. In some species the blades have holes in them.
TIME OF YEAR: Generally year round.
ENVIRONMENT: Ulva lives attached when young to rocks in the middle to low intertidal zone, and as deep as 35 feet in calm, protected waters. Usually seen in dense colony. It is often offers a hiding place for blue crabs. Older it is free-floating.
METHOD OF PREPARATION: Raw or cooked, in salads or soups, chopped as a relish, a late ingredient to stir fries. Can be dried and added as a power to other foods. Or, chop it up, boil for a half an hour, mix with grated cheese and oatmeal, form into patties and fry. Sea Lettuce fritters. The blades can also be used as a wrap, raw or cooked or for cooking, such as wrapping one around a shrimp before frying. Ulva can be microwaved on low power for three or so minutes.
HERB BLURBUlva has been used to treat burns and gout. It is a natural source of iodine and is an astringent.
Sea Rocket Siblings
Wild mustards are easy to spot on our beaches. They are between the wrack line and the lift of the dune. (The root is unrelated debris.) Photo by Green Deane
The Cakile Clan: Seaside EdiblesCakile edentula
Food is where the water is, be it fresh or salt, and one of the waterway foods of North America is Sea Rocket. There are at least five native Sea Rockets and one or two imports.
Cakile species are perennial that can grow upright or spread out. They grow close to the coast, often in dunes. Leaves are fleshy, the flowers are typically pale mauve to white, with four petals about a third of an inch in length. They are rather similar to those of the wild radish, that is, the petals have veins whereas mustards petals do not. Identifying leaves and stems is the way to tell them apart. The leaves are also peppery and have a nose of mustard.
Cakile maritima
The most common is Cakile edentula (kah-KIL-ee e-DEN-tuh-luh.) It can be found from California to Alaska, Louisiana to Greenland and land boarding the Great Lakes. Florida has its own version, Cakile Lanceolate (lan-see-oh-LAY-tuh) that runs from Texas to Florida and Puerto Rico. C. maritima, from Europe, is found on the west coast, California to British Columbia, coastal Texas and Alabama, North Carolina to Long Island. It is said muh-RIT-tim-muh, Latin, or mar-ih-TEE-muh, British. The point is, if you are near big water, there is a Sea Rocket near you and their ranges overlap. The goal is to learn your local variety or varieties. Not all of the Sea Rockets are used the same though they are similar. So let’s look at these three individually.
Cakile lanceolata
Cakile edentula: Leaves and young stems, raw or cooked. The younger leaves are used in salads, the older leaves are mixed with milder greens and used as a potherb. The flavor is similar to horseradish. The root can be dried and ground into powder. That can be mixed with flour and used to make bread. Said bread is a famine food.
Cakile maritima: (European Sea Rocket) Leaves, stems, flower buds and immature seed pods raw. They can be cooked but cooking makes them very bitter. However, they are rich in Vitamin C. Their root can also be dried and used.
Cakile lanceolata: (Southern Sea Rocket) Leave and steams eaten raw or cooked, has a mustard flavor. Young shoots or tips are excellent. No report on the root and I haven’t tried it. Leaves can have an ether taste but I have not encountered it.
Medicinally, boiled leaves have been used to clean persistent wounds.
Cakile is an old Arabic name for the plant. Edentula means without teeth, maritima, of the sea, and lanceolata, lance shaped. Sea Rocket comes from the rocket-shaped seed pods.
Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant ProfileIDENTIFICATION: C. edentula, low, fleshy, branching beach plant with pale lavender flowers, not heavily toothed or not at all, found on the above the high-tide line of beaches, seed pods angular, succulent young stems and leaves somewhat like horseradish. C. maritima has very deeply lobed leaves, shiny, fleshy, green, tinted with purple or magenta, long-lobed, white to light purple flowers, sculpted, segmented, corky brown fruits to an inch long. C. lanceolata has long leaves that can be toothed or not or irregular but not deeply lobed. Pods cylindrical. Flowers white to light purple.
TIME OF YEAR: Mid spring to the autumn depending on climate.
ENVIRONMENT: Found on the above the high-tide line of beaches, oceans, Great Lakes and local rivers.
METHOD OF PREPARATION: Leaves and stems of all raw, leaves and stems of the C. edentula and C. lanceolata can be cooked. C. Maritima becomes very bitter when cooked. The root pounded and dried and mixed with flour and baked for a famine food.
The Little Mustards
Little Mustards are seasonal like this Garden Cress, Lepidium sativum. Photo by Mike Dunton, Wilderskills.com
Coronopus, Descurainia, Cardamine, Erucastrum and Sibara
There are numerous little mustards that show up seasonally populating lawns and fields with spots of green against dead winter grass, and then they are gone. Their variety is rich and variations many. You may never know exactly which one you have. With most, not all, look for the four-petaled flower with six stamen, four long, two short. Blossom can be yellow, white or pink. The seeds pods can be long like tooth picks or short little hearts or round scales.
This quintet of little mustards shouldn’t be dismissed but they are easy to miss. Their season is usually as short as they are. Locally the little mustards pop up in our cooler months, carpet some areas, and then are gone before one gets around to study or harvest them. There are many of them and variations are seemingly endless, which mean you can easily reach the conclusion you’ve got a little mustard but exactly which one it is will be open to debate. Fortunately, in small amounts at least, there are no toxic mustards.
Swinecress has distinctive seed pods.
Swinecress (Coronopus didymus, koh-RON-oh-puss DID-eh-mus) is called said because pigs like it. Low growing, it’s usually a bright green rosette against the fading grass of cold weather. Locally it is found at the same time and with wild radishes. Flowers are greenish and minute. The entire plant very pungent when crushed. From a consumption point of view it is a trail-side nibble, a salad addition, and if cooked in at least one change of water, a pot herb. How many changes of water depends upon your tastes and how strong a tummy you have. In small amounts it is considered by farmers to be good cattle food but in large amounts toxic because it upsets their cows’ chambered stomachs. So find out how you and it get along before indulging greatly.
Tansy Mustard
In this particular case, the botanical name is actually helpful. Coronopus is a forced amalgam of two Greek words meaning Raven and foot, or in English “crow foot.” And indeed the three-pointed leaves resemble a three-toed bird foot. Not only does the end of the leave look that way, but the little leaves off the side of the main leaf do as well. Those little leaves alternate, barely. At the end of the leaf they are without stem, near the base of the leaf they have a little bit of stem.
And as is the case quite often, the second part of the name is a bit earthy, though references try to make it politically correct. Didymus is often rendered as Greek for “paired.” That is not linguistically accurate. While there are many words for “paired” in Greek one of the most common is ζυγός, zee-GOS which means “yoke” as in a yoke of oxen. In fact the word for spouse is σύζυγος, SEE-zee-gos. Got the idea? That is not the kind of pairing didymus means. Strictly said didymus means testes. And indeed the seeds of the Swinecress resemble two little you guessed it. Coronopus didymus. Crow foot testes. And you thought botany was sophisticated….
Hairy Bittercress like to grow in damp areas.
Our next little mustard is the Tansy Mustard because it, yep, resembles the tansy. Apparently botanists, when not thinking up dirty names for plants, aren’t too creative.
