Hit and Miss

Wrinkled rose. All roses and rose hips (the fruit of the rose plant) are edible, although some are larger than others. The wrinkled rose is a good one to find because it's relatively large.

Ground ivy growing in my compost pile.

I recently discovered that this little ivy that grows all over my lawn, in my flower beds, and around my compost actually makes a delicious and healthful tea. I'm sure you have it at your house, too. It's called ground ivy, or gill-over-the-ground. It has these kidney-shaped, wavy-margined leaves and a distinct smell. One of my books likened it to basil, although that's not quite right. To me, it smells like someone just cut the grass -- although now I realize that the smell I associate with cut grass is actually cut ground ivy. In the spring, it makes small purple flowers. After reading that the plant is high in vitamin C, and feeling a bit under the weather, as it turns out, I went out to my compost pile and picked a handful of leaves. I boiled water in the tea kettle and poured it over the chopped ground ivy, then let it steep for a few minutes. The taste was just as advertised -- bitter. But a spoonful of sugar and a splash of milk turned it into a delightful drink. I'm not much of a tea drinker, but I do love mint tea -- and it turns out that ground ivy is in the mint family, although it doesn't have a minty aroma.

Catnip in flower. There weren't
many leaves left, and those that
remained were puny and past
their prime.

Speaking of mint, a while back I went to replenish my supply from our local train station, where it grows in abundance. I had been repeatedly refilling a pitcher of iced mint tea in my refrigerator. However, when I got to the train station I was met with two unpleasant surprises. First, the mint had all gone to flower, and the leaves were no longer suitable for tea (they were narrow and straggly looking). Second, most of the mint patch, along with some sumac, mallow, thistles, and other tasty plants, had been bulldozed! There went my foraging plans. Fortunately, there is plenty of other space for plants around the train station's parking lot, and construction actually produces a plethora of "weeds" we can eat, so I'm not worried about the long-term prospects of my collecting grounds. I'm sure much of the mint will be back next year (and much of it is still there in other spots).

This is the bare spot where
there used to be a variety
of mint and other edible plants
at the train station.

As you might recall from my May 9 post, my eldest son was actually the one to discover the mint at the train station. He used his nose, whereas I was using my eyes and didn't recognize it. I have a few different kinds of mint growing in my garden, but this mint was different -- a lighter, grayer shade of green, and soft enough to be a baby blanket. The tea I made from the leaves suited me even better than the tea I made from my garden mint, so I kept going back to the train station instead of just walking out my back door when I needed another pitcher. I still didn't know what kind of mint it was. Then, during a recent guided foraging walk with Russ Cohen, I learned what it was: catnip.

Perhaps this doesn't surprise you, but it surprised me. I didn't even know catnip was a mint, and I definitely didn't know anyone other than cats liked it. Catnip, as you probably know even if you don't have a cat (I don't), makes felines -- even big ones such as lions -- go a bit crazy. It's a stimulant. For humans, catnip apparently has the opposite effect, so it's a nice tea to have just before bed.

Russ's walk took us around an organic farm, but the plants we looked at weren't the cultivated ones. He talked about many plants I've learned to identify on my own -- day lilies, cattails, elderberry, pokeweed, and burdock, for example. But I also got to see several plants for which I'd been avidly searching but had failed to find. I mentioned previously that he showed us hopniss vine, and just seeing that plant in its natural habitat helped me to identify it on my own mere days later. Here I'll mention some of the other exciting plants Russ showed us on the walk.

Unripe common barberries from the foraging walk.

Common barberries (as distinct from Japanese barberries, which are actually more common now) are not tasty right off the bush, but they make nice additions to jams and jellies, where they impart welcome tartness, similar to (and reportedly better than) that of cranberries. Barberries once were used in households throughout New England, but now that cranberries are so widely available (and easier to cultivate), most people have forgotten about barberries.

The berries are ripe and juiciest in mid-autumn, but I understand that you can still collect them later, when they are shriveled. You'll just have to add a little water and soak the berries first for about a half hour. I haven't tried any of this, of course, given that the first time I saw barberries outside of a book was on this foraging walk and that the berries weren't ripe then. All of this information is from the walk and Russ Cohen's book, Wild Plants I Have Known ... and Eaten (available from the Essex County Greenbelt Association).

Common barberries from our property. When they are ripe,
all will be bright red.

