Search: “ice plant”

Toxic Mexican Poppy photo by Green Deane

White mexican poppy.

No, it is not edible. This time of year you will see yellow Mexican poppy Argemone mexicana in dry areas. Beside railroad tracks is a common location. If the blossom is white it is argemone albiflora, see photo at right. The plants are poisonous — particularly the seeds — but have been used medicinally.  The toxic seed oil has been used to adulterate commercial “vegetable” oil, particularly mustard seed oil (to make it more peppery.) And added to tea and beer for the same effect. The oil however has been used for soap making and fuel.  In folk medicine the Mexian Poppy has been used to treat asthma, the root mixed with rum for stomach pains, the stem sap for toothaches and petals given to kids with various urination problems. The seed oil also has been used to treat  leprosy,  skin  diseases,  indolent  ulcers,  injuries, flatulence, constipation, colic, malaria and rheumatalgia. Extracts reduce morphine toxicity.  Research suggests they might be good for treating liver disease. Alcohol extracts are anti-bacterial particularly against Staphylococcus  aureus  and  Bacillus  subtilis, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Argemone is from ancient Greek and means “cataract of the eye” as the ancients believed it would get rid of cataracts. Where the plants are prolific they are a common allergen.

CHickasaw plum blossoms photo by Green Deane

This time of year it is easy to spot the Chickasaw plum, the Eastern Red bud and the Pink Tabebula. They all have many blossoms and few leaves.  The chickasaw plum (prunus angustifolia) will have edible fruit near the end of spring, the Eastern Red Bud (cercis canadensis) has small pink blossoms you can eat now and later pea pods, the Pink Tabebulia  (Tabebulia heterophylla.) is mostly just pretty though a tonic/tea used to be made from the cambium. In folk medicine it was used as an anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial and for treating cancer

Ice Plant is native to South Africa.

Natives in northwest United States had a saying: When the tide is out the table is set. I use a variation in my foraging  classes: Food is where the water is. Foraging is treasure hunting for adults. An unusual edible you can see from Port Charlotte to Tarpon Springs is  Carpobrotus edulis, the ice plant You can find it on the land side of Fred Howard Park, Tarpon Springs and at the Nature Park in Punta Gorda. Ice Plant resembles purslane on steroids. Definitely not native, it’s a succulent-looking ground cover often put into coastal landscape. Leaves are less than two-inches long, opposite, evergreen, lance shaped.  The plant gets to about a foot high and is drought tolerant. The pink blossom with a yellow center is cactus-like. Leaves are used in salads. Fruits are eaten raw, dried, cooked or pickled or used in chutneys and preserves. Also edible are C. aequilaterus and C. deliciosus.

Beginning brining Osmanthus megacarpus

There are can be many reasons why an edible wild plant is not eaten. Often they were replaced by a better cultivated crop, or they were eaten in other parts of the world but not locally. Sometimes one group ate it but their rivals did not, or one group only ate the seeds and another group only the roots. And sometimes the information was not shared leaving the plant in modern foraging limbo. Foresteria are in the olive family. As far as I know locals only used the fruit of one, F legustrina,  and then to make ink. The fruit is bitter, but so, too, is the common olive without brining. Two Foresteria, F. neo-mexicana and F. pubescens var. pubescens, were eaten raw. A native member of the olive group is Osmanthus megacarpus a.k.a. cartrema floidanum. Which I have eaten after brining and I know a person who eats them before brining. 

After brining a month in four changes of brine.

Brining means soaking the fruit covered in salted water (in this case submerged in a 10% solution) for a month and changing it every week essentially the same processed as fermenting. Salt is often used to reduce tannins and is part of the process of turning Java Plums into wine. One critical element when fermenting or brining is the material you are treating has to be submerged. If any part is out of the liquid it will grow mold. I used a glass plug/plate to keep this fruit in the solution. After a month of brining the fruit had lost its bitterness and had an acceptable taste. The seed is most of the fruit leaving little pulp to eat. It was a lot of attention and time for a small amount of payoff. Then again we don’t eat a lot of plants for their caloric punch. As the forager Ray Mears has often said every little bit fills the soup pot or the tummy. These did taste like cured olives. In a previous newsletter I wrongly called the Osmanthus a Forresteria (whose berries tend to be small, oblong, and often blue/black.

