September 2009 Archives

As my collection of wild edible plant identification guides grows, I have been able to likewise grow my knowledge of the resources available to the would-be forager.

This review has been a long time coming, but the Peterson Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: Eastern/Central North America by Lee Allen Peterson (1977, 33rd printing) is by far the most comprehensive field identification guide I have examined, in keeping with the Peterson guide series made famous by Lee Allen's father, Roger Tory Peterson.

[Edit 6/1/10: Since writing this entry, I have acquired Steve Brill's Identifying & Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants, which is also quite comprehensive, and Samuel Thayer's The Forager's Harvest, in which he calls into question the edibility of at least two of the plants recommended by Peterson (certain water lily tubers, which Thayer says are actuallly poisonous.) As you can imagine, that put the fear of god in me--and so now, in an effort to make this review as honest as possible in light of new information, I will pass that concern along to you. As for me--I have the book and find it quite useful. However, knowing at the very least that there is some controversy, I will continue to cross-reference and use careful judgment about plants that are not widely corroborated in print and online references. Just so you know, Thayer asserts that a number of other wild edible plant books out there also have errors, likely caused by some instances of an author copying another author's accounts of a plant without testing it him or herself. So, do with that what you will. And now, on to the rest of the original entry and what I did and still do like about the Peterson guide...] 

One of the definitions of a civilized people, in contrast to our hunter-gatherer ancestors, is the advent of and reliance on agriculture as a food source. Arguably, the discovery came about naturally as people brought back seed-bearing food plants to their campsites and processed them, only to return the next year and find the same food plants growing nearby.

The late author Euell Gibbons reflects on this idea in Stalking the Faraway Places (1973), when he, his niece and nephew, and a team from National Geographic magazine pitch camp near some cliff dwellings in the Utah desert as a part of a foraging expedition. "I found the immediate neighborhood of these ruins very interesting, botanically," Gibbons states. "The rhubarb dock, Mormon tea, prickly pear, and the thistle we had been gathering grew more plentifully near the ruins than elsewhere. Just below the ruins was almost a thicket of serviceberry in full bloom. ....Did these semi-agricultural primitives have anything to do with the fact that these plants grew here?"

Mullein is not a native species. It's another one of a long list of plants that was brought over by European settlers, but far from being considered an invader, it quickly demonstrated its value. Native American tribes adopted mullein for its medicinal qualities (Brill, 1994 ). Today, it is appreciated for being a good soil-regenerator and is common to waste areas, disturbed soil, and roadsides, particularly areas with dry, sandy soil and a high alkali content.

I first read about mullein's medicinal uses in Common Edible and Medicinal Plants of Colorado (1979) by Kathryn G. and Andrew L. March. "A cold can't be cured till it has run its course, but to help one along and relieve sore throat and cough nothing is superior to this gentle herb," they state. "An ounce of the dried leaves or the equivalent of fresh (a handful) can be infused in a pint of water, or better yet, boiled for ten minutes in a pint of milk, strained through a close-woven white cloth napkin to remove fine hairs, and taken with a little honey a half-cup at a time." The March's promise "a mild sedative effect" and that "a decoction or infusion also helps diarrhea."

Owing to the fact that we live above 11,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains, this is not the first early season snow we've had. Several times now we have awoken early morning to see Mount Silverheels in the distance covered in a light dusting of snow all the way down to treeline. We've also hiked up on Pennsylvania Mountain in mixed weather conditions. Occasionally, there has even been snow--or graupel--falling at the house, but each time it's stopped and started melting shortly thereafter.

I'm posting this entry as "Part II" because I wrote an earlier piece on the first half of the book after it rode away from me, along with a backpack full of our belongings, in a New York City cab last month. When I returned to Colorado, however, Gregg gifted me a paperback copy of the book, which he acquired second-hand at the newly-opened Printed Page bookshop in Denver.

By way of review, Michael Pollan uses the first part of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, to critique what he calls "nutritionism," the tendency of food science and national policy over the last several decades to look at food and healthy eating in terms of individual nutrients, an approach that has allowed the producers of "food-like substances" to make outrageous nutritional claims and in effect wrested the expertise of eating from both mom and the American populace and handed it over to the "experts." As a result, Pollan argues, we have actually become more confused about what we should eat and less healthy as a people.

Despite the fact that Water for Elephants was a #1 New York Times bestseller--among other bestsellers lists--I found it difficult to get into this book at first.

Admittedly, it may have more to do with a personal aversion I seem to have for circus stories, however, and less with the book itself. (Nightmarish recollections of a long ago reading of Geek Love by Katherine Dunn come to mind...) Of course there is also the "what's going on in my life at the time" hypothesis--that how much I enjoy a book depends on inane and inapplicable factors such as how well I slept, how I am feeling, and how busy I am--and that I myself do not know how large a role these factors actually play in my assessment. (This blog book review effort is based around that, by the way; this is my mission to figure out what it is, exactly, that I like and dislike in a novel in an effort to finally churn out all the fiction pieces in my own head one day.)

What a strong impression this book has made on me! I've read many good books recently, but not for a while has a novel engaged my fascination and in turn inspired me to work on my own fiction so much as The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a collection of philosophical essays and musings on life, literature, and art, told through the erudite words of two characters--a low-born concierge named Renée who hides her intellectual pursuits from the wealthy tenants of number 7, rue de Grenelle, where she has lived and worked for her entire adult life; and Paloma, the extremely intelligent 12-year-old daughter of one of those wealthy families, who, seeing the pointlessness in life, has vowed to commit suicide on her 13th birthday.

Empire is the first and probably the last zombie novel I'll ever read. Horror is just not up my alley. The book was loaned to me by a friend because it is a postapocalyptic zombie novel, and I have (long) been working on a piece of postapocalyptic fiction--albeit of a very different variety.  

The book takes place in Jefferson Harbor, Louisiana, where there is a swamp containing a "Source" of dark energy that can bring the dead to life. The undead have caused a viral outbreak--anyone who is bitten becomes a zombie too, and the zombies feed on human flesh. The story takes place many decades after the initial outbreak and is accompanied by older journal entries describing life during the early stages of the plague, although most of the characters have lived their entire lives in the dark times following the outbreak.