Exactly which Tansy Mustard you have will be a bit of a guess as well. Locally, here in Florida, I seem to find the Western Tansy Mustard. (It is called western so not to confuse it with one growing in Europe which is not called the Eastern Tansy Mustard.) And although I sit on the semi-tropical temperate line the tansy mustard is known as a plant found around the top of the world, not the equator. There are also a lot of subspecies so you may never know exactly what tansy mustard you have.
Botanically it is Descurainia pinnata, des-koor-RAY-nee-uh pin-NAY-ta.) In this instance, the name doesn’t help much. The first part honors Francois Descourain (1658-1740), a French botanist, physician and pharmacist. The second part, pinnata, means feather-like, or feathery et cetera and this is true in the sense that the leaves are wispy.
Dog Mustard is perhaps the least common of the little mustards.
Perhaps I’m not looking for Tansy Mustard, but it does not seem to me to be as common as other little mustards but it certainly likes the same environment, think dry pastures. Six to 20 inches tall or so, fine, delicate, like the other little mustards a nibble, a salad addition and when cooked to tolerability, a green. It’s texture is mealy or hairy… kind of both.
The tansy mustard, also tansymustard, has one to several densely hairy stems, giving it a different texture than most Little Mustards. The basal leaves are divided twice into small segments, very hairy, stem leaves are divided into small segments once, very hairy. The flowers are bright yellow to almost white, fruit stalk long, elongated dark red seeds. If it looks like a tansy but is peppery like a mustard… it just might be the tansy mustard.
Quite common locally is the Hairy Bittercress, or Cardamine hirsuta, kar-DAM-en-neh her-SOO-tuh. Unlike the other little mustards, it likes to grow where it is damp. In northern climes it germinates in the fall and stays green under the snow. Here in Florida we see it popping up in our winter, which is Christmas to Valentines Day. But it can be found in cooler shady wet spots for perhaps nine month of the year.
Sibara virginica
This little mustard is nearly hairless, stems are green or sometimes purplish in strong sun, not hairy, circular, tapering towards both ends, from a tap root. Usually many stems growing from a tap root. Basal leaves, however, have hairy stems. Leaves can be rounded to wedge-shaped, with little hairs, can flower when very small. Each leaf generally contains 4 to 8 leaflets arranged alternately along the leaf stem (rachis.) Seed capsule is 10 times longer than wide. Unlike other little mustards it looks like something one might grow in an herb garden. Flowers are small, usually a group of them, four white petals, on the ends of wiry stems. The long narrow seed pods (siliques, said sah-LEEKS) and alternating round leaflets are prime elements of identification. The little siliques tend to grow upright.
Shepherds Purse is another mustard clan of spring.
It is also often found in garden centers because of the watering, or lawns. If you are an organic gardener, aphids love the Hairy Bittercress meaning you can use them as a trap crop. Leaves and flowers – raw or cooked — have a hot cress-like flavor, often used as a garnish or for flavoring. Can be used as a potherb but as with the other little mustards, proceed carefully.
Dog Mustard, also called the Hairy Rocket and French Rocket, is our least common little mustard, and the largest, getting up to a scraggly two feet under optimum conditions. To my eyes it looks like a ratty wild radish. It was introduced into the US and Canada in the early 1900s and spread along the railroads. It can cross with the rape plant (from which seeds we get canola oil.) This is viewed as good and bad. It can cross on its own and change the plant for the worse or it can be a source of genes should the rape need a shot of new genetics.
Poor Man’s Pepper Grass can be short or tall.
The Dog Mustard grows upright from a foot to two feet tall, pale yellow to whitish flowers, 4-petals to a half inch wide, petals rounded at on top, narrowing at the base; in a cluster. The seed pod is thin, long, four-angled usually curving up. Lower leaves are oblong, deeply pinnately-divided, end leaflet the longest; stem leaves not clasping, leaves get smaller toward the top. In northern areas it usually begins to blossom in June or so.
Botanically it is known as the Erucastrum gallicum, er-roo-KAS-trum GAL-ee-kum. This time the name tells us little. The first word means resembling the Eruca, which was some ancient plant mentioned by Pliny the Elder. Gallicum means from France. It is used as a pot herb but may need more than one change of water. Try sparingly.
Mustard Blossoms, regardless of size, have four petals and six stamen, four long two short. Here the short ones are on the sides.
Now we get to the mustard that is coming and going. If you think you have a Sibara (SIGH-bar-ah) , you might actually have an Arabis (ARE-uh-bis or ARE-you-bis.) Arabis means from Arabia (read Eurasia ) and both the genera Arabia and Sibara used to be all Arabias. Then it was decided six species were native to North America, which hardly made them from Eurasia or Arabia. So those Arabis were renamed Sibara, which is Arabis spelled backwards. Ain’t that almost clever. They are Sibara deserti, Sibara filifolia, Sibara grisea, Sibara rosulata, Sibara viereckii, and Sibara virginica.
This close up shows the female part of the flower in the middle, four tall stamen and two short ones.
This is a winter annual from a rosette of deeply dissected leaves, five to 14 divisions on each side of the main leaf stem. The leaves at the base of the plant are slightly hairy. Leaf segments are narrow, the terminal segment though is somewhat larger, or broader. Flowers are white with four small petals. The fruit (silique) is stalked, long, very narrow with around 15 flat seeds. You can tell it from the Hairy Bittercress above (Cardamine hirsuta) by having larger siliques and narrow leaf segments. The rosette overwinters. It likes disturbed, waste ground, unused fields, and roadsides.
Senecio glabellus often grows the same time as mustards and is toxic. It has a yellow daisy-like blossom.
Lastly, a common toxic look-alike in the rosette stage is the Senecio glabellus. When dried and fed to rats 20% of their body weight killed them. While the blossom is different than the mustards, the basal rosette can look similar. S. Glabellus leaves are toothy and mild whereas the mustard leaves are not toothy and are usually peppery. It has pyrrolizidine which is a chemical that can clog up small veins in your liver causing fluid retention and death. The Senecio yellow blossom is daisy-ish whereas mustards have a four-petal X or H shape blossom.
Pellitory, Up Against The Wall Weed
Pellitory, food and medicine. Photo by Green Deane
Pellitory: Parietaria is a WhizFinding greens locally in the cooler months isn’t much of a challenge unless you’re looking for Pellitory . It likes to hide and move.
Pellitory, or Parietaria, is in the greater nettle family and likes it cool and dry, if not shady. It even grow on rocks up to 12,000 feet. Uncooked, pellitory has a hint of cucumber aroma, hence sometimes it’s called the Cucumber Weed. Cooked, it is bland, which suits some palates just fine because you can flavor it as you like. I have friends who just stuff it raw into tacos with other fixings.
Pellitory, note flowers on stem
Parietaria (pair-ee-eh-TAR-ee-uh) also known as Pellitory Over-the-Wall. It has a reputed split personality you should be aware of. Its purported double life may also explain why so many foraging books skip it. Many years ago I was told by foraging expert Richard “Dick” Deuerling (co-author of Florida’s Incredible Wild Edibles) that half the people who ate pellitory got the itches — like a niacin flush but longer lasting. I don’t get an all-over itchy feeling when I eat Parieitaria so I don’t think about it, but, if a person has allergies they should approach Parietaria with caution. Frankly in the decades since hence I have met only one person who get the itches from eating it. However, Dick, below left, was a stickler for details and I could have easily just met a lot of folks who don’t react to it.