Silverthorn berries ripen around St. Valentine’s Day. Photo by Green Deane

Valentine’s Day was this week which reminds us of Silverthorn. Silverthorn usually fruits around Valentine’s Day. We’ve been seeing ripening berries for several weeks and found a lot of sweet ones this past weekend. Locally it is a very common hedge plant that is rather easy to identify. It has green waxy leaves that are silver on the back with rusty freckles. The fruit is about the size of a jelly bean and light red with silver and gold sprinkling. You can read about it here, and a video here. Also flowering this week and will be fruiting soon is Eastern Gamagrass. A clumping ornamental (and native) it has a frilly flower spike that turns into grains that can be used like wheat if you can get them out of their husk. You can read about it here. 

Foraging classes are held rain or shine, heat or cold. Photo by Nermina Krenata

Foraging Classes: Sticking to the southeast end of the state this weekend, with a class in Ft. Pierce and then West Palm Beach, the latter is more tended to than the former.

Saturday February 18th, La strange Preserve, Ft. Pierce, 9 a.m. meet at the parking lot. 

Sunday February 19th, Dreher Park, West Palm Beach, 9 a.m. meet north of the science center parking lot.

Saturday February 25th, John Chestnut County Park: 2200 East Lake Road, Palm Harbor, FL 34685. Meet at the trail head of the Peggy Park Nature Walk, pavilion 1 parking lot. 9 a.m 

Sunday February 26th, Wickham Park: 2500 Parkway Drive, Melbourne, FL 32935-2335. Meet at the “dog park” inside the park 9 a.m 

For more information, to pre-pay or sign up, go here. 

You get the USB, not the key.

My nine-DVD set of 135 videos has been phased out and replaced by 171-videos on a 128-GB USB, see right.  The USB videos are the same videos I have on You Tube. Some people like to have their own copy especially if social order falters.  The USB videos have to be copied to your computer to play. If you want to order the USB go to the DVD/USB order button on the top right of this page or click here. That will take you to an order form. Or you can make a $99 donation, which tells me it is for the USB (include a snail-mail address.)  I’d like to thank all of you who ordered the DVD set over the years which required me to burn over 5,000 DVDs individually. I had to stop making them as few programs now will read the ISO files to copy them. Burning a set also took about three hours. 

Green Deane Forum

Want to identify a plant?  Perhaps you’re looking for a foraging reference? You might have a UFO, an Unidentified Flowering Object, you want identified. On the Green Deane Forum we — including Green Deane and others from around the world — chat about foraging all year. And it’s not just about warm-weather plants or just North American flora. Many nations share common weeds so there’s a lot to talk about. There’s also more than weeds. The reference section has information for foraging around the world. There are also articles on food preservation, and forgotten skills from making bows to fermenting food. Recent topics include: Stale Bread and Cod Liver Oil, Killing Bugs with Tobacco Plugs, Eating weeds: Is it safe? Have they mutated? Not the Eastern Red Bug but the Pink Tabebuia, African Tulip Tree, Asparagus densiflorus, Green Deane’s Book… You can join the forum by clicking on the button on the upper right hand side of this page.

This is my weekly newsletter #545. If you want to subscribe to this free newsletter you can find the sign-up form in the menu at the top of the page. My website, EatTheWeeds.com, which is data secure, has over 1500 plants on it in some 428 articles. I wrote every one myself, no cut and paste. 

 To donate to the Green Deane Newsletter click here.

Sedum with mild flavored leaves. Photo by Green Deane

Edible Ice Plant, Carpobrotus edulis, is a common ornamental. Photo by Green Deane

Confessions of  forager: In a general sense I have known for many years that “Stonecrops” were edible. I avoided them as they were usually associated by writers with cactus (In that they grow well where it is warm and dry and rocky. Where I live it is hot, wet and no rocks.) So I ignored “stonecrops” for decades except for two:  a distant edible relative I stumble across in Florida, Ice Plant, Carpobrotus edulis,  and Sedum ternatum (now (Hylotelephium telephium.) which I played with as a kid in Maine. 

I grew up on a dirt road out in the country, five miles west of the famous L.L.Bean store in Freeport Maine. Of course back then it was a relatively small store over the post office. Now it’s the entire town. My grandfather printed catalogues for L.L. himself and invented their one-wheel deer carrier.