Much to my excitement, I just recently found common barberries on my own. My husband and I are about to embark on the construction of a new home. In fact, the land clearing began yesterday. Before letting the workers start chopping down trees, we walked through the area to be cleared and marked trees we'd like to keep. Beneath the trees I found lots of common barberry! Unfortunately, I've just read that barberries (both the edible, European [common] kind and the inedible, Japanese variety) are invasive in Massachuestts, which means that it's illegal to propagate the plants. A Guide to Invasive Plants in Massachusetts indicates that the common barberry has been widely eradicated because it serves as an alternate host for wheat rust, which is a threat to grain crops. So, although the plant is no longer common, it still poses a potential threat. I'll have to make do with the plants I found growing naturally on our property, but I feel fortunate to have found any at all. They weren't making many berries, presumably because of the shady location (barberry does well in full shade to full sun).

Rose hips from a wild rose plant whose specific name
I have unfortunately forgotten.

But back to the foraging walk. Russ wanted to talk to us about the wrinkled rose, which grows wild all over New England sea shores and sometimes inland as well (just recently I saw it in a flower bed at a local ice cream stand). However, there weren't any wrinkled roses along our walk, so instead he told us about a different wild rose, whose flowers and hips are much smaller but still edible (all roses and rose hips -- the fruit of the rose plant -- are edible). Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the rose we actually saw, but I have seen it growing wild all over the place and did not realize it was a rose. It might have been the multiflora rose, another invasive species. The rose hips we found were still green and unripe. But when they are ripe (and red), they have a fleshy fruit inside and a LOT of seeds, which must be spit out if one wants to enjoy the fruit. Rose hips are high in vitamin C and can be made into jellies, jams, and healthful teas.

Wrinkled rose and hiding rose hip.

The author of one of my wild-plant books says that although he knows some foragers like to nibble on rose hips along the trail, he doesn't care for them. I snuck one from a wrinkled rose bush at the above-mentioned ice cream stand, and I thought the fruit was quite tasty. It's no joke about the large quantities of seeds, though! I'm wondering what would happen if I put rose hips in my steam juicer. I'll have to find a supply that isn't in someone's flower bed, however.

Ground cherry, with leaves overturned to show
the flower. The lanterns are hanging
at the bottom right. This plant is in my garden!

To me, one of the most exciting plants we found on the walk were ground cherries. Ground cherries are not that common, and I hadn't come across any yet. They are related to tomatoes and are supposed to taste like a very sweet tomato. I love tomatoes, and as a bonus, ground cherries grow inside these cute little papery lanterns. What's not to love? Unfortunately, the fruits we found were not ripe yet (they are yellow when ripe and typically fall off the plant), so I still haven't been able to taste one. However, I was excited to find that two of these plants had snuck into my garden without my even having noticed! I hope the squirrels and chipmunks will share some of the fruits with me when they get ripe (see the Photo Gallery for additional pictures).

Plantain flower spikes in my garden.

We also learned about a plant that is growing all over my lawn and starting to invade my garden. I've read about it but never made the connection with the plant I've actually seen. It's called a plantain (but it's different from the banana-like fruits of the same name). It's an inconspicuous plant with flat-lying leaves. It sends up several flower spikes, although you might not think about them as containing flowers. The color is mostly green. The young

Plantain leaf.

leaves make good salad greens, and when the seeds on the spikes have dried (or when you have picked them and thoroughly dried them), you can grind them into a flour. It occurs to me that these should be relatively easy to collect in quantity. One of my books includes a recipe for pancakes made with the flour of the plantain seeds. Also, one of the women on the foraging walk said she'd heard that eating the tender tips of growing plantain flower spikes wards off mosquitoes and ticks. I'm not sure (and she wasn't sure) whether that is true, but it might be worth a shot!

Jewelweed likes to grow in moist, damp woods. I have seen
extensive patches of it.

Unripe jewelweed seed against my hand. The seed is green
and is hanging next to the flower.