Dick Deuerling circa 1992. Photo by Green Deane
While there is a difference between eating a plant and breathing its pollen, in the Mediterranean area pellitory, in particular Parietaria judaica, is becoming a significant problem. More than 82% of people who are allergic to pollen show an allergy to that particular Parietaria. Some Australian hospitals call the P. judaica the Asthma Weed and warn against it, labeling it dangerous. If you have allergies, or hay fever, Pellitory might be a plant to skip, or at least approach carefully.
That said, besides being an edible salad ingredient and pot herb for thousands of years, Parietaria has been used herbally, with a slight contradiction in constituents. Its attested main feature is that it is a diuretic of significant strength and good for kidney stones, bladder issues, et cetera. Yet, it is high in sodium which tends to make some folks retain water. On the other hand, Parietaria is high in potassium and nitrates, the latter of which a 2006 study showed helped lower blood pressure, which is often done by lowering ones fluids. Ben Johnson wrote centuries ago:
‘A good old woman . . . did cure me with sodden ale and pellitorie o’ the wall.’
There is also some debate if the plant as a treatment herb is more potent green or dried. There are arguments for both. Now, if you are still willing to try pellitory, know the complete plant also cleans glass and copper pots well. It’s botanical name, Parietaria, comes from the Latin word paries, meaning a wall. Of course, if you have been reading a lot of these articles you know by now that Latin is just a combination of stolen Etruscan and mangled Greek. “Paries” in Latin came from the Greek word “parifi” meaning edge. Parietaria likes to grow in the cracks of walls but it can also form large clumps, such as in my garden or under dry road bridges frequented by transients. The local species is Parietaria floridana.
Below is a recipe from the Italian book Piante Selvatiche by Roberto Gamacchio, which specializes in wild greenery.
Pasta with Parietaria
Ingredients:
Macaroni or spaghetti, 7 ounces dry
Parietaria 3.5 ounces
Béchamel sauce 2 ounces
salt
chilli
Cook the pasta “al dente”. Steam the Parietaria, salt and blend. Add the sauce and chilli to taste. Fold the sauce in the pasta, serve immediately, salt to taste
Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant ProfileIDENTIFICATION: Six inches to a 14 inches tall in Florida, usually unbranched. Central stem is green, four-angled, it can be slightly hairy. The lanceolate leaves alternate. Each flower is surrounded by several green bracts that are longer than the flower. The flowers are green with no petals, four stamen. Grows in colonies. NO TEETH ON LEAVES. If you have a pellitory with teeth on the leaves you have misidentified an Acalypha, not edible.
TIME OF YEAR: Early winter in Florida, lasting just a few of months at best, December to around March, occasionally later in cool winters and very deep shade. Elsewhere usually during cool spring months.
ENVIRONMENT: Walls, fences, edges, cool dry areas, light shade, moist to slightly dry conditions.
METHOD OF PREPARATION: Edible raw or cooked. Try a small piece first, it may make some people who eat it raw itch for a while. Raw it is better chopped up in salads. HINT: Even when cooked the stems can be fibrous, so chopping or cutting them into bite-size length before cooking is recommended. The water pellitory is cooked in is considered by chefs to be excellent stock for making risotto.
Cereus Today Not Tomorrow
Cereus blossom at night. Photo By Green Deane
Getting Down To Cereus BusinessThere are three things irritating about Cereus other than their spines: 1) several botanical names for the same plant; 2) which species do you exactly have, and 3) how you pronounce “Cereus.”
DNA testing may indeed be reducing crime but it is increasing cactuses, or at least changing their names. Many “cereus” are no longer cereus, among them C. undatus, C. pentagonus, C. robinii and C. keyensis, or as they are now known Hylocereus undatus, Acanthocerus tratragonus, Pilosocerus polygonus, and Pilosocereus robinii. Do those name changes clear things up? … Thought so….
Cereus fruit in late summer, early fall. Photo by Green Deane
The last three are found only in southern Florida or the Keys and are endangered. Just know they are sprawling, usually three sided, and fruit’s pulp is edible raw if you are starving, just spread the seeds around. Also endangered in Florida is the C. eriophorus var. fragrans, C. gracilis var aboriginum, C. simpsonii and C. deeringii. The H. undatus (aka C. triangularis & tricostatus) is naturalized up to coastal central Florida and planted inland, such as at Mead Gardens. It is a commercial crop called “Dragon Fruit.” Also eaten is Cereus giganteus, known more famously by its common name, Saguaro Cactus. (Now that Cereus is called Carnegiea gigantea.)
The fruit of cactus are used in similar ways. The Saguaro Cactus is a good example. It was a staple of the Papago and Pima Indians. They harvested the fruit in July. The fruit can be eaten fresh or dried. When dry they can be pressed into cakes. The juice was used to make moonshine and the seeds ground into a buttery paste. The fruits are also eaten of the C. hexagonus, C., jamacaru, C. pernambucensis, and the C. peruvianus, the latter is perhaps the most common ornamentally grown cactus in the world, if it really exists at all, as a species. An explanation is required.
While many cactus are sold with the name C. peruvianus some people aren’t even sure it really exists as a species and might actually be one or two other species, or some hybrid. The Cereus above has nine spines where as most pictures show them with seven. One Cereus with nine spines is C. jamacaru, but its fruit is oblong and the one above is not. Tis a puzzle. Fortunately, all Cereus fruits are all edible so which one you have is academic (though practical as some have spines and other do not.)
Some Cereus are free standing, others climb trees. Photo By Green Deane
The pronunciation of the genus is also something of a puzzle. You can find SEE-ree-us (like serious.) Or KEE-ree-us, and one British plant dictionary even has KAY-ree-us, which is surprisingly linguistically the most accurate. Most sources cheat and say it comes from Latin or Latin and Greek. But they stop there. The original base word was κερἰ (keri) said ke-REE and means wax (think candle as in the shape which is why some call them candlestick cactus.) When the Romans took a Greek word beginning with a “K” they wrote it with a “C” which then often gets mangled into an “S” sound… KEE-ree to SEE-ree. As the plant is shaped like a candle the genus was called Cereus, so you can call it “SEE-ree-us or KEE-ree-us depending upon your Latin or Greek temperament though it is usually said SEE-ree-us. (Also see “Catus, don’t be spineless.”)
Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant ProfileIDENTIFICATION: Stems creeping, sprawling or clambering, branching profusely, or straight up to 30 feet or more, thick; tough with age, wavy. One to three spines on adult branches , .5 to three inces long, grayish brown to black, spreading; skin deep green. Flowers large, night blooming, scented; greenish yellow or whitish, rarely tinged rose. Fruit oblong to oval, two to four inches long, one to two inches thick, red with large bracteoles, pulp white, seeds black.