Down the road from our house in Pownal was a seasonal pond with alder trees and polywogs and what we called Frog Bellies growing right beside the road. It was Hylotelephium telephium. As kids we didn’t know what it was but we would suck on the leaves. The upper layer of the leaf would separate and balloon up, filled with air which to a kid looked close enough to a frog’s puffy belly. There are between 400 and 475 different species of Sedum.    Several species of stonecrop have a history of edibility.”the genus native to Europe, Northern Africa and Asia where varities grow in rock crevices, on ravine edges and in scrubby areas. It’s among the fe plants tht can survive in the rocky Greek landscape.

Among the edibles are: Sedum, sarmentosum (which is high in vitamin C) S. roseum, S. rhodanthum, S. reflexum, S. telephium var. purpureum, and S. acre. Roots of Sedum roseum are eaten after being cooked. The roots of S. roseum are also a common supplement sold under the name Rhodiola rosea. The roots of S. telephium var. purpureum have also been eaten. Sedum telephium var telephium is a cultivated salad plant in Europe, the leaves are used. S. acre has pungent leaves and is used as a condiment. Native Americans used S. divergens, and S. laxum for food, the latter rolled with salt grass. The red tops of  Sedum integriforlim ssp. integrifolium  were used to make a tea, or the leaves eaten fresh or with fat, the root was also eaten. S. rosea (The rhodiola) was eaten fresh, cooked or fermented. Roots eaten with fat or fermented.  Interestingly kalanchoe is in the wider stonecrop group though I have never heard of any of them being edible. Avoid Sedum alfredii which is known to accumulate cadmium.

Contemporary references say Sedum means “House Leek” in Dead Latin. Merritt Fernald, the Big Botanical Man at Harvard from 1900 to 1950, author of Gray’s Manual of Botany 1950 (the year he died) says “Name [is] from sedire, to sit, alluding to the manner in which many species affix themselves to rocks or walls. Hylo is the Greek word meaning forest or woodland. The genus honors Telephus, King of Mysia, who was the son of Hercules. 

Green Dean’s Itemized Plant Profile

IDENTIFICATION:  Sedum acre,  tuberous-rooted, carpet-forming, evergreen succulent  to  3” tall spreads moss-like along the ground to often making an impressive ground cover. Plants are thickly clothed with blunt, conical, pale green leaves. Leaves overlap in shingle-like fashion. Small, terminal clusters of tiny, star-shaped, five-petaled, yellow flowers to half an inch  blooms most of the summer.

TIME OF YEAR: warm weather, most like it suuny and dry

ENVIRONMENT: Sunny locations, Varies. Some like to cling to rock faces and well-drained gravely soil others like lawns. Like Ice Plant a good plant to cultivate near the sea. Can tolerate some shade, rarely needs to be watered

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Varies with species, some just the young and tender  leaves, others the entire plant, often roots are eaten with fat. Or dried and powdered and use for tea. The sap os S acre, can irritate the skin of some people and the leaves, eaten in quantity, can cause stomach upsets.

Sedum with mild-flavord leaves. Photo by Green Deane

Confessions of  forager: In a general sense I have known for many years that “Stonecrops” were edible. I avoided them as they were usually associated by writers with cactus (In that they grow well where it is warm and dry znd rocky. Where I live it is hot, wet and no rocks.) So I ignored “stonecrops” for decades except for two: one a distant edible relative I stumble across in Florida, Ice Plant, Carpobrotus edulis,  and sedum purpureum which I played with as a kid in Maine but didn’t eat. We called it frog belly.  

