Not long ago I did a post on dandelion wine, and the comments soon included the food and (possible) medicinal uses. And that gave me the idea that perhaps a topic devoted to edible and medicinal wild plants might be in order. SO, I'll give it a try.

I thought I would start this topic off with dandelions. They're not the most useful plant, but they certainly are abundant, and everyone knows what they look like. For that reason alone, it serves as a pretty good introduction to the subject.


This is my dad’s old recipe for dandelion wine.

One 5-gallon plastic bucket (or thereabouts)

One gallon of dandelion flowers (flowers only, not the green sepals which are bitter)

One gallon of boiling water

Three lemons

Three oranges

Four pounds of sugar

One yeast cake, or one packet of dry yeast

Bottles and corks

Place a gallon of dandelion flowers in the bucket, pour a gallon of boiling water over them, and let stand for 24 to 48 hours. During this time, the flowers should rise.

Add the juice from the lemons and oranges, and stir. Add the sugar and the crumbled yeast cake (or packet of dry yeast) and stir lightly every few hours until the fermentation ceases. (When it stops bubbling, fermentation has ended.) Strain, bottle, and cork.

There’s roughly a zillion slightly different recipes for this, so feel free to experiment.

Dandelion leaves are best gathered in early spring, before the flowers develop. Allied POW’s in WWII ate them raw in salads, but if you desire, they can also be boiled or steamed. The flowers themselves (again, minus the green sepals) are often added to a batter and made into fritters.

The dandelion has a long, deep taproot, which is pretty hard to dig up. I’ve heard the root, when roasted, tastes a little like popcorn. Consider the trouble it takes to dig it up, I think if I want popcorn I’ll buy it.

I’ve also heard a decoction made from the taproot is good for a hangover. Boil half an ounce of finely chopped taproot in 3/4 of a quart of water for about half an hour, until about a third of the water is boiled away, and strain. Sip this liquid several times throughout the day. It’s supposed to remove the toxins from the liver, gallbladder, and kidneys.

Again, I’ve never tried it. In any event, I doubt it would have worked with the last hangover I had, a monumental ouzo hangover in Greece. But then again, I don’t think morphine would have helped that one.

Onward and upward,
airforce

CATTAILS



I don't think there is another wild plant that is as useful for food as the cattail. Every part of the plant is edible, at one time of the year or another. Their only real drawback - and it can be a major one - is that they live in or near water, and you're going to get muddy collecting them.

I think the best part of the plants are the young shoots, collected usually in early spring before the flower forms (although you can find young shoots in midsummer, and sometimes even later). You can peel them and add them raw to salads or sandwiches, use them in stir-fry dishes, or add them to soups and stews late enough so they don't lose their crunchiness.

Try to harvest the shoots on a dry day, so you don't sink too deep in the mud. Choose the largest shoots that haven't begun to flower, and use both hands to separate the outer leaves from the core. Grab the shoots as close to the base as you can, and pull. Cut off the tough upper parts with a knife, and take them home.

At home, peel off the outermost layers until you get to the inner core, which is soft enough to pinch through with your thumb nail. (You'll have to do more peeling near the top.) The proportion of food to waste is best just before the flower head forms.



The flower head itself is in two parts. The upper part is the male part of the flower, the lower part the female. While the flower is still immature and green, you can cut off the male portion, boil for a few minutes, spread butter on it, and eat it like corn on the cob.

Beginning around late spring or early summer, the male flowers open and become covered with the yellow pollen you see in the photo above. If you're one of those people who pay outrageous prices for capsules of bee pollen in health food stores, you're going to save a lot of money - this pollen is way better tasting and more nutritious than the expensive bee pollen.

Try to collect the pollen on a day when the winds are calm. Bend the pollen-covered flower over into a paper sack, close the sack shut lightly so the pollen doesn't blow away, and shake gently. it's time-consuming, but you can collect a bunch of it this way. Sift to remove the trash. It won't help you're bread to rise, but you can use it to bake cooking, muffins, pancakes, or waffles. You can extend you're supply of flour by mixing it about one part of cattail pollen to two or three parts of wheat flour. Be sure the pollen is dry before storing it.