TIME OF YEAR: Bloom and fruits mainly in August and September
ENVIRONMENT: Can be found on the ground or growing on trees and walls and the like
METHOD OF PREPARATION: Ripe fruit is often chilled and cut in half so that the flesh can be eaten with a spoon. The juice makes a cool drink. A syrup from the whole fruit can be used to color pastries and candy. The unopened flower bud can be cooked and eaten as a vegetable. The seeds can be eaten as is or ground up and used as flour. Fruits can also be made into preserves. Pulp food value is water, 92.20; protein, 0.48-0.50; carbohydrates, 4.33-4.98; fat, 0.17-0.18; fiber, 1.12; ash, 1.10%.
Acorns: The Inside Story
World’s Largest Acorn
Acorn: More than a survival foodThe first time you eat an acorn it makes you wonder what the squirrels are going nuts about. As the bitterness twists your mouth into a pucker it reminds you animals can eat a lot of things we can’t… unless we modify them.
A lot has been said about acorns. I’ll try to say a few things that haven’t been said. Let’s start with that fact that the world’s biggest acorn is in Moore Square Park in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. Raleigh calls itself “The City of Oaks.” The “Big Acorn” is ten feet tall and weights 1,250 pounds. I’d hate to meet the squirrel that can carry it away. But, it does remind me of a general rule of thumb about acorns: The bigger the cap on the acorn, the more bitter it will be.
The English word “oak” is some 1,260 years old. In German it was “eih” ending up “eiche” The Dutch extended it to “eychen” or ” eychenboom.” (I went to school with a “Cossaboom” meaning cherry tree.) Oaks are also mentioned in ancient texts. Greeks of old said “dryas.” Modern Greek say “dris.” It was the preferred tree of Zeus. Those faithful to Zeus gathered around oak trees. The Celts preferred to knock on oak wood. One variation of their word for oak was “dair, the fourth letter of the Celtic alphabet and part of the name of the city Kildare (means “Church in the Oaks.”) Often associated with strength, the US military awards gold “oak leaf clusters” for exceptional bravery. Oaks have been a significant part of every culture around them.
The larger the cap the more tannic acid
The word “acorn” is a combination of “ak” for oak and “corn” meaning seed thus acorn means oak seed. The Greeks say velanidi, the Spanish bellota, the French gland, Italians glanda, Portuguese, glande, and in the forgotten fifth romantic language, ghinda in Romanian. Those Romans got around. All the Romantics come from the Latin word for gland, which also lent itself to the medical term for a certain acorn-like part of the male anatomy. The acorn is also one of the few nuts or fruits that is not directly named in Modern English after the tree it comes from which is why one does not hear of oak nuts… walnuts, beechnuts, hickory nuts, oak nuts… gland… it could all get rather naughty.
The smaller the cap, the less tannic acid
At least 450 species of oak populate world wide. Some 30 species in the United States have been used for food and oil. The Live Oak is the most prized, not only for food but particularly ship building. Its very long, graceful limbs were ready-made for boat keels and ribs. In fact, the U.S. Navy once had its own live oak forest just for boat building. Sold off long ago, the Navy began stockpiling Live Oak in 1992 for restoration of the USS Constitution. It got 50 live oaks from Florida in 2002 of 160 that were cleared for a golf course near Tallahassee. Just as 200 years ago, the trees were selected for their natural curves for the ship. In the white oak family, the Live Oak’s acorns are among the mildest one can collect. Botanically the Live Oak is Quercus virginiana. Quercus (KWERK-kus ) was the Roman name for the tree and virginiana (ver-jin-ee-AY-nuh) means North America and usually where the species was first noticed, such as Virginia.
Storing acorns the Acorn Woodpecker way
The seed crop from an oak, the acorns, is called a “mast” which means “food” and putting on a crop of acorns is masting. It is tempting to say it is probably related to the word to “masticate” meaning to chew but it isn’t. Mast came from the Middle English word “mete” meaning meat, which at that time meant any food, and we still use it abstractly in that way, as in “Education became his meat and experience his drink.” Mete came from the Italian word madere which came from the Greek word, madaros, meaning to be wet. That takes a bit of explaining. Ancient Greeks divided food into two large categories. “Wet” food was food fit for humans and pigs. Dry food was fit for cattle and fowl. Now you know.
Acorns are quite nutritious. For example, the nutritional breakdown of acorns from the Q. alba, — the white oak — is 50.4% carbohydrates, 34.7% water, 4.7% fat, 4.4.% protein, 4.2% fiber, 1.6% ash. A pound of shelled acorns provide 1,265 calories, a 100 grams (3.5 ounces) has 500 calories and 30 grams of oil. During World War II Japanese school children collected over one million tons of acorns to help feed the nation as rice and flour supplies dwindled.
Live Oak leaves have no teeth
Oaks fall into two large categories, those that fruit in one season, white oaks, and those that fruit after two seasons, the black oaks and the red oaks. The latter category is far more bitter than the former. The first category have leaves with round lobes and no prickles at the end of the leaves. The black and red oaks have prickles at the end of their leaves. They also have scales on the cups of the acorns, hair inside the caps, and a sheath around the nut (which always throws a color even when the tannin is leached out.) Some times those in the first category don’t need any leaching, or very little. The rest always do. But first, separate the acorns.
Floaters are bad or have a usable grub in them
To separate acorns dump them into water and remove the ones that float. Take the ones that sink and dry them in a frying pan on the stove or in the oven at 150F or less for 15 minutes, preheated. Or put them in the sun for a few days. You don’t want to cook them yet, just dry them off and shrink the nut inside making them a little easier to shell. The yield, not counting bad acorns, is 2:1. two gallons of usable acorns in the shell will yield a gallon of nutmeat. We must leach out the tannic acid it can damage our kidneys, Most unleached acorns are too bitter to eat without leaching.
Soaking in cold water, minimal energy and the starch is not cooked
There are three general ways to leach acorns. The least common way is to bury them whole in a river bank for a year, which turns them black and sweet, good for roasting. The other method is to grind them into a course meal and soak several days or weeks (depending on the species) in many changes of cold water until the water runs clear. These will be slightly bland but good for making acorn flour. (Sometimes the leached acorns will be dark but sweet afterwards.) The third way — boiling — is least preferred because if done wrong it will bind the tannins to the acorn and they will not lose their bitterness. Also, when you boil the acorns you also boil off the oil with the tannins, reducing their nutrition. That oil, however, is very nutritious. At this writing it is selling for $182 a gallon. You can make it for far less. There is actually a fourth method that requires lye but it is not commonly used nor have I tired it.
Boiling speeds up the process but cooks the starch
The boiling process requires two pots of boiling water. Put the acorns in one pot of already boiling water until the water darkens. Pour off the water and put the hot acorns in the other pot of boiling water while you reheat the first pot with fresh water to boiling. You keep putting the acorns in new boiling water until the water runs clear. Putting boiled acorns into cold water will bind the tannins to the acorn and they will stay bitter. So always move them from one boiling bath to another. Putting acorns in cold water and bringing the water to a boil will also bind the tannin. So it is either use all cold water and a long soaking or all boiling water and just a few hours of cooking. There is one other difference between the two methods.