Suzanne Shires making pesto. Photo by Donna Horn Putney

So when I saw this past weekend  herbalist Suzanne Shires and our event host Donna Putney eat two different species of Stonecrop they caught my attention. We were at an event at Putney Farm in South Carolina where I taught four classes and had the opportunity to hear Suzanne talk about plants. (If you can possibly do so attend any presentation of hers, and Donna’s.) The result: I have clippings from Donna of  stonecrop. I will probably have to wait until they bossom to identify them down to the species, but I know they are edible! We had some in a pesto. There are several species of stonecrop with a history of edibility. Among them  Sedum, sarmentosum (high in vitamin C) S. roseum, S. rhodanthum, S. reflexum, S. telephium var. purpureum, and S. acre and several more. Roots of Sedum roseum are eaten after being cooked. The roots of S. roseum are also a common supplement sold under the name Rhodiola rosea. The roots of S. telephium var. purpureum have also been eaten. Sedum. telephium var telephium is a cultivated salad plant in Europe, the leaves are used. S. acre has pungent leaves and is used as a condiment. Native Americans used S. divergens, and S. laxum for food, the latter rolled with salt grass. The red tops of  Sedum integriforlim ssp. integrifolium  were used to make a tea, or the leaves eaten fresh or with fat, the root was also eaten. S. rosea (The rhodiola) was eaten fresh, cooked or fermented. Roots eaten with fat or fermented. (I will ferment Ice plant the next time I run across it.) There are between 400 and 475 different species of Sedum.  Interestingly kalanchoe is in the wider stonecrop group though I have never heard of any of them being edible.Avoid Sedum alfredii which is known to accumulate cadmium. Contemporary references say Sedum means “House Leek” in Dead Latin. Merritt Fernald,the Big Botanical Man at Harvard from 1900 to 1950, author of Gray’s Manual of Botany 1950 (the year he died) says “Name [is] from sedire, to sit, alluding to the manner in which many species affix themselves to rocks or walls.”

Forage Pesto. We picked all the seeds off the cleavers (which I am going to roast.)

Forage Pesto? Yep. Suzanne Shires, above left  made a foraged pesto for Sunday’s class. Among the plants used were cleavers– minus seeds — chickweed, Stinging nettle, dandelions, Jeruselam artichoke leaves, rumex leaves, strawberry leaf, spider wort and sedum (The goal by collecting different species was to create a familiar taste and texture.) Olive oil, sunflower seeds and black walnuts and nutrutioinal yeast (which added a cheese flavor) rounded out the ingredientw, salt to taste.  Besides being an herbalist Suzanne also has the cooking knowledge of what to forage to make into various meals. Her new book is Beyond the Garden Gate, Wild food Recipes. Her previous book is Wild Herb Gardening. Available here.

Cinnamon Sprig

The do-it-yourself plant world can hold many surprises. Years ago while trying to collect vinegar bacteria from scratch I failed completely for about five years. Then while doing something else I accidentally succeeded finding a sure fire way to collect the bacteria. A couple of months ago I potted a couple of dozen cinnamon seeds. No sprouts. I put some leafless twigs — collected at the same time —  in water in and left them outside with daily sun ignoring them (not wanting to throw them.away.) Now I have a leafing sprig.  The photo left is the result, it’s been potted and at the end of the year I’ll move it to a new location.

Foraging classes: Two favorite locations this weekend, Dreher Park on Saturday and Mead Gardens in Orlando on Sunday. Subtropical to subtemperate plant communties.

Classes are held rain or shine (but not during hurricanes.)

Saturday May 14th Dreher Park, 1200 Southern Blvd., West Palm Beach, 33405. 9 a. m. to noon. Meet just north of the science center. 

Sunday may 15th, Mead Gardens, 1500 S. Denning Dr., Winter Park, FL 32789.  9 a.m. to noon. Meet at the bathrooms.

Saturday May 21st Eagle Park Lake, 1800 Keene Road, Largo, FL 33771. 9 a.m. to noon Meet at the pavilion near the dog park.

Sunday May 22nd, Colby-Alderman Park: 1099 Massachusetts Street, Cassadaga Fla. 32706, 9 a.m. to noon. Meet at the bathrooms

Saturday May 28th  Bayshore Live Oak Park, Bayshore Drive. Port Charlotte. 9 a.m.  to0 noon. Meet at the parking lot at Bayshore and Ganyard.

Sunday May 29th Mead Gardens, 1500 S. Denning Dr., Winter Park, FL 32789.  9 a.m. to noon Meet at the bathrooms.

For more information, to pre-pay or sign up go here

You get the USB, not the key.

My nine-DVD set of 135 videos has been phased out and replaced by 171-videos on a 128-GB USB, see left.  The USB videos are the same videos I have on You Tube. Some people like to have their own copy especially if social order falters.  The USB videos have to be copied to your computer to play. If you want to order the USB go to the DVD/USB order button on the top right of this page or click here. That will take you to an order form. Or you can make a $99 donation, which tells me it is for the USB (include a snail-mail address.)  I’d like to thank all of you who ordered the DVD set over the years which required me to burn over 5,000 DVDs individually. I had to stop making them as few programs now will read the ISO files to copy them. Burning a set also took about three hours. 