From fall to early spring, the rhizomes store food. They look nasty when you first dig them up, but don't worry. Peel off the tough outer layers and cook like a potato.

You can also use the starchy rhizomes to make a flour. After peeling them, slice them thinly, but them in cold water, and mash them up (a potato masher works well for this). Wait bout an hour for the starch to settle, remove the fibers, pour off the water, and repeat once or twice. Once it's dry, you'll have a white flour that you can use as is, or add to your existing stock of flour.

The buds of the following year's shoots are also edible. Collected before they break through to the surface, they can be peeled, boiled for a couple minutes, and pickled in hot vinegar. tasty, but as far as I'm concerned, really too much work to make it worthwhile.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Good plant. You can also make torches with the dried out tops like in your first pic. Just soak them in oil of your choosing and lightem up.

Yep. And without the oil, the dried-out flower heads will burn slowly, like a punk, creating a smoke that is supposed to drive insects away. I've never tried it.

The dried leaves can be twisted and woven to make baskets and backing for chairs. Archaeologists have found woven cattail floor mats in caves in Nevada that were over 10,000 years old.

Native Americans also used the "jelly" from between the young leaves as a poultice for wounds, sores, and boils, to relieve pain. Again, I've never tried it.

Onward and upward,
airforce

We use wax myrtles to keep mosquitoes off of us in the Mid Atlantic region and further south of us. Natural and no one can smell ya coming.

ACORNS

Not too many people even realize acorns are edible any more. In the last twenty years or so, I've only seen a couple people out collecting them, who weren't members of my family. One was an elderly Vietnamese refugee, and the other was Mexican. I guess that, as flour became cheap enough for anyone to buy at the market, fewer and fewer people wanted to go the the bother of collecting them and processing them.

That may change. A loaf of bread is fast approaching a five-dollar bill these days, and flour sure ain't as cheap as it used to be, either.

With that being said, making them edible is indeed a chore. A couple species of white oak are edible as is or after being roasted, but most have to be leached of the tannins which give them a bitter taste. Tannin is water soluble, but it's still a chore.

First, of course, they have to be shelled. First, dump them into bucket of water. Keep the ones that sink, and discard the floaters. Then dry them by either putting them out in the sun for a few days (keeping an eye out for squirrels, who will steal them if given the chance), or dry them in an oven preheated to 150 degrees for about 15 or twenty minutes. Don't overdo it, you don't want to cook them yet. Use a nutcracker to shell them until they are all shelled, or until you are no longer amused. Two gallons of acorns will give you roughly a gallon of shelled meat.

There are two ways to leach the tannins. If you are going to use the acorns for flour, use method #1. If you are going to roast them or use them for snacks, #2 is fine.

1. Grind them in a lot of water to a fine meal, and soak them for days or weeks (depending on how much tannin the acorns have) in cold water, changing the water at least twice a day. You will know when they're done when the bitterness is gone, and the water remains clear. This is actually the preferred way, because the acorns will retain their oil and will be more nutritious.

Dry them again in the sun or in a 150 degree preheated oven, and you will have a very good flour that won't break apart when cooked. Store them carefully so that the oil doesn't go rancid.

Acorn oil is selling for about $200 a gallon right now. Unfortunately, i don't know how to recover the oil when boiling them. If you know how, please tell me.

2. Follow these instructions carefully. If you do it wring, you will actually fix the tannins to the acorn meal - which you definitely don't want to do.

You will need two pots. Put the acorns into one pot of boiling (not cold) water, and start heating the second pot of water. When the water in the first pot darkens, pour off the water and dump the acorns into the second pot of boiling water. Do not put the acorns into cold water and heat the water. Always put the acorns into boiling water until the water remains clear.

To make bread, most people mix one part acorn meal to one part wheat flour. here's one recipe:

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.

Onward and upward,
airforce

You can use cold water if it is brisk running creek. You are obviously looking for current to wash away the tannin acid. I would suggest using a sock or netting and leaving them for 24 hrs if you were to use this method. You are also correct on the the White Oak as being the preferred acorn to look for. I highly suggest you steer clear of acorns that come from trees in the Red Oak family. Be also advised that there are over 250 species of Oak.

