We went a little higher up in the mountains to be able to find the plants we'd miss earlier on the valley floor. So here we are again with more edible spring plants.
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| Indian Paintbrush |
Common Paintbrush (Castilleja miniata) looks just like its name: a paintbrush dipped in paint. The top colored portions of the plant are edible though it tends to concentrate selenium. Selenium is a needed element for good health but in very small quantity. Therefore, paintbrush is best left alone in soils rich in selenium or consumed in small quantities. The rest of the plant is mildly toxic.
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| Lamb's quarters |
Lamb's quarters (Chenopodium album) is often considered a pesky weed but is a delicious relative of spinach. The tender plants and, later, the tender leaves before flowers appear, are great as salad greens.
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| Siberian Miner's Lettuce |
In a previous post we already talked about Miner's Lettuce. Here we have a slightly different species with larger flowers resembling those of Spring Beauty (they're all in the Purslane family): Siberian Miner's Lettuce (Claytonia sibirica). Just like its cousins, it makes a great raw addition to salads.
The last gift of Arrowleaf Balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata) is its seeds. As soon as the flowers disappear you will see little black seeds tightly packed in the flower/seed head. While the seeds are immature they will stay stuck to the head. Once they are mature and ready to harvest they will become very loose. The best time to harvest them is right when they barely start to get loose. One easy way to do this is to walk through the hills and shake the seed heads into a bag. Alternatively, you can collect the whole seed heads and let them dry in the sun for a day or so before shaking the seeds out of them. Don't try to break the seed heads apart in an attempt to get more seeds. You'll just end up with a huge mess that you will have to winnow out and that's definitely not worth the effort. Like sunflower seeds, balsamroot seeds have a shell that is edible but not necessarily pleasant to ingest. Being so small it's not very practical to shell the seeds so I generally use them in stews, where the shells soften up and become a lot easier to eat. If you want to store them for a long time, you'll have to parch them first so that the moisture doesn't make them go bad. That way, they'll keep for years. You can also make flour by grinding the seed but it needs to be consumed very rapidly after being ground or it will go rancid.
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| Arrowleaf Balsamroot Seed Heads |
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| Common Plantain |
Though common plantain (Plantago major) is commonly used medicinally against insect bites and other ailments, the young tender leaves are also great added to salads. Stay away from the older leaves as they will be bitter, tough, and stringy.
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| Red Clover |
Red Clover (Trifolium pratense) flowers already beautify the landscape from afar but they're even more amazing observed up close. Indeed, if you look closely you'll see the small individual pea flowers forming the whole flower head. These flower heads also make a great addition to salads but make sure there is no brown spots on them; they are susceptible to mold!
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| Shepherd's Purse |
Shepherd's purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris) is another common weed and is easily recognizable with its heart-shaped seeds. Like all members of the mustard family (look for 4 long stamens and 2 short ones inside 4 petals), the above-ground parts can be added raw to salads to add a little extra peppery taste to them.
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| Sweet Cicely with emerging green seeds |
Sweet Cicely (Osmorhiza chilensis) is a member of the Umbelliferae so make sure you have a positive identification so that you don't seriously poison yourself with Water or Poison Hemlock. Before the plant flowers you can harvest the carrot-like taproots and eat them boiled. Later on, you can harvest the immature seeds while they're still green. They have a sweet, anise-like flavor that makes them great additions to salads.
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| Sweet Cicely Roots |
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| Yellow Salsify |
We already talked about Yellow Salsify (Tragopogon dubius) when we harvested its roots and compared it to Death Camas. In its second year, it sends out flower stalks with large terminal buds like this one. Salsify is kind of a trickster plant as it doesn't remain open all day like a lot of other flowers and spends a long time tightly hidden in its bud. I'm not quite sure what factors determine when the flower is open as I have several Salsify plants side by side and they're rarely open at the same time. Regardless, the flower buds are great eating, either raw or stir-fried, as they're very filling and even meaty. Just make sure to pick the actual flower buds and not the seed buds, which look just the same from the outside but are filled with puffy dandelion-like seeds on the inside! Just pry the green parts open to get a peek and make sure the bud is in its edible stage.
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| Pineapple Weed |
The aptly named Pineapple Weed (Matricaria discoidea) likes open areas, including driveways and trails, so make sure the area hasn't been sprayed with anything you wouldn't want to ingest. Its flower heads are edible, satisfyingly crunchy, and with a light pineapple flavor. They also make a delicious tea.
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| Stonecrop |
Lance-Leaved Stonecrop (Sedum lanceolatum) has very fleshy leaves. Like all members of the Stonecrop family the leaves are edible before the plant flowers but only in moderation as they have purging qualities.
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| Glacier Lily Leaf |
As soon as the snow melts, Glacier Lilies (Erythronium grandiflorum) emerge from the ground and carpets the ground in beautiful yellow flowers. The elongated bulbs of Glacier Lily are edible after cooking, boiled or in stir-fries. They can also be dried fairly easily for later use. Like all other root crops it is preferable to harvest Glacier Lily bulbs either just as the first leaf emerges from the ground, as shown to the right, or after it has gone to seed, as shown below.
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| Glacier Lily Seed Head |
Glacier Lily can be very hard to dig and often doesn't warrant the calories burnt while digging. The stem is also very delicately attached to the bulb and it will readily break away from it, thus making the search for the bulb even more difficult. The only areas that are worth digging are either very soft soils or areas with large rocks that can be removed easily by hand to uncover the bulb resting just underneath.
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| Dug up Glacier Lily after it has gone to seed |
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| Glacier Lily Bulb |
As usual, I'm 100% confident of the accuracy of this information and I have much personal experience with these plants. However, don't rely on my pictures to identify plants on your own. You should always, always have someone knowledgeable by your side to actually show you the plants and their characteristics until you have enough personal experience to be able to tell them apart from other plants. You take full responsibility for the mistakes you may make in the field.
Visit the other posts of this Edible Plants series:
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