Green Deane Forum

Want to identify a plant?  Perhaps you’re looking for a foraging reference? You might have a UFO, an Unidentified Flowering Object, you want identified. On the Green Deane Forum we — including Green Deane and others from around the world — chat about foraging all year. And it’s not just about warm-weather plants or just North American flora. Many nations share common weeds so there’s a lot to talk about. There’s also more than weeds. The reference section has information for foraging around the world. There are also articles on food preservation, and forgotten skills from making bows to fermenting food. Recent topics include: Fermenting potatoeswith yogurt, make a water filter, nixtamalization at home, Stale Bread and Cod Liver Oil, Life’s a Grind, Killing Bugs with Tobacco Plugs, Eating weeds: Is it safe? Have they mutated? Not the Eastern Red Bug but the Pink Tabebuia, African Tulip Tree, Asparagus densiflorus, Green Deane’s Book… You can join the forum by clicking on the button on the upper right hand side of this page.

Did you know there are two elderberry cultivars, john and Adam: They were bred from Sambucus canadensis and have larger berries and ripen sooner than the wild kind. Now you know. I think this picture is of a “John” 

An Elderberry cultivar, “John”. Photo by Green Deane

This is my weekly newsletter #507. If you want to subscribe to this free newsletter you can find the sign-up form in the menu at the top of the page. My website, EatTheWeeds.com, which is data secure, has over 1500 plants on it in some 428 articles. I wrote every one myself, no cut and paste.

 On a personal note, my rent is doubling. I need a place to move to. Currently renting a two-bedroom small house.  Looking for either a rental or place to buy.  Email Green Deane@gmail.com

                             To donate to the Green Deane Newsletter click here.  

Ice Plant is native to South Africa.

Natives in northwest United States had a saying: When the tide is out the table is set. I use a variation in my foraging  classes: Food is where the water is. Foraging is treasure hunting for adults. An unusual edible we saw this weekend in Port Charlotte was Carpobrotus edulis, the ice plant. It was in a neighborhood near Bayshore Park on Sibley Bay Street. My only other sighting of this species was a few years ago on the land side of Fred Howard Park, Tarpon Springs. You can also find it at the Nature Park in Punta Gorda. Ice Plant resembles purslane on steroids. Definitely not native, it’s a succulent-looking ground cover often put into coastal landscape. Leaves are less than two-inches long, opposite, evergreen, lance shaped.  The plant gets to about a foot high and is drought tolerant. The pink blossom with a yellow center is cactus-like. Leaves are used in salads. Fruits are eaten raw, dried, cooked or pickled or used in chutneys and preserves. Also edible are C. aequilaterus and C. deliciosus.

Enteromorpha some times called Ulva. Photo by Green Deane

The tide was quite low at Port Charlotte so we got to see some sea lettuce, Ulva lactuca, (bottom right) looking like green plastic wrap. Sold commercially it’s one of the more tasty local sea weeds (or as they are called now sea vegetables.) Sea Lettuce is more commonly found after a steady onshore sea breeze. Free floating it starts out attached to a shell or rock. If you find lots of a sea lettuce-like plant  but it’s stringy, not wrapper-like, that is the  Enteromorpha version (photo left). The second thing you might notice about the Enterophrphas besides looking stringy is they are a similar bright light green as the Ulva. Some taxonomists have given up and call them all Ulva or all Enteromorpha. Enteromorpha in Dead Latin mangled from Greek literally means intestine-shaped, Ulva means sedge in Dead Latine or wolf in Gaelic (sometimes a girl’s name.) Both groups are also called Green Nori.  What is native, what is not,  and what are their ranges is officially “unclear.” They can also be found inland at salty springs and also the Great Lakes. As far as I know all Ulva and Enterophorpha are edible. The various Enteromorpha species are E. intestinalis, E. clathrata, E. flexuosa, E. compressa, E. linza, and E. prolifera. Like Ulva, they are edible raw, cooked or preserved. In fact a restaurant at Port Canaveral used to see a Sea Lettuce salad. 

Sea Lettuce is perhaps the best of our local seaweeds.

Since most seaweed is edible, and nutritious, why isn’t it consumed more often? Taste and texture. I’ve collected Sargassum and prepared it many ways. Semi-drying and frying isn’t too bad but Bladderwrack is better, Sea Lettuce better still. Sea Lettuce is about the best in the Americas. Not surprisingly most land animals including birds don’t like seaweed. However, it does make good mulch and fertilizer. So while one may not use it directly in the diet it can still help sustain you with uses in the garden. During Victorian times it was highly used in English agriculture. Here are some of my articles on seaweed: Bladderwrack,  Caulpera,  Codium,   Gracilaria,   Sargassum,  Sea Lettuce, and Tape Seagrass.