Mrs. Freddie, a Hupa, pours water over ground acorns in a sand basin
The temperature at which you process the acorns at any point is critical. Boiling water or roasting over 165º F precooks the starch in the acorn. Cold processing and low temperatures under 150 F does not cook the starch. Cold-water leached acorn meal thickens when cooked, hot-water leached acorn meal does not thicken or act as a binder (like eggs or gluten) when cooked. Your final use of the acorns should factor in how you will process them. If you are going to leach and roast whole for snacking then boiling is fine. If you are going to use the acorn for flour it should be cold processed, or you will have to add a binder.
The finer acorns are ground the quicker they leach
Personally, I grind mine in a lot of water to a fine meal, let it set, then strain. I add more water to the meal, let set and strain. I do that until the water is clear or the meal not bitter. That takes a few days to a week. Then I dry it in the sun, unless there are squirrels about, then in a slow oven (under 150º F.) I end up with a meal or flour, depending on the grind, that will not crumble when cooked.
There are nearly as many ways to leach acorns as there are opinions about acorns. Another way is to put the shelled acorns in water in a blender or food processor and blend them into a milk-like slurry. Put that slurry in a fine mesh bag and then massage that under running water like a faucet. It works very quickly but of course some meal and oil is lost in the process. But it turns hours of leaching into minutes. Of course, leaching them in an unpolluted stream is the easiest way but you can also arrange for a container to leak slowly. Simply put a cloth on the bottom to hold the meal in and fill the container when it is empty, or run the faucet slowly to maintain the leaching. Another ways is to clean out the tank on your toilet and put the shelled acorns in a mesh bag in there. Every flush will remove tannic water and bring in fresh.
Acorn bread in a classic cast iron pan
Many Native Americans preferred bitter acorns to sweet ones because they stored better. If after leaching there is just a hint of bitterness that can sometimes be removed by soaking the acorns in milk for a while. The protein in the milk will bind with the tannin in the acorns and can be poured off, if there is just a little. To get oil from the cold-leached acorns, boil them. The oil will rise to the top of the water. Also, charred acorns can be used as a substitute for coffee but really nothing is a substitute for coffee.
Acorn Grub
Whole leached acorns can be roasted for an hour at 350º F, coarsely ground leached acorns slightly less time. They can then be eaten or ground into non-binding flour. To make a flour out of your whole or coarsely ground acorns, toss them in a blender or food processor. Strain the results through a strainer to take out the larger pieces then reduce them as well. Acorn flour has no gluten so it is usually mixed 50/50 with wheat flour. Since acorn flour is high in oil it needs to be stored carefully and not allowed to go rancid. Remember cold processed acorn flour has more binding capacity than heat processed acorn flour.
Live Oak acorns top the food list for birds such as wood ducks, wild turkeys, quail and jays. Squirrels, raccoons and whitetail deer also like them, sometimes to the point of being 25% of their fall diet. Interestingly, the tannin tends to be in the bottom half of the acorn which is why you will often see a squirrel eat only the upper half of the acorn. Squirrels are also not fools. They will eat all of a white acorn when they find one because it is the least bitter. They will bury the very bitter red and black acorns so over time some of the bitterness is leached into the soil. Raiding a squirrel’s hoard will get bitter acorns. By the way, acorns shells and unleached nutmeat have gallotannins which are toxic to cattle, sheep, goats, horses and dogs.
If you use the boiling method don’t throw away the tannic water. The water has a variety of uses. With a mordant it can be used to dye clothing. The tannic acid also makes a good laundry detergent. Two cups to each load but it will color whites temporarily a slightly tan color. Tannic water is antiviral and antiseptic. It can be used as a wash for skin rashes, skin irritations, burns, cuts, abrasions and poison ivy. While you can pour the tannic water over poison ivy, if you have the luxury freeze the brown water in ice cube trays and use the cubes on the ivy eruption. If you have a sore throat you can even gargled with tannic water or use it as a mild tea for diarrhea and dysentery. Externally dark tannic water can be used on hemorrhoids. Hides soaked in tannic water make better leather clothing. Using the brown water turned hides tan colored and that is why it is called tanning and from there we get the words tannins and tannic. In traditional tanning methods, whole hides are soaked in a vat of tannin water for a full year before being processed.
Oak trees begin to produce acorns at about 20 years years old but usually the first full crop won’t happen until the tree is about 50. The average 100-year old oak produces about 2,200 acorns per season. Only one in 10,000 will become a tree.
Besides dyes paints have also been made from the oaks. It also a dense wood for working and weights 75 pounds per dry cubic foot. The hull of the US warship, USS Constitution, was made entirely of oak, white oak covering over a live oak core. At the waterline she was 25 inches thick. Eighteen-pound cannonballs bounced off the oak, notable in the 1812 battle with the HMS Guerriere. That battle and the subsequent loss of British ships caused the British to issue the order that no ship was to attack the Constitution singlehandedly. The Constitution, as of this writing, is still on duty and berthed in Boston.
Peter Becker’s “Newtella”
Sprouted acorns are also edible as long as they haven’t turned green. I’ve heard from German forager Peter Becker has a slightly different view of what to do with acorns.
“What I do to prep acorns for consumption is let them germinate, so the starches turn into malt sugar. I’ve only just developed a new product with acorns to introduce this precious nut to public because acorns are generally considered inedible here in Germany. NewTella is a sweet bread spread just like Nutella, the famous hazelnut creme, except that all ingredients are locally available, it has less sugar and the only fats are from the acorn. The basic preparation is to roast leached, peeled and germinated acorns, boil 1 part acorns with 3 parts of apple juice, when soft process them smoothly, add 20 % sugar with pectin. This bread spread is also a great way to preserve acorns and can be used for cookies. It’s a great way to promote this gigantic untapped resource and jazz up general nutrition.”
A few exchanges about Peter’s process is below in the comments. He shells them, leaches them (cold water) and sprouts them before using them to make his NewTella. That helps convert the starch to malt, which is sweet. To visit Peter’s site click here.
Lastly you may have a use for those acorns that float. Most of them have a weevil grub in them, the Acorn Curculio. Look for a little 1/8 inch hole. In time that grub will crawl out and burrow into the ground for a couple of years turning into a full-fledged insect. You can use that grub in the acorn as bait for fish. Or, you can let it crawl in to a bucket of dirt or sawdust or a container of oatmeal where it will make a cocoon which you can then open later and use for bait. Store live in the frig. Also, squirrels like the grubs so it is not beyond reason to use them for bait for squirrels. And to answer your question, the grubs are edible by humans raw or cooked.
Acorn Bread
2 cups acorn flour
2 cups cattail or white flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup maple syrup or sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
3 tablespoons olive
Bake in pan for 30 minutes or until done at 400 degrees.
A far more simple form of acorn bread is to make a thick acorn porridge out of cold processed acorn flour. Take a large tablespoon of the porridge and drop it into cold water. This causes the porridge to contract. Take the lump out of the water and dry.
Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant ProfileAutum Acorns
IDENTIFICATION: Acorns, small nut with cap. Rough and larger caps belong to the more bitter acorns.
TIME OF YEAR: Usually late summer, fall, tree do not produce every year.
ENVIRONMENT: Oaks inhabit all kinds of environments.
METHOD OF PREPARATION: Numerous once leached of tannins.: out of hand, flour, candy.
HERB BLURB
The tannins have been used as an astringent as well as antiviral, antiseptic and antitumor but could also be carcinogenic. The mold that develops on acorns has antibiotic properties.