Another plant I see everywhere and didn't know was edible is jewelweed. Well, let me clarify. I'd read that jewelweed was edible. I just didn't know that this plant I see everywhere was jewelweed. In fact, a friend of a friend had told me it was called something else entirely (I can't recall what) and that it wasn't edible. This person has a mild interest in wild plants, so I put a little more trust in the information than perhaps I should have. In any case, it turns out that these plants are edible. The young greens make a reportedly delicious boiled vegetable in the spring, and when the seed pods, which are skinny and hang vertically from the plant, are ripe, they burst open upon any slight touch. The two sides of the seed pod curl open as this happens, and the seeds fly everywhere. In fact, for this reason the plant is called touch-me-not or snapweed in some places (the name jewelweed comes from the way the pretty, water-resistant flowers, which come in yellow and orange varieties, sparkle when water beads up on them). My husband was familar with snapweed as a kid (kids love to surprise their friends with seed explosions), but little did he know that the seeds are edible. I have now eaten a good number of them, and I think they taste exactly like miniature walnuts. Collecting them is a bit of a trick, though: You must carefully enclose a ripe seed pod in your hand before setting off the explosion. That way, the seeds will explode in your hand. Russ told us that if we peel off the seed coating, inside we would find a seed of a striking robin's-egg blue. (but it isn't necessary to remove the seed coating to eat the seeds). I haven't seen this on any of the seeds I've collected, so I wonder whether they might not have been entirely ripe yet.

Unripe mulberry. (See the
photo gallery for a picture
of the whole tree).

We also got to see a mulberry tree. Mulberries look a lot like raspberries, except they grow on trees instead of bushes. The tree didn't have that many berries left on it, and the ones that were there were hard. Someone ate one and declared it good, but when I asked whether mulberries were supposed to be soft when ripe, Russ said they were. I suspect this was a case of wishful thinking (or maybe wishful tasting) on the part of the sampler. I didn't try one.

The few ripe autumnberries the birds
didn't get.

Overall, the walk was an interesting and educational -- not to mention tasty. We got to sample some black-walnut baklava, autumnberry fruit leather, and wild hickories at the end of the outing. This was the second time I'd had autumnberry fruit leather, courtesy of Russ, and both times I was impressed with how delicious it was, especially after learning that it was 100% autumnberries, and no added sugar. I love autumnberries, and certain plants produce fruit that is tasty right off the bush. But they are tart, and the jelly I made last fall certainly benefited from added sugar. My family likes to take fruit leather along on backpacking trips, so I've been looking forward to trying my own autumnberry fruit leather this year.

Yellow beach plum. This fruit is the size of a cultivated cherry.

Much to my dismay, the birds seem to have eaten almost the entire crop of autumnberries this year (and the fruit has ripened early). What's left are the least tasty berries (birds are expert foragers). I picked some and added them to some beach plums a friend and I found outside our town offices (they were landscaped; we got permission to pick them) because I thought the plums were sweeter, but the resulting fruit leather wasn't nearly as tasty as I'd hoped. It wasn't terrible enough to make me throw it out -- after all, a lot of work went into picking and preparing the fruit. But it was definitely bitter and only palatable when we were really hungry (we took it along on our camping trip Labor Day weekend and managed to eat half of it; see the end of the Photo Gallery for camping pictures). I've definitely learned the importance of choosing the right autumnberry bushes to pick from.

My son stands next to one of the
plum bushes with our bucket of fruit.

It was getting dark as my friend and I were picking the plums, so by the end we were feeling around in the bushes until our fingers happened upon a fruit. We thought we'd picked the bushes clean, but when I returned (on other business) a couple of days later, I saw that the bushes were still loaded with fruit. I vowed to collect more plums soon and do something a lot tastier with them.

With that goal in mind, my eldest son and I headed back to the plum bushes this evening. There are two bushes: one with purple plums, the other with yellow plums. More of the yellow plums were bug-ridden and shriveled than the purple ones were, so we mostly picked the purple variety. We filled our bucket in less than half an hour and headed to the grocery store to get marzipan and oranges for the muffins, which are baking as I type.

Smilax berries in various stages of ripeness.
They turn black later in the season.
The berries are not edible.

In other exciting discoveries, My elder son and I found a smilax (carrion flower) vine along a trail we've walked many times before (of course). Just one, mind you, but I'm sure more are to come now that I've made this first identification. The edible portion of the smilax vine is the flower stalk, so it is now well past harvesting season. But it's a good time to recognize the plant locations because the berry clusters are distinctive, and this is how I found my vine.

The plant received its unfortunate name because of the smell of one species of smilax, but not all of the flowers smell like rotting meat, and fortunately the plant's taste is much better than the smell of its flowers. In The Forager's Harvest, Samuel Thayer says he likes to tell people that the carrion flower is actually called the carry-on flower because those who have sampled it carry on and on about how good it tastes. I can't wait to try some next spring! (Note: Not all species of smilax are carrion flowers; the genus also contains greenbriers, which are quite different plants.)