Foragers benefit from bad ideas. One of those is taking plants from one place on earth to another. We harvest and eat a lot of local plants that came from somewhere else. One of them is so far from home that it fruits in February.

Silverthorn berries are ripening now.

The Silverthorn is native to Southeast Asia. It came to North America as an ornamental about 200 years ago. Early botanists were sure it would not become an invasive pest because they said the fruit were not nutritious for birds. Thus, the birds would not eat them and spread the seeds around. The problem is no one told the birds that (and if birds did not spread the seeds around in Asia, what did?)  In some areas the Silverthorn is an invasive species and forbidden. In other areas it is still sold as an ornamental. We call it tasty and we has some almost ripe ones Sunday in Sarasota.

Silverthorn fruits ripen about Valentine’s Day, give or take a week or two.  The bush hides the blossoms and they are a bit strange looking, if not futuristic. The four-petaled speckled blossom turns into a red jelly bean-like fruit with gold and silver speckles. They are bitter and or sour until ripe. The shelled seed is also edible. Altogether the fruit is high in vitamin C, lycopene, and Omega 3 fatty acids. And that is a tasty treat in the middle of winter even up into north Georgia. To read more about the Silverthorn go here.

Unidentified shrub with what appears fruit turned into galls. Photo by Green Deane

There are at the least two ways to look at plants: As a whole comprising of parts, or, parts that comprise a whole. This is not a riddle or a paradox. Beginners tend to see whole plants not their parts and experienced foragers tend to see parts that either do or do not make the whole. Beginners will make such mistakes as identifying Florida Pursley for Chickweed because they have a similar shape even though they are very different in size and hairiness. Similar confusion happen with Oakleaf Flea Bane and Plantagos — both have stem threads — Elderberries and Water Hemlock because of similar leaves and blossoms and environment preference. Experience foragers see a whole comprised of parts and it all works or it does not. If a plant were a jigsaw puzzle beginners see the general shape and notice there is a picture. Experience folks see the pieces, the picture in detail and the shape that then make a whole. When you’re used to looking at plants it can sometimes look right but something is naggingly wrong (usually one of the parts, so always be sensitive to that little doubt.) This shrub to th right — still unidentified by me — resembles a Marlberry but… the arrangement and low amount of fruit is wrong (according to Marlberries I have seen.) And the taste of the black fruit was surprisingly palatable whereas marlberries are usually barely edible. The whole of the shrub is suggests Marlberry, the parts do not. Also the fruit seems to become galled and the seed disappears. So it’s still on the “I don’t know list” though it is nursery-raised and I would thus presume probably a native as it was intentionally planted in a park. I’d suggest a Foresteria but it’s fruit is bitter and this is sweet. In foraging “close” is not good enough. 

Classes are held rain or shine (but not during hurricanes.)

Foraging Classes: Classes this week are in Winter Park, north of Orlando, and John Chestnut Park, not far from Tarpon Springs  

Saturday February 5th, Mead Garden: 1500 S. Denning Dr., Winter Park, FL 32789.  Meet at the bathrooms. 9 a.m. to noon. 

Sunday February 6th,  John Chestnut County Park: 2200 East Lake Road, Palm Harbor, FL 34685. Meet at the trail head of the Peggy Park Nature Walk, pavilion 1 parking lot. 9 a.m. to noon. 

Saturday February 12th, Spruce Creek Park, 6250 Ridgewood Ave. Port Orange, 9 a.m. to noon, meet at the pavilion.

Sunday February 13th,  Eagle Park Lake, 1800 Keene Road, Largo, FL 33771. 9 a.m. to noon. Meet at the pavilion near the dog park. 

Saturday February 19th,  Dreher Park, 1200 Southern Blvd., West Palm Beach, 33405. 9 a.m. to noon, meet just north of the science center. 

Sunday February 20th,  Blanchard Park, 10501 Jay Blanchard Trail, Orlando, FL 32817. 9 a.m. to noon. Meet at the pavilion next to (east of) the tennis courts.