Oxalis: How To Drown Your Sorrels
Oxalis have five petals and can be pink or yellow. Photo by Green Deane
Sorrels are like McDonald’s restaurants: No matter where you are on earth there’s one nearby.
That’s because the sorrels, properly Oxalises, comes from a huge family. What’s huge? There are some 850 different species of them, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. No, that’s not a record. The biggest family is the composites, you know, like sunflowers and daisies. There’s over 20,000 in that family, maybe more, no one really knows for sure. Still, an Oxalis (ox-AL-iss) is found at every location on the rotation except at the north and south poles. There are at least four species in Florida, three pink and one yellow, one of which has the good taste to sprout up in my garden. I live mid-state right on the line between temperate and subtropical so many plants said to be in the state are often 200 miles farther north in temperate or 200 miles farther south in tropical.
Oxalis is mistakenly often called clover
When you have a family of plants that’s 850-strong, and folks don’t know enough to eat them, you also get the other view: That the Oxalis is not a delicate, pretty little greenerific morsel but a pernicious ugly weed that uses up your water, fertilizer and garden space. Once an Oxalis gets a roothold in a garden, it’s there forever, which brings up a touchy point: Gardeners who complain the most about weeds are also usually the last group to consider eating the weeds. It’s kind of like they are for controlled green but not natural green. To me an Oxalis in my garden is food I didn’t have to plant. As long as it’s growing where I want it to grow there’s no issue. If it isn’t, it’s not a weed. It’s dinner. Sorrel is the first wild plant I saw someone other than my mother nibble on. A childhood friend of mine named Peter Jewett (wrongly) called it “sour grass.” We used to play on a small island in a small brook in the Maine woods and it grew profusely there. It was the fort’s “food supply.”
Here in Florida I have at least five versions of the Oxalis; corymbosa, violacea, intermedia and articulata, large imports with pink blossoms, and the native Oxalis stricta, which is small and has yellow blosoms. All parts are edible including the root bulb, which is succulent and sweet. Above ground it tastes much like rhubarb but not as tart. The C. violacea occasionally has, in the words of Merritt Fernald, author of Gray’s Manual of Botany, “an icicle-like water-storage organ or fleshy root.” In other parts of the world, Oxalis tuberosa is popular not only as a green but as a root vegetable. The same with Oxalis deppei and Oxalis stricta.
Oxalis roots are popular as a vegetable in New Zealand
Sorrel is from the High German word “sur” meaning sour. Oxalis is from the Greek though the accent is on the end: oxal-IS, base word (Οξύς, pungent) The Oxalis is mildly tangy because of …oxalic acid… now there’s a surprise. Corymbosa (kor-im-BO-sa.) is also from Greek and means clusters, in this case clusters of flat-topped blossoms, but it could also mean growing in clusters as well. Violacea (vye-o-LAY-see-uh) like a violet. Intermedia (inter-MEE-dee-ah) means intermediate. Articulata (ah-tic-you-LAH-ta) is jointed. Stricta (STRICK-us) means upright, errect. The little plant does stick up as high as it can. Tuberosa (too-ber-ROW-sa) means tuber. Oxalises can grow individually or in colonies, and if you have one there will be colonies. They are refreshing to nibble on, are nice additions to salads, and can be made into an ade. Their tart flavor is both positive and negative. A little is good, but a lot when eaten uncooked, to excess, can leach some calcium out of your bones. (Yes, you would have to consume it like a force-fed lab rat for months, but it can happen.)
Oxalis root in situ
Cooking plants with oxalic acid reportedly renders them harmless, and that’s what has been done with other plants containing oxalic acid, such as docks and sheep sorrel, both Rumex and in the buckwheat family. This is particularly true if any form of calcium is used — milk for example — or included in other food. A good use for this plant is stuffing that trout you just caught and are cooking over the fire.
Every book on wild foods warns us not to consume too much oxalis acid, but that’s to keep the accursed lawyers happy. ( Shakespeare was right.) It is true that folks with kidney stones, gout and the like should not over-consume oxalic acid. Yet, when was the last time you read or heard of such a warning for tea, parsley, rhubarb, carambolas, spinach, chard, beets, cocoa, chocolate, nuts, berries, black pepper and beans? They all have oxalic acid as well, but no dire warnings are given with them. The French are not succumbing from sorrel soup slurping. As my Greek ancestors used to say some 3,000 years ago, μέτρον άριστον, [ME-tron A-ri-ston] all things in moderation.
Lastly, the Internet calls Oxalies “clover which is completely wrong. Different genus, different shape if you look closely.
Below is an Oxalix Cooler recipe from Sunny Savage
Oxalis Cooler
1 quart water
1/2 cup Oxalis leaf/stem/flowers/seedpods
1 Tablespoon agave nectar or honey
dash of salt
Mix all ingredients in a blender. If possible, let sit overnight in refrigerator and enjoy!
Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant ProfileIDENTIFICATION: Perennial growing to ix inches, three leaves, some times very delta shaped, other times round or lance shaped, depending upon the species. Pink and or yellow blossoms in Florida
TIME OF YEAR: Grows and flowers year round in Florida, July to September in more northern climes. Very prolific in February and March in Florida.
ENVIRONMENT: Anywhere moist but well drained, lawns, woods, trails, parks.
METHOD OF PREPARATION: Leaves and stems in salad, or made into ade or soup. Use as a stuffing for fish and chicken or ferment like a sauerkraut. If you cook oxalis best to use a glass or ceramic pot. Like all plants with oxalic acid should be used in moderation. Some people may be allergic to it. The juice can be used to coagulate milk for cheese making. See my article on rumex.
Jelly Palm, Pindo’s Alter Ego
Pindo Palm, Jelly Palm
Cemeteries remind me of Pindo Palms. They are a common landscape plant in Florida cemeteries, and public parks as well. In fact, they are a very common landscape plant in southern climes and most owners are glad to give you the fruit and surprised to learn they are edible.
Banana yellow, sometimes with a rose blush, they are sweet and tart at the same time. Pindo Palms are also lost fruit. They were once the stable of every southern yard that didn’t dip below 12º F degrees or so. Now it’s considered a palm that creates a mess on lawns. Indeed, one of the common complaints about the Pindo Palm is that it produces too much fruit… Think about that: Only a nation with yards of decapitated grass and an obesity epidemic would think a plant produces too much food.
Look for short spines on each side of the frond
The fruit of Pindo Palms are often called palm dates and were used to make jelly — hence Jelly Palm — because they contain a good amount of pectin. That same pectin makes for a cloudy wine, the other common use and name for the plant, Wine Palm. Its botanical name is Butia capitata (BEW-tee-uh kap-ih-TAY-tuh.) Butia is a Portuguese corruption of an aboriginal term meaning “spiny.” Capitata is Latin, meaning “with a dense head” referring to the seed heads. The name Pindo comes from the town of Pindo in southern Brazil where the palm is native. Its common local name is Yatay. It’s habitat is grasslands, dry woodlands and savannahs of South America. It ranges across northern Argentina, southern Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Besides Florida, it’s a popular landscape plant throughout the Gulf and southeastern Atlantic coastal regions and northern California, places that are subject to only occasional frosts. It is reported in isolated microclimes in North Carolina, Washington DC and British Columbia.