A seasonal food in the worst of times if you know what your looking for and how to process them. Deer and turkeys also prefer the White Oak acorn over other acorns as well. Not to say that they will not enjoy certain trees more than another which is the case.

Red oak acorns are edible, it just takes longer to leach out the tannin. But the taste is about the same.

Acorn Pancakes

One cup acorn meal

One cup flour

Two tablespoons baking powder

Three tablespoons sugar

One teaspoon salt

Two eggs, beaten

1 1/2 cups milk

Three tablespoons oil

Sift together the dry ingredients and, in a separate bowl, mix, the eggs, milk, and oil. Combine the ingredients, and spread butter on a hot griddle. When the edges start to bubble, flip the pancakes and brown on the other side. Serve with syrup or jelly.

Onward and upward,
airforce

You are correct. They are far more bitter. Even the critters know this. All this talk about acorns is going to have to be put to use this coming fall. Please bring this topic up again in Sept if you or I can remember this and lets make some stuff and then do a review.

Your pancake recipe while interesting and worth a try, will not stand up to the stack Im getting ready to take on here shortly. Please stay the course on the wild edibles.

I've mentioned Jerusalem artichokes, or sunchokes before. This survival food fed the French under nazi occupation. Their grains, fruits and veggie production were all used for German troop and civilian consumption. If not all at least a very large portion.

The French though had this low- to-zero maintenance staple food crop that they could tend in private. It can be invasive, so don't plant in the garden. Plant random plots out in the wild like deer food plots. Keep a map that designates these spots. You could add to this acorn and walnut stands, cat tails, asperagus stands.... A survival food map.

Huskerpatriot, it's funny you should bring that up, it was next on my list. I hope to have a post on them in a day or two. I'll have to hurry, because the time to dig them up before winter ends is fast approaching.

Thanks, guys. And feel free to post more recipes or other ideas in here. I can use all the help I can get.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Just about time to plant sun chokes.

JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE or SUNCHOKE



A plant in the sunflower family, it grows up to 8 or 10 feet tall. The flowers are about 3 to 4 inches across, with anywhere from 10 to 20 petals. The leaves are large and ovate, about 5 to 10 inches long. Dig up the tubers anywhere from about a week or so after the petals start to fall, through winter.

They can be eaten raw, cook, or pickled. My great-grandmother used to grate them raw and add them to salads, and that's still my favorite way to eat them.

They're easy to overcook. They can be boiled or fried like potatoes, and they make a good soup. Supposedly they can be roasted, but I've never had much success with that.

I've heard that they can cause diarrhea. I've never had a problem with that, but you probably shouldn't eat too many of them at one time.

KUDZU



WARNING: DO NOT CONFUSE THIS PLANT WITH POISON IVY, WHOSE LEAVES APPEAR SIMILAR. It is best identified by the grape smell the flowers give off.

Also called, "the vine that ate the south," this fast-growing vine has become a huge problem in the southeast. An insect has been inadvertently introduced that eats kudzu. Unfortunately, it also eats soybeans and may soon become as big a problem.

In my philosophy, the best way to get rid of a troublesome plant or critter is to eat it. Unfortunately, eating kudzu is not easy. I've seen recipes for the young shoots, that are supposedly edible when cooked. If you're starving and there's nothing else, go ahead and eat them. Or trade them for whatever Bear Grylls is eating. Otherwise, feed them to the rabbits. The seed pods and seeds are NOT edible.

However, the roots, collected anywhere from late fall to early spring, are starchy and nutritious when made into a flour, much like cattail roots. Strip off the outer layer, slice them, and puree them in a blender with plenty of water.

Run this mess through a colander to collect the water. Squeeze the water out of the fibrous material you collect in the colander and add it to the water you've collected, and discard the fibers.

Allow the starch to settle out, discard the water, add more cold water, mash them up again and allow to settle. Repeat this once or twice more, and dry the starch to form a pretty good white flour.

And yes, hunting and gathering is labor intensive.