Saturday February 26th, Tide Views Preserve, 1 Begonia Street, Atlantic Beach Fl 32233 (near Jacksonville Fl.) 9 a.m. to noon. Meet at the parking lot. 

Sunday February 27th, Mead Garden: 1500 S. Denning Dr., Winter Park, FL 32789.  Meet at the bathrooms. 9 a.m. to noon. 

Saturday/Sunday May 7th & 8th,  Honea Path, South Carolina, classes at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. each day. 

For more information, to pre-pay or sign up go here

If you look across local lakes now you will see garnet red splotches on the horizon. Those are maples putting on new leaves. Are maple leaves edible? Yes and seeds, too. Are they prime foraging food? Opinions vary. The delicate samaras (see right) happen to be red but they can also be green. Later the auto-rotating wings will turn brown. Locally the trees are so heavy with seeds they appear red from a distance. As for eating them what you need to do is taste them first. If they are not bitter you can tear off the wings and eat them raw though some folks eat the soft wings as well. If they are bitter they need to be cooked in boiling water, cooled, then tasted. They should be less bitter. You may have to boil them again. Non-bitter seeds can also be roasted or sun-dried. Some Native Americans sprouted the seeds for a treat. I do not know of any toxic maple seeds to humans but red maple (Acer rubrum) leaves and seeds are toxic to horses. That said I do recall we had two red maple intentionally planted in the barnyard. My step-father liked the looks of them. Our horses — definitely leaves eaters — left them alone. To read more about maples go here.

Green Deane videos are now available on a USB.

My nine-DVD set of 135 videos has been phased out and replaced by a 171-video USB. The USB videos are the same videos I have on You Tube. Some people like to have their own copy.  The USB videos have to be copied to your computer to play. If you want to order the USB go to the DVD/USB order button on the top right of this page or click here. That will take you to an order form. Or you can make a $99 donation, which tells me it is for the USB (include a snail-mail address.)  I’d like to thank all of you who ordered the DVD set over the years which required me to burn over 5,000 DVDs individually. I had to stop making them as few programs now will read the ISO files to copy them. 

Green Deane Forum

Want to identify a plant?  Perhaps you’re looking for a foraging reference? You might have a UFO, an Unidentified Flowering Object, you want identified. On the Green Deane Forum we — including Green Deane and others from around the world — chat about foraging all year. And it’s not just about warm-weather plants or just North American flora. Many nations share common weeds so there’s a lot to talk about, such as the one to the left. There’s also more than weeds. The reference section has information for foraging around the world. There are also articles on food preservation, and forgotten skills from making bows to fermenting food. Recent topics include: California Wild Mushroom Parties, A Good Reason To Eat Wild Garlic, Black Walnuts and Amaranth, Sea Salt and Plastic, Wild Mustard? Heavy Metals. Oriental Persimmons. What is it? Pine Cough Drops and Needles, Skullcap, Malodorous Plant? Another NJ Tree, Maypop? Roadside Plant, Unknown in Sudan, Please Help Identify, and Preserving Prickly Pear Bounty. You can join the forum by clicking on the button on the upper right hand side of this page.

Jabuticaba fruit grows on the trunk and limbs of the tree.

In its native Brazil the Jabuticaba is by far the most popular fruit. The Dutch knew about it in 1658. Jabuticaba made it to California by 1904. It’s a common ornamental and there are many “cultivars:” Sabara, Paulista, Rajada, Branca, Ponhema, Rujada, Roxa, Sao Paulo, Coroa, Murta, and Mineira. Per 100 grams Plinia cauliflora fruit has 45.7 calories, 0.11 grams of protein, 0.08 grams of fiber, 0.01 grams of fat and 12.58 gams of carbohydrates. Vitamin A is absent but it has 22.7 mg of vitamin C which is about a third of your daily need. The B vitamins are B1 (thiamin) 0.02 mg, B2 (riboflavin) 0;02 mg, and B3 (niacin) 0.21 mg. Two minerals are reported: Calcium 6.3 mg and phosphorus 9.2 mg. It is also called Myrciaria cauliflora.

It’s a short tree planted in warm areas of North American and a common ornamental in Florida and the Gulf Coast. One is reported to sustain an 18F freeze and continued to thrive and fruit. Jabuticaba means “like turtle fat” referring to the fruit pulp, or, it means “tortoise place.” Take your pick. Myrciaria is from the Greek myrike (μυρίκη) which was the  Greek name for the “tamarisk” a tree that is aromatic. In English it becomes Myrtle. Cauliflora means cauliflower-like. Plinia is Dead Latin for filled, full, rich, whole, perfect, well-equipped. You might remember from history Pliny the Elder and Younger. 

