As farmers are hauling bales back for winter storage, while vegetables are ripening in our gardens, the wild plants offer their own delectable yield.
If you can get to them before the critters, you can find a tempting array of wild foods on your backwoods doorstep.
Before you head out, please consider these two points.
Never wander onto property that’s not your own. If you’re tempted to pick that apple tree that’s just inside a fenced pasture, don’t do it without first seeking and obtaining permission. If you do get permission to enter a field, don’t forget to close any gate you might open, and don’t destroy fencing. Use the hiker’s law: leave only your footsteps behind. That way, livestock don’t get into trouble, fences aren’t ruined, and you don’t give wild gatherers a bad name.
Second caution is to know and beware of poison ivy and cow parsnip. The ditches and waysides are full of these troublesome plants. Poison ivy manifests itself in different guises: sometimes it’s an innocent-looking plant of perhaps 5 cm in height; other times it’s a lusty half metre in height. At this time of the year it’s particularly beautiful, as its three glossy green leaves turn to scarlet. Unsure? Leaves of three, let them be.
On the other hand, cow parsnip resembles an immense, coarse-looking Queen Anne’s Lace plant. Several years ago I wrote about this plant. The Pilon family had cleared some land of cow parsnip, only to have their skin erupt into large weeping blisters that were itchy and disfiguring. I’ve intended to write about this plant again, for a close friend recently did some clearing and came up with the same very disfiguring welts. It’s a nasty plant, so ensure you know it and, just like poison ivy, avoid coming into contact with it.
Now, on to the happier topic.
Do you know what a hazelnut (sometimes called filbert nut) tree looks like? If not, dig out your tree identification book. Look for a tall shrub whose leaves are 5 to 12.5 cm long and are double toothed.
The variety growing here is the beaked hazelnut; the name comes from the long “beak” or pointed end of the husk.
The nuts are delicious eaten raw. However, Peterson Field Guides Edible Wild Plants (by Lee Allen Peterson, ISBN 0-395-31870-X) suggests you can grind them into flour as well as make candy from them.
These mostly ornamental trees offer their vermilion coloured fruit for harvest in a week or so. Rich in pectin, the pretty fruit make a tasty jelly. I’ve tasted some and although not a personal favourite, it is worth the trouble of gathering and preserving this fruit.
A member of the walnut family, butternuts are oblong in shape rather than being the almost perfectly round shape of the black walnut.
Butternuts are delicious eaten raw, but just like the beaked hazelnut, keeners can grind them into flour, make candy, or even boil them to make oil. In spring, so the field guide says, both walnuts and butternuts can be tapped for their sap.
Butternut trees are reasonably common: in fact, if you see a tree that you think is a black walnut, take a second look, for walnuts are definitely less common in our woods. When you use your tree identification book to look up these related trees, you’ll note how the leaves are very similar. The Butternut leaf is compound, with large narrow-toothed leaflets formed opposite one another on a slender stem. Butternuts usually have the end leaf, while walnuts generally are missing this leaf (but not always… Mother Nature seems to have a sense of humour at times…).
See if you can find some of these trees while you seek the edible wild produce. The nuts are ripe in October. Find your trees now, while the weather’s lovely, then go out and gather later on.
Closer to the ground find the brambles, or blackberries. Ours have been ripe for about a week, and are greatly appreciating the light rainfall of the past few days.
Blackberries are delicious eaten raw on their own or over ice cream, in milkshakes, or on breakfast foods like pancakes or cereal. Jelly, jam, syrup are also delectable. Don’t forget to gather some leaves, dry them and put them away for tea, also.
While re-reading the section in the field guide on brambles, I was reminded that young shoots are delicious in salads. I’ve not tried this… But there you go, why not add them to your salad bowl?
Rose hips are the seedpods of the fragrant wild roses that are still blossoming in the roadside verges. The hips will ripen soon now, and are so full of vitamin C that they really ought to be part of our diet.
Rose hips make excellent jelly, as well as tea and candy. Like many teas, don’t forget that in summer many of the wild tisanes are deeply refreshing as iced tea. Poured into a frosty glass over ice makes a pretty as well as vitamin-rich refreshing beverage.
The wild cherries are definitely ready to be picked; in fact some of the choke cherries were ready a few weeks ago. We’ve already made a small batch of jelly, and are looking forward to heading out again. The blacker they are, the better, so don’t pick berries that are scarlet: although you can sweeten them artificially with sugar, it’s worthwhile waiting until the fruit are dark crimson to black, for their own natural sugars have matured.
However, a choke cherry shrub whose plump black berries were just perfect was almost bare last night, when we went out to pick. The deer had discovered it, lucky things!
Syrup and jelly can be made from the choke, pin or black cherry trees that grow so abundantly here in the Pontiac.
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There’s lots to eat out there… But my final and very real caution is this: please do not pick and eat anything before you know what it is. It’s your responsibility not to poison yourself or your family, so please be wise. If you don’t know what a plant is, take a sample leaf, flower and/or fruit and take it home so someone can identify it. Don’t fall prey to that silly notion that just because a plant is “natural” or that you’ve seen a wild animal or bird eat it, that it’s okay for human beings’ consumption. Animals have entirely different enzymes and can cope with toxins that seriously damage or can even kill us.
Be wise. Know your plants. And… have some delicious fun.
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Katharine Fletcher enjoys wild foods in the Pontiac. She telecommutes from her home north of Quyon, Quebec, and welcomes your comments to your Environment Forum.