Onward and upward,
airforce

WILD ONION, WILD GARLIC

Nodding Onion, in flower:




Wild Onion:



Field Garlic:



Wild Garlic:



Typically, these plants resemble the garden varieties, with slim, often hollow leaves.

I honestly can't tell exactly what the plant is, unless it's in flower. But when it comes to these plants, it's really not necessary. Any of these plants that smell of onion
or garlic are edible, and delicious.

Every part of these plants are edible. The bulbs can be dug up all year long, if you remember where they are over the winter months. That isn't as hard as it sounds; these plants are almost impervious to cold, and can often be found sticking up out of the snow.

Before the plants flower, the shoots and leaves can be cooked, or chopped and added to potato dishes or spreads, or added to salads. And the bulblets can likewise be added to soups and stews, or pickled and used later.

I try to add the bulbs to any rabbit or squirrel stew, they're delicious. They can also be minced and used as a seasoning for just about anything.

Native Americans sliced and cooked the bulbs, and dissolved the juice in maple syrup for use as a cough syrup. The crushed bulbs were also made into a poultice, and placed on the chest of those suffering from bronchitis or pneumonia.

WARNING: If it does not have an aroma of onion or garlic, do not eat, and wash your hands after touching them.

Onward and upward,
airforce

POKEWEED, POKE SALLET



A common side dish on many dinner tables in the South, but I still had a debate with myself on whether to include it here. But, please read this:

Warning: Eat only the young shoots, when they are 8 inches or less tall, and discard any shoots that have any tinges of red or purple on them. Eat them only after boiling them for 25 or 30 minutes until they are tender, and changing the water at least twice. Do not eat any other part of the plant.

With all that being said, these are actually quite good, tasting a little bit like asparagus. You would think that all that boiling would take away the vitamins, and you would be right. But the vegetable retains the beta carotene, and is still a healthy food. Just don't poison yourselves with them.

This is one of those plants that take time to identify. It is best to find them in the summer months, when they are in flower, and remember where they are so you can find the shoots in early spring. There are a lot of plants like that, so I can't stress enough the necessity to take several walks, at all times of the year, through parks, vacant lots, and old fields, with a guide book, notepad, and preferably a camera.

As a side note, back in the late 60's (while I was home on convalescent leave, if you must know), the hit song Poke Sallet Annie came out. At least, that's what I could clearly hear him singing. But the recording studio, inexplicably, gave it the title Polk Salad Annie. There's a big difference. Sallet means "cooked greens," while salad pretty much implies it was eaten raw. A bunch of people ended up poisoning themselves.

(Why would anyone eat something because of a dumbass 60's song? Well, because the whole 60's decade was brain dead. And if anything, the 70's were worse.)

Anyway, it's a good vegetable, if properly identified and properly cooked. But please, don't kill yourself. Follow the instructions.

Onward and upward,
airforce

KENTUCKY COFFEE BEAN TREE

Daniel Boone didn't always have real coffee, but he had this. And if you like your coffee decaf, but don't like paying for it, you'll enjoy this too.



The tree is identified by its long 2-3 foot leaves, divided into anywhere from 7 to 14 leaflets. The tree is among the last to get leaves in the spring, and the first to lose them in the fall. But over the winter, unless you have a huge windstorm, the tree will retain these seed pods:



When you open the pods up, it will look something like this:



WARNING: Use only the beans, discarding the pods and washing the pulp from the beans. Roast the beans in a COVERED roasting pan at 300 degrees for three hours.

The pan you roast them in MUST be covered. The beans will pop like popcorn, and mess up your oven if it is uncovered.

After they've been roasted, grind the beans in your coffee grinder or blender to the consistency of ordinary coffee, and run brew in your coffee maker or percolator as you would ordinary coffee.

Experiment with how strong you like it. I used about 2 teaspoons per cup, and it tasted about right for me.

Onward and upward,
airforce

MAPLE



It isn't hard to recognize the maple tree. It's leaf is even on the Canadian flag. And in the fall when leaves change color, they can be quite spectacular.



The winged seed pods are also distinctive. The seeds are edible, but it takes nearly 400 of them to an ounce, so they're hardly worthwhile.

