Recently in Wild medicinal plants Category

Attention Wild Food Aficionados:

Fall foraging forges forward, and by that alliteration I mean to say that foraging for wild food "has not yet ended" this fall, so don't put away your scissors or your plastic knives or your bare hands just yet!

Just yesterday I came across some fabulous fall dandelion greens in the Colorado high country despite its notoriously short growing season. They were growing amidst the deep, down-trodden grass at the base of willows lining an old mining road, and some were nearly as long as an arm! Up here, anywhere the miners and their mules once trod is a good place to look for dandelions. At the very least these early travelers toted the seeds along by accident. Other good places to look for fall dandelions are next to water sources in shady, protected places and any lawn in any neighborhood, provided it has not been sprayed by the owner or town/city tree-spraying operation.

Heads up, blog readers, especially those of you interested in wild edible plants--I have an exciting announcement to make!

New Wild Food Girl site:

Etmarciniec.com is now the proud parent of a new baby bloglet dedicated solely to the topic of wild edible and medicinal plants as well as other wild food. Please oh please visit wildfoodgirl.com. (And if you want, you can join the RSS feed in the upper right corner.) I've posted two new articles already, one related to goosefoot and the other to cow parsnip. I do not intent to post any new wild food articles here at etmarciniec.com, so please make the move with me if wild edible plants is your reason for visiting this site.

What happens to the old content?

After much thought, I decided to leave most of the old articles up here at etmarciniec.com for ease of browsing, although I may set up a 303 redirect on a few of the most highly-searched pages if I can figure out how on earth to do that without screwing things up, heh.

In the meantime, thanks so much for reading and I hope to hear from you over at wildfoodgirl.com.

-Erica 

There's a pot of mullein and juniper berry tea simmering on my stove right now--the mullein because I've grown to love the taste, and the juniper berries as part of a far-fetched effort to curb the (ahem) gas problem I have been suffering of late. You see, in their out-of-print book, Common Edible and Medicinal Plants of Colorado (1979), Kathryn G. and Andrew L. March explain that among other medicinal uses, juniper berries can be used to reduce intestinal gas. So I figure if I can get them to work for that purpose, surely Gregg will appreciate it.

The more I read, the more medicinal uses I find for mullein--that tall, fuzzy, pale green plant with the big leaves that you see all over the place, especially on roadsides, from New England to the Rocky Mountains and everywhere in between. 

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."

This entry about our visit to Cattail Bob Seebeck's mountain property to learn nearly 100 wild edible plants is much overdue; it's just that I experienced information overload there on the mountaintop in the rain that day, and I didn't know how to begin or what to include afterwards.

By way of review, renowned wild edible plants author and guide Cattail Bob invited me and a friend to attend his last class of the season on September 12, 2009, in Drake, Colorado. This invitation came in sort of a roundabout way. My sister bought me his book, Best-Tasting Wild Plants of Colorado and the Rockies (1998), as a gift for my 35th birthday. However, when Cattail Bob wrote a personalized greeting addressed to her instead of me on the receipt, she took charge and contacted him (as my sister is wont to do) and told him about my blog, specifically the entry where I glowingly review his book. So Cattail Bob contacted us with his generous invitation, and the rest is history.

The name kinnikinnik is a Native American word that translates as "smoking mixture," according to Gregory L. Tilford in Edible and Medicinal Plants of the West (1997). The leaves of the kinnikinnik plant were mixed with other dried plants and smoked both ceremonially and recreationally by Native Americans.

The term comes from the Algonkian family of native languages, explain Kathryn G. and Andrew L. March in Common Edible and Medicinal Plants of Colorado (1979). It has many different spellings, some with a "ck" and some without the second "n" in the middle of the word. The Marchs' reasoning for choosing the above spelling is both amusing and endearing; they like the fact that it is a palindrome--a word that reads the same when spelled backwards.

For years I've enjoyed popping the ripe seed pods of the jewelweed, a plant that grows in abundance by my parents' house. There are spotted jewelweeds (orange, spotted flowers) and pale jewelweeds (pale yellow flowers), both of which are also called "touch-me-nots" because of the way the ripe pods expel two small seeds when touched, much to the joy of children and adults alike. Furthermore, the seeds have a pleasing, nutty taste, although they would be difficult to collect in enough quantity to make them worthwhile as a food source. The stems of the jewelweed are succulent and juicy. The flowers dangle from the stalks, and the leaves supposedly turn silver when immersed in water. The bees really seem to like the jewelweed too.

Willow has been my first foray into wild medicinal plants to date. The bushes are everywhere up here in the mountains of Colorado, and until recently I'd adopted the popular sentiment that they're more of a pain in the neck than anything else, having heard stories of how difficult it can be to navigate a thicket of them.

Kathryn G. and Andrew L. March explain willow's medicinal uses in Common Edible and Medicinal Plants of Colorado, stating that "the bark, roots, leaves, and flowers of various willows have long been used in America, Europe, China and Russia to treat colds, fevers, headaches, coughs, diarrhea, rheumatic pains, wounds, sores, dandruff, and other ailments." 

These "rules of engagement" are a compilation of information I've put together from many sources over the years for the safe and sustainable foraging of wild edible plants.

• Make sure you identify each plant correctly before tasting it. Use a wild edible plant identification book with pictures or illustrations and compare it carefully to the plant in question. If you are not sure, give the plant a few days to grow some more and double check your hypothesis before trying it. YOU are responsible for making sure a plant is edible before eating it.
• Know the plant's look-alikes, especially the toxic ones. Most wild edible plant identification guides have information about toxic look-alikes to watch out for.
• Try only a small portion the first time, one plant at a time. Wait a full day to see if any ill effects have occurred. If not, increase your consumption the next time and perform the same test. Everyone has the potential to react differently to what they eat--even (or especially) commercially available food.