Ripe Pindo Palm fruit
When I was a foreign exchange student teaching in London back in the Dark Ages I took a trip to Cornwall and the Scilly Islands. I still have pictures of Pindo Palms growing there. I suspect the fruit of the B. capitata was made into jelly more often than pies et cetera because eating it is similar to eating sugar cane, in that it is tasty but very fibrous. Some people can swallow the fiber and have no tummy problems, in others it can upset stomachs. So, chewing the fruit and spitting out the fiber is accepted practice. Try only one at first, they don’t agree with everyone. One writer said they have a “terrific taste that starts out like apple and transforms to tart tropical flavors as it tantalizes the tongue.” To me they taste like a banana and a nectarine put together. Of course, once you have juice from the palm many things can be made from it and no southern home should be without a jelly palm. They are inexpensive, hardy, showy and bountiful. Incidentally, the seeds are about 45% oil and are used in some countries to make margarine. The core of the tree is also edible, as like the cabbage palm, but that also kills the tree so reserve that for palms only slated for development execution.
This Pindo Palm fruit will be used to make wine. Photo by Green Deane
Lastly, don’t confuse the fruit of the Queen Palm with the Pindo Palm. While the resemblance is superficial, and the Queen Palm usually much taller, they make a similar stalk of fruit and lose them the same way. The Queen Palm’s fruit when ripe is always orange to red in color. The Pindo Palm fruit, however, is always yellow, and when very ripe very yellow but not orange. Pindo Palms are also usually squat and not very tall. I’ve never met one that was so tall you couldn’t reach the fruit from the ground.
Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant ProfileIDENTIFICATION:An evergreen tree growing to 20 by 12 feet, a long spike of green fruit — see upper right — turning yellow then dropping, ripe fruit very fragrant. Note the spines on the fronds in the upper right picture. Fronds are very long.
TIME OF YEAR: Evergreen, fruits in late spring in Florida.
ENVIRONMENT: Landscape plant that likes full sun,sandy well-drained soil but needs moisture, grows fuller if in partial shade.
METHOD OF PREPARATION: Fresh fruit off the tree, juice made into jelly and wine. The best fruit are usually the ones you fight the ants for. Also the flavor and sugar content can vary from tree to tree.
Pindo Wine
Pindo Wine is very tropical, takes a long time, and can have clarity issues because of the natural pectin.
About 1.2 kg of ripe pindo fruit
1 Campden tablet
1.2 kg sugar dissolved in 1 liter boiling water and cooled
½ tsp tannic acid (optional – slightly alters the taste and lightens the color of the wine)
½ tsp yeast nutrient
general purpose winemaking yeast
For wine: Cover the fruit with water then use clean hands and rub out the seeds. Mash up the fibrous fruit pulp. Add crushed Campden tablet and leave, covered for 24 hours. Make up the wine starter. Add the pectinase dissolved in a little water and leave for several hours. Add the sugar syrup, tannic acid and yeast nutrient and make up to 5 liters. Add the yeast. Stir 3 times per day for 6 days before sieving into a demijohn. Rack and add sugar as necessary. A final specific gravity of about 1.020.
Pindo Jelly
One would think it would be easy to make jelly out of the fruit of a plant called the “jelly palm.” The answer is yes and no. It is called the jelly palm because the fruits, in a good year, have enough natural pectin to make jelly, barely. So, one should add pectin. The other issue is the seeds. You can cook the fruit with the seeds still in them but I think that can impart a woody flavor to the jelly and reduce its ability to jell (I think cooking the seeds release some of the edible oil and that affects the process.) On the other hand, cutting the fruit off the seed is a chore. Friends make the job go quicker. You can cut the pulp off or try to rub the seed out, your choice.
Since three cups is the standard for Sure Jell, start with six cups of ripe fruit. Cut and scrape as much fruit as you can off the seeds. One would like to say cut the fruit out but it hangs on so tenaciously to the pulp you really have to cut the fruit off the seed. Starting with six or more cups should yield you three cups of cleaned fruit. When you have three cups, cover with three cups of water. Bring to boil and cook until you have about 3.5 cups of infused juice. Yes, measure it. When you have those 3.5 cups, filter the juice and make jelly per the recipe on the box for three cups, adding two or three cups of sugar, depending upon taste. Of course, you also don’t have to filter it, and can use three cups as is, the texture and clarity will be slightly affected, but it is just as wholesome.
Jambul
Jambul, species Syzygiym cumini, ripens from white to dark purple. Photo by Green Deane.
Syzygium: A Jumble of JambulThe Jambul tree makes you wonder what people were thinking.
For a half a century or so the United States Department of Agriculture brought into Florida many species the state now considers problem plants. Jambul is one of them. It was introduced into south Florida as a shade tree, not once but three times, 1911, 1912 and 1920. It took 71 years for the species to become a naturalized pest and now a century later full-grown specimens can be found the warm south of the state to central Florida. Not bad for a tropical tree.
Jambul blossom in July. Photo by Green Deane
The species has been introduced into most warm areas of the world. However, in Hawaii it probably got there by migrating mynah birds and was first recorded on the islands in 1870. That state is trying to eradicate it. Jambul was also cultivated throughout the Caribbean and got to Puerto Rico in the 1920s, where it’s naturalized as well. Because of its later introduction there it is one of the few genera in the Caribbean that is not used much in local folk medicine (though very present in native India medicine.) As a forager there is little I can do about the genus except my civic duty and eat as many of its fruit as possible to reduce its spread. Actually there are at least two species of Syzygium naturalized in Florida, the S. cumini that bears dark purple fruit, above, and S. jambos, below, which has white to red fruit. Both species are called the Jambul tree (jam-BULL.)
Jambul, species Syzygium jambos
A native of south Asia and Australia Jambul produces food, wood products, and materials for folk medicine. The dark fruit of the S. cumini tastes and smells like a ripe apricot but looks like a stretched black olive, very juicy and to me puckery like a chokecherry. The S. jambos has pearish-shaped fruit that ranges from white to green to yellow to red. Its flavor is more like an apple/green pepper cross with a rose scent and a slightly bitter aftertaste. It’s skin is thin, waxy, and the hollow core contains a small amount of inedible fluff.
Ripe Syzygium cumini fruit. Photo by Green Deane
Jambul fruit, which are high in vitamins C and D, can be eaten out of hand or made into sauces, tarts and jams. They make a good fruit sherbet, syrup and squash. They can be made into vinegar, wine or distilled, one native spirit being “jambava.” It is also a good honey tree. Harvesting of fruit in its native range is in summer or early fall. Here in Florida it tends to be in spring to summer. The leaves make good livestock feed and oil in the leaves has been used to scent soaps and perfumes. The bark yields a brown dye and has tannin for leather making. The wood is very durable to water. It’s used used to make beams, rafters, telephone poles, oars, ship masts, boats, and water troughs, among many more uses.