The sugar maple shown above is probably most famous, but all species of maple will produce syrup. The amount of sugar in the sap varies from species to species, and even from tree to tree, but they all produce syrup.

Getting to the syrup isn't easy. it's almost pure water as it comes out of the tree. In fact,in areas where water is polluted, the maple is a good source of pure drinking water. To get to the syrup, most of the water must be boiled away. You may have to boil away as much as forty gallons of water to get a gallon of syrup.

Are you looking for something legal to run through your still? Collect the distilled water as you boil down the syrup. you won't get as much for the distilled water as you would for the moonshine but, hey, it's legal.

If you keep boiling it, you will eventually get maple sugar, which has far more vitamin B, calcium, and phosphorus than commercial refined sugar. It seems hard to believe, but colonists used to apologize to their guests when they only had maple sugar, because they couldn't afford the more expensive and inferior refined sugar.

Don't have any maple trees in your area? Hickory and birch trees will also produce syrup.

UPDATE: A fellow who knows more about stills than I do, has just pointed out to me that my idea to capture the distilled water, probably isn't such a good idea. The temperature in the still will be higher because it's under pressure, and you run the risk of scorching the syrup.

Onward and upward,
airforce

I've had birch syrup. Weaker (not as sweet) and more "woodsy" flavor. I liked it, but it is different. My uncle from Maine said it took 10x as much sap as maple to produce the same syrup! Hence the price...

I read somewhere that a syrup could be made from sycamore trees, so I actually tried it. It was not good.

Onward and upward,
airforce

An old home wine maker once told me "you can make wine out of about ANYthing, even dirty socks... It's just a matter of what it tastes like!"

GROUND IVY or GILL-OVER-THE-GROUND


Photographed on lined notebook paper, to give you some idea of the scale.

This trailing vine-like weed is almost as ubiquitous as dandelion, and at least as hard to get rid of if you're unlucky enough to find this in your lawn. It's among the first plants to flower in the spring, and will continue to grow well into the fall. A field or meadow taken over by this plant can display some patches of brilliant purple.

Gather the leaves fresh, and use them as a tea. Some sources will tell you to dry the leaves. Don't do that. Drying the leaves robs it of the essential oils, and that's where the good stuff is. (Since it can't be dried and sold as an herb, you won't find it in any herbal books.)

It's rich in Vitamin C and other nutrients, and a pretty effective diuretic. It's been used for a variety of ailments of the digestive tract, and as a cough remedy.

Onward and upward,
airforce

When I was a kid (back before cub/Boy Scouts got turned pink/P.C.) our scout leader was a Vietnam veteran.

I remember one hike he showed us how to make two small pan fish we caught feed all 5 of us. While one person fished, the rest of us gathered wild roots. Dandilion roots, wild onion, cattail roots... Several other ones that the years won't let me recall. The fish were gutted and headed. Roots chopped up. Some leaves he had picked and identified for us were chopped and added to the mixture of roots. This was put on a large piece of anuminum foil, fish sat on top, then wrapped up. This was sat on a pile of coals to cook while we set up camp and tended to other things.

Eventually it was ready. I remember how good it tasted, and how he really did feed all of us with two pan fish!

Ever hear that old story about Stone Soup ? It sort of brings that to mind.

Some of us old farts still know a thing or two.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Airforce mentioned above about making syrup, also that it didn't taste good. That and a recent experiment in home remedy brings to mind to try these before you have to. Although the remedy sort of worked, the forcible act of choking down the tea was an act of will. This was a further act of hopping on down to the drugstore for a better option. The point being that we can talk about how certain foods can be foraged, but many members are showing that experience is what counts in doing.

Everyone's taste buds are different. I like broccoli raw, in salads, but most of the grandkids won't even touch it. Just because I say something is good doesn't mean that you will like it, and vice versa. And a lot of the stuff you will see in various guide books might be a treat for Bear Grylls, and then only when the camera is rolling.

So, nothing beats experience. Get out and try these things. You'll be gaining experience, you'll have something to talk about at cocktail parties and, if you substitute just one free vegetable or fruit a week, or substitute a couple free teas for worthless sodas, you will save a few dollars to spend on preparations.

How's that for a deal?

Onward and upward,
airforce

If you're thinking about making syrup, see my update above. My idea about using a still to capture the distilled water, probably isn't such a good idea after all.

Onward and upward,
airforce

RED CLOVER, WHITE CLOVER

Red clover in flower:



White clover, in flower:



I'd imagine everyone is familiar with with these three-leaved (sometimes four, for good luck) plants. You can find them in lawns, vacant lots, roadsides, old fields, and pastures. (If you find an entire field of them, use caution. There's a good chance a beekeeper has a few of his hives scattered about.)

Both flowers will bloom from spring to fall, but the best time to collect them is in late spring, when the most flowers bloom. Look closely,and discard any flowers that have brown on them, they taste terrible. Clover flowers, fresh or dried, make one of the best teas around. You can buy clover tea in the store, but they cost anywhere from 20 cents to a dollar per teabag. Save some money, and make the tea yourself .

The flowers can also be chopped up and eaten raw in salads, or even dried, ground, and added to flour for breads, biscuits, and pancakes. Either way, they're rich in vitamin C, B-complex vitamins, beta carotene, and other nutrients. Medicinally, a strong infusion of red clover was used as an expectorant and antispasmodic for bronchitis, whooping cough, and even tuberculosis.

There are varying opinions as to the edibility of young clover leaves. Some people eat them raw in salads, while others say they are indigestible. Some Native Americans made a sort of mush from the leaves, after soaking them for hours in salt water. And some sources say to boil the leaves for twenty minutes before eating. I've tried them raw and cooked, and I don't much care for them. The young leaves do make a decent tea, though not as good as the flowers.

WARNING: As was stated above, you can make a wine out of anything, but do not attempt to make clover wine. Warfarin - the rat poison - was derived from fermented clover. I don't know how many glasses of clover wine I would have to drink before I died of internal hemorrhaging, nor am I willing to find out.

Onward and upward,
airforce

I must chime in here. When you are harvesting clover or other edibles. Let them dry completely before you put them in a bag or pouch for consumption at another time. Never eat moldy edibles as they can kill you or at least make you wish you had not done so.

True. And store your dried foods and herbs in an airtight container, or they won't stay dried for long.

You can't dry many herbs the same way you dry meats, fruits, or vegetables. You will evaporate away all the essential oils, where all the good stuff is. See this topic for instructions on drying herbs.

Onward and upward,
airforce

CHICORY



The chicory is also called "blue dandelion," and once you see the early leaves you'll understand why. They do bear a resemblance to its cousin, the dandelion. The early leaves can be eaten like dandelion leaves in salads.

Gather them early though. Once the flower stem appears in mid-spring, the taste turns bitter. Some people alleviate the bitterness by cooking them in two changes of water and eating them as a cooked green. But I'm pretty sure that will boil away all the vitamins too, so I've never tried it.

Many sources will tell you the flowers are also edible, raw or cooked. I've tried them, so you don't have to. They taste terrible. I suppose, if you had to, you could mix them in batter and fry them like fritters, but again I've never tried it.

The real treat though, is chicory coffee. gather the long taproots from late fall to early spring. Roast them in an over at 250 degrees for anywhere from 2 to 4 hours, until the roots are black, brittle, and rather fragrant. Grind them in a blender to the consistency of coffee, and run it through your coffeemaker at about 1 1/2 teaspoons per cup, for an excellent decaf coffee.

Most folks, however, mix chicory with their regular coffee to improve the taste (and to extend their coffee supply). Chicory coffee, sold in stores and over the internet at a suitably outrageous price, is considered a gourmet item. Save a ton of money, and gather the roots yourself.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Would be a good idea to make a code for each of these (and others) so you can annotate maps of your AO. Put a little work into improving these stands, or adding others in the area.

In an emergency situation, scavenging for food, is much easier to do if you know where specific items are.

The collection of foods, and guarding of these gathering parties could be a good task for "second line"/"auxiliary" forces. They could be part of a logistics team that keeps "first line" militia forces in the field well fed and supplied. They could also provide valuable intel on enemy activities and movements.