Boneset. Notice how the leaves appear to be
pierced by the stalk.

I've been reading Euell Gibbons's Stalking the Healthful Herbs, which is where I learned about ground ivy. I was on a bike ride a couple of weeks ago and was excited to recognize a distinctive plant I'd read about in the book. I couldn't remember what it was called or what one did with it, but there was no mistaking the plant. the stalk looked like it had just shot up and pierced the leaves through the middle because of the way the leaves clasped the stalk. I took a picture and then leafed through the book when I got home. The find was much less exciting than I'd hoped for; it turns out the plant is boneset, a plant so bitter that people who drink a tonic made from its leaves apparently swear at its taste. It's said to be effective in treating a wide variety of ills, including fever, colds, and rheumatism, to name but a few, but nothing I have read makes me think it's time to ditch my FDA-approved medications (of which I take very few, in any case). Nonetheless, since I became seriously interested in edible wild plants, I find that I've also become interested in putting a name to non-edible ones, so I felt some sense of satisfaction in having identified boneset.

Silky Dogwood. Not edible!

Another non-edible plant I've just learned to identify is the silky dogwood. I kept seeing this plant, and its metallic-blue berries, everywhere, and I finally identified it in my Wild Berries & Fruits field guide by Teresa Marrone. My picture doesn't capture the beauty of the berries, but stay tuned for better pictures (of other plants if not this one) in upcoming posts: my husband has just given me a macro lens, which will allow me to take better close-up pictures to share with you!

On that note, I'll lead you right into the photo gallery for a few more pictures.

Photo Gallery

Purple beach plums. These are about the size of large grapes.

A different view of purple beach plums.

My 6-year-old collecting plums.

Our collection of plums. This was way more than I needed for a double batch of muffins. Next I'll try some jam. Slightly under-ripe fruit is supposed to be better for jam, and our fruit is quite ripe. I might add some sumac concentrate for tartness. I'm excited to try the new food mill my mother-in-law gave me for my birthday! It will make removing the skins and pits a lot easier.

Close-up of a boneset leaf seemingly pierced by the plant's stalk.

Here's the cattail pond my boys and I found back in February (see February 22 post). You might recall that I went to collect cattails later in the year but found the pond inaccessible. On a recent hike around the surrounding conservation land, we found the way cleared, and we also found another way to get to the pond. Next year I might have more luck collecting.

Jewelweed seeds. They taste like walnuts.

Smilax berries. Don't eat the berries; it's the flower shoot that is edible.

Smilax (carrion flower) vines have heart-shaped leaves.

Smilax vine.

Another picture of common barberries (from our property). The plant has long, narrow thorns on the branches.

Mulberry tree. This picture didn't turn out that well, but maybe if I'd had my snazzy new filters for my camera lens (one of them promises to make skies bluer, but that would have been quite a feat on this day, when we had a hurricane warning).

Unripe ground cherry. I'm pulling apart the "lantern" husk so you can see.

Green "lantern" husk hiding an unripe ground cherry in my garden.

At the top of Mt. Greylock, our daytime hiking destination on our recent camping trip, people kept stopping to take pictures of our "cute hiker dog," so I figured I should, too. They kept trying to guess what was in her backpack, but they were always wrong (she was carrying a couple of hammocks and her canvas water bowl). My 6-year-old felt very grown up to be the one to hold her leash all weekend.

My husband and my 6-year-old both have Osprey hiking packs, and my husband wanted me to take a picture of them together. Our 2-year-old is in the lead, and there's that cute hiking dog again. This was on our hike out of camp after a 3-night stay in the Berkshires (Mt. Greylock).

My 4-year-old thought his hat, whistle, walking stick, and boots made him look like a "real hiker," and he wanted me to take his picture. I assured him that he actually was a real hiker; he didn't just look like one! It really made his day (and proved my point) when we passed a couple of guys going the other way and one of them said, "You're a real hiker!"

We never lack for toys or entertainment in the woods. The boys are scraping out roads in the dirt at our campsite.

My middle son enjoys the view from the "Overlook Trail."

Looking at the camera now.

My 2-year-old had hiked on his own until this overlook, but this was the end of the line. He refused to take another step down the trail, and my husband relented and put all 31 pounds of him in the backpack. My middle son is in front.

My 6-year-old refused to be in the picture. I know we were dirty and smelly from having spent several days sleeping in the woods, but I don't think we were that embarrassing.