This is my weekly newsletter #493. If you want to subscribe to this free newsletter you can find the sign-up form in the menu at the top of the page. My website, EatTheWeeds.com, which is data secure, has over 1500 plants on it in some 428 articles. I wrote every one myself, no cut and paste. 

 To donate to the Green Deane Newsletter click here.

Bunya Bunya get no respect in countries where people have plenty of food. The falling large cones — about this time of year — are consider a legal hazard and the trees are often cut down (as they were at the entrance to Bok Tower in Lake Wales. That plant preserve is the last place one would think they would be removed.) The bigger the cone the more likely it will have kernels in the shells. It is a bit of work to get the enclosed nuts out of their green husks. As the kernel taste more like chestnuts than pine nuts I prefer to roast them. This also makes the outer shell more brittle and easier to crack. You can read more about the Bunya-Buya here.    A reasonably close relative with edible seeds is the Norfolk Island Pine, upper right. They used to be standard landscaping fare and are far more common. Also called the Norfolk Pine, the species is common in warm, humid coastal areas because the species is quite salt tolerant (though there is one down the street from me in the middle of the state.)  At one time the greater family included a huge amount of species ranging over much of the earth. Botanists tell us that most of them died out along with the dinosaurs leaving just a few species ranging from South America to Australia. While in its native habitat the Norfolk Pine can reach 150 feet high and 10 feet through in North America it is often a house or office plant popular because it somewhat resembles a stringy Christmas tree.

Foraging is like treasure hunting. While pedaling along a bike trail I had to stop at an intersection and noticed some Boerhavia diffusa. It’s a common marginal edible probably from India or somewhere near there. One usually finds it in somewhat trashy ground such as sidewalk cracks, parking lots, and dumps. So when I stopped at the intersection it was no surprise to see Boerhavia growing there. But growing next to it was a white Boerhavia, B. erecta. The leaves are more pointed than the common species and it’s a Florida native. B. erecta, the “Erect Spiderling” or “Erect Boerhavia”  has spread to other parts of the world and is reportedly edible and medicinal like B. difussa. You can read about the ruby-blossomed B. diffusa here.

Also seen on bike trails and blooming now is Goldenrod. It is a bit of a treasure hunt and disappointment. The treasure hunt is that one species is better than all the rest for tea, Solidago odora. It does grow here, has an anise flavor, but is hard to find. It’s reported in most counties but is not common. Goldenrod grows in about half of the United States, southwest to northeast. Other Goldenrod species can also be made into tea, perhaps all of them particularly for herbal applications, but they don’t taste anywhere near as good.  In fact, after the “Boston Tea Party” of 1773 halted tea imports colonialists drank Goldenrod tea and even exported some to China. It did not catch on. However, every time I see a Goldenrod I pull off a leaf and crush it hoping to detect the tell-tale anise smell. It’s a golden treasure hunt.

There is a tree you should be scouting for now so when the fruit ripens next month you’ll have some already located. As in real estate so in foraging: Location, location, location. Hackberries (also widely know as Sugarberries) like to be near but not in fresh water. You can often find them about 10 feet above the local water table but I’ve seen them as low as three feet. Usually you can find them up the bank from the water. Older Hackberry bark will often be warty, sometimes heavily so. Leaves have uneven shoulders, and on the back side of the leaf notice three prominent veins at the base, unusual for tree leaves. The small-pea sized fruit is green this time of year but will ripen to a burnt orange. The entire fruit is edible though the seed is hard. To read more about them go here.

My foraging classes this weekend range from Jacksonville to north central Florida in Cassadaga. The Jacksonville campus is always a pleasant location with great diversity. Colby Park in Cassadaga is a small but fruitful place that historically draws small classes. More personal attention that way. It has edible “Yams” and good examples of Kudzu.

Saturday, August 10th, Florida State College,  south campus, 11901 Beach Blvd.,  Jacksonville, 32246.  9 a.m. to noon. We will meet at building “D”  next to the administration parking lot.

Sunday, August 11th, Colby-Alderman Park: 1099 Massachusetts Street, Cassadaga. Fla. 32706. 9 a.m. to noon. Meet by the bathrooms. