Thoreau, so sorry you've been sick. I have a touch of that head cold stuff, too, but it hasn't wiped me out. Hope you are well again soon.<br><br>Glad you are enjoying the wild edibles. Sheryl seems to be very knowledgeable!<br><br>Sheryl, your plantago is what we call plantain. It grows in spring and fall here. I don't like it raw, but I do like it as a cooked vegetable.<br><br>Mallow doesn't grow in our area, either. I have been looking for the little cheese wheels for years! <img src="/images/boards/smilies/smile.gif" border="0" align="absmiddle"><br><br>What I like doing best with dandelion is making coffee from the roots. Until I tried it, I thought it would be a very poor substitute for the real thing. But I was stunned by how delicious it really was. It was rich, mellow, complex, and had undertones of chocolate. Beats Starbucks any day!<br><br>Violets grow here in abundance in spring. As do mint, purslane, wild blueberries, wild blackberries, bracken fiddleheads, nettles, amaranth, lambs quarters, wild carrots, groundnuts, a few Indian Puttyroot. They are rare so I only ate the roots of one plant. Raw, they are like starchy, crunchy water chestnuts. Cooked, the will literally stick your teeth together. Ask me how I know. <img src="/images/boards/smilies/smile.gif" border="0" align="absmiddle"><br><br>I've also eaten bull thistle roots (1st year--taste like turnips, but give you a ripping case of gas!), the strong celery-tasting bull thistle flower stalks (carefully peeled), and black cherries for jelly. Our crabapples are abundant, but the apples are so bitter that no amount of sugar can make them really good. I still occasionally try to make a good tasting crabapple butter, but haven't succeeded yet.<br><br>We also have autumn olives, staghorn sumac, tender, crunchy greenbrier shoots for spring and much of the summer. I tried thickening soups with bullbrier roots and didn't care for it. In the summer, we have evening primrose growing out by our ditch. I haven't found jewelweed here, and I've looked for years. I know it must grow around here somewhere.<br><br>We also have several kinds of wild lettuce.<br><br>We don't have chamomile here -- way too hot and humid for it. But we have several kinds of honeysuckle. My favorite is the white heavenly smelling Japanese honeysuckle (which is also a noxious weed).<br><br>We do have hibiscus, roses, yellow dock, curly dock, clover.... and we have Solomon's seal and false Solomon's seal.<br><br>I'm sure I'm missing a ton of the things I've harvested over the years. But I still grieve that burdock and Jerusalem artichoke don't grow wild here. <br><br>My blog is a mixture of all things that interest me. Some of it is about tatting, most about camping, but there are several wild edible posts buried in there.<br><br>I intend to make wild edibles and mushrooms my number one priority in the coming year. I've coasted and just played with them the past few years, but am getting antsy to really dig into it again.<br><br>I used to go on foraging trips. Would hike into a national forest for 5 days and take only a few staples like salt, sugar, oil and coffee, and forage for my food. The first day was always a little scary, but after that I would find far more than I could use.<br><br>I've toyed around with acorns, but haven't done a lot with them. I learned I don't like the hot watcher leaching method. I saw an article once where a girl cold water leached them in her blender. That's something I want to try next fall.<br><br>Anyway, it's an endlessly fascinating hobby that can also vastly improve your nutrition.<br><br>For a newbie, I'd suggest that as soon as the snow is gone, you start taking an hour walk two or three times a week and LOOK at the plants. At first, don't even try to identify anything. Just get used to noticing the different shapes and forms of leaves and plants. If you start that way, then start looking for some of the easily-identifiable yard weeds, your knowledge will grow.<br><br>I didn't learn by leaps and bounds at first. It was a pretty slow process. But once I started SEEING plants, it really took off.<br><br>And it is definitely worth the effort!<br><br><br>
