You don’t have to travel to the steppes of Russia to find this wild edible plant. “Cossack asparagus” is another name for the common cattail, sometimes called bulrush. There are probably very few people who don’t know what a cattail is or what it looks like. When mature, the cattail is easily recognized by its brown “hot dog on a stick” appearance. Technically, male and female cattail blossoms are flowers, but extremely small. When they open, the tiny female flowers are greenish but before long they turn into the familiar brown cylinder. Male flowers don’t hang around very long. They grow on a yellow spike that juts out of the top of the brown cylinder, and when their pollen is ripe, it drops on the female flowers below. Then the male flowers fall off, leaving the familiar hot dog-on-a-stick. There are even fewer people who know that the common cattail…
Author: Dan Willis
Poisonous Plants And Mushrooms In The Landscape
La Rochefoucauld said that “To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.” Nearly everybody in his or her life has had at least a small desire to get out of the fast lane and resort back to a simpler way of life. Not the least of these instincts are the pleasure of eating foods provided by nature and becoming, at least for a day, independent of the supermarkets. Edible wild plants and mushrooms grow in our woodlands, marshes, fields, pastures, and in our own landscapes. Some of the best tasting and healthy foods are available “free” for the eating, provided you know which plants and mushrooms are edible! One of our early cave dwelling ancestors encountered a pretty cluster of mushrooms on the ground and asked: What can I do with it? Will it feed me? Will cure my ills? An intrepid ancestor ate it and…
An Edible Landscape: Wild Mustard
For many years I have had fun surprising my gardening friends by inter-planting my shrubs and flowers with vegetables such as tomatoes, sweet peppers, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and others. That is until I moved to a house located in a heavily wooded area where sun was a valuable commodity. That’s when I discovered that many wild edible plants, like mayapples and fiddlehead ferns, happily grow in partial shade. Since some “noxious weeds” also like the same habitat, I thought it might be interesting to attempt growing some edible “weeds” in my garden. My maternal grandmother would always gather wild greens in the spring from farm fields and woodlots. She made them into a “spring tonic” and, as I recall, they had the same effect as a good dose of castor oil. She did teach me, however, to appreciate the value of these wayside plants both from an edibility and medicinal…