Terminal leaves are always in pairs. Photo by Green Deane
Often planted as a windbreak, the S. cumini trees can reach full height in 40 years, which in their native rage is near 100 feet. In Florida it is half that. It can have a crown 18 to 40 feet wide and often has multiple trunks radiating from near the ground. The Jambul can also grow in wet and dry areas as long as it has sun. The bark on the lower part of the tree is discolored, rough textured, cracked and flaking; young bark higher up is smooth and light gray. The paired, opposite leaves have a hint of turpentine when crushed. The evergreen leaves are two to ten inches long, one to four inches wide, oblong in shape, oval or elliptic, can be blunt or tapering to a point at the tips. The leaves start out pinkish then mature leathery and glossy, dark green above, light green below. Each leaf has a yellowish midrib. The S. jambos tends to be shorter, perhaps 45 feet at best in its native range, its leaves are more lance shaped, and the bark a smooth gray.
Medicinally the seeds of the Jambul have been used to control blood sugar levels and the leaves and bark high blood pressure. Incidentally, we regularly used another member of this genus, S. aromaticum. Its dried flower buds form the spice we know as “cloves.”
As is often the case the botanical name is Greek tainted by Latin. Syzygium is said to refer to the tree’s paired leaves, one also sees “twin” leaves. The base word, however, is zygos (zi-GHOS) the yoke. A person’s spouse in Greece is called my Zizigos (ZEE-zee-ghos) my yoke mate. So the Greek speaker would be strongly tempted to pronounce Syzygium as zee-ZEE-ee-yum. Anglicized Latin would have it sizz-ZYE-gee-um.
The species name cumini, said KOU-mee-nee, is from the Greek kyminon (KEY-mee-on) or in modern Greek Kymino (KEY-mee-no) meaning the spice cumin. Jambos (jam-BOS) is the Malaysian name for rose-apple though it comes from Sanskrit’s Jambudvīpa, which means rose apple land.
Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant ProfileIDENTIFICATION: S. cumini is a tree to 50 feet, S. jambos smaller, both often multiple trunks, bark on the lower part of S. cumini is discolored, rough textured, cracked and flaking, young bark higher up is smooth and light gray, bark on S. jambos smooth and gray. Paired opposite leaves have a hint of turpentine when crushed. The evergreen leaves of the S. cumini are two to ten inches long, one to four inches wide, oblong in shape, oval or elliptic, can be blunt or tapered to a point at tips, leaves of the S. jambos more lance shaped. Leaves start out pinkish then mature leathery and glossy, dark green above, light green below. Each leaf has a yellowish midrib.
TIME OF YEAR: Summer and fall in native range, late spring and summer in Florida area.
ENVIRONMENT: Likes sun, can tolerate wet and dry conditions, does not tolerate freezes unless full grown then iffy.
METHOD OF PREPARATION: Fruit out of hand, or use as any fruit as jelly, sauce, syrup, wine, spirits and vinegar.
Paper Mulberry
The orange pom-pom fruit of the Paper Mulberry. Photo by Green Deane
Broussonetia papyrifera: Paper ChaseIf you are a forager, you will be told two things constantly: One is that the plant of your admiration is “poisonous.” Sometimes they are, often they are not. The other thing you will hear is that a particular species is a “trash tree.”
When I first asked about this species I was told by a knowledgeable botanist that it was a trash tree though at the time he did not know what species it was. Over the years I wondered about its identity. It resembled a basswood tree but wasn’t one. It was certainly prolific, growing in hursts everywhere, often in low spots or gullies and ditches. I watched it for several years but it never seemed to fruit. While it did form colonies I also saw an isolated tree now and then. I presumed it could either fruit or reproduce by cuttings and the like. In hindsight, compounding the issue is that a young tree’s leaves look very different than a mature tree’s leaves. Indeed, it was a lone young tree near a bike trail that got me on the track of solving the identity of my mystery tree.
Young Paper Mulberry leaves
What I discovered was that while it might be an invasive species it is far from a “trash tree.” Also know as the Paper Mulberry, the Broussonetia papyrifera (brew-soh-NEE-she-uh pap-ih-RIFF-er-uh) has been used for thousands of years to make paper and cloth. Young leaves are edible cooked — chewy — and in the right climate it produces orange pom-pom-like fruit. The tree, with extra large leaves, soft on one side, rough on the other, is also a common source of woodland toilet paper.
Native to the cooler regions of Asia they were taken to the Pacific Islands for paper and cloth. Someone had the bright idea of taking only sterile male clones to control their proliferation plus the male trees produce the better bark for cloth and paper. However, they can clone themselves by runners. Big mistake. The Paper Mulberry was in Florida by 1903 with someone also introducing female trees as well. With males and females being able to clone plus seeds from the female the species went gangbusters.
Mature mulberry leaves
Two things compounded my identification and appreciation of the Paper Mulberry. The first, already mentioned, is that the leaves of the young Paper Mulberry look very different than the adult. They are palmate and very indented, resembling an ornamental, Chinese pitchfork. Older leaves are very large mittens with one or two lobes looking like left or right thumbs, double thumbs or no thumbs. The second issue was the species is from a temperate climate. Florida is not temperate. In my sub-temperate area they never fruit. Eighty miles north of here they do fruit but in years of watching they’ve never fruited locally (They might, however, if we have an exceptionally cold winter producing the necessary chill hours.) It took tid bits of observations over many years to finally sort out the species’ identity.
To call the fruit an orange pom-pom is actually quite accurate. It starts out as a green ball about the size of a large marble on the end of a two-inch stem. The ball is pitted much like a Bread Fruit, which it is related to, and the Osage Orange. Then the ball grows white hairs which eventually make the orange pom-pom part, which is edible. The ball is not edible as far as I know. The fruit is sweet, juicy and fragile. It does not travel well and is best eaten on the spot. Fruiting starts around April and ends by the end of June. Young leave for food are steamed though they do have a texture issue. You can also chop them up and boil them as well. The larger leaves can be used to wrap food in for cooking.
At one time the Paper Mulberry was grouped with other mulberries, and is closely related, but was given its own genus Broussonetia named after Pierre Maria August Broussonet (1761-1807) a professor of botany at Montpelier, France. In the US the tree can be found From Massachusetts south to Florida, west to Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas.
Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant ProfileRipe fruit
IDENTIFICATION: Paper mulberry is deciduous with milky sap to 45 ft. (15 m.). Twigs hairy reddish brown, on young trees zebra stripped, older trees tan, smooth, furrowed. Wood is soft and brittle. Leaves are hairy, lobed or mitten-shaped, alternate, opposite or whorled along stem. Leaf edge sharply toothed, base heart-shaped to rounded with pointed tips, upper leaf surface is rough feeling. Separate male and female flowers in spring. Male flower clusters are elongate, pendulous, 2 ½ to 3 in. Female flowers globular about one inch in diameter. Fruits orange to reddish purple.
TIME OF YEAR: In Florida April to June, summer in northern areas, February to April in warmer climates.
ENVIRONMENT: Open sunny fields but also low areas such as ditched and gullies. Grows very fast and can be fruiting within 18 months.
METHOD OF PREPARATION: Fruit out of hand (orange parts only.) Young leaves steamed or boiled. Bark can be used to make paper and cloth (tapa). The fruit (grown in Thailand) is very high in calcium, potassium and magnesium. It also has trace amounts of arsenic (0.62 ppm) as many foods do. Deer like to nibble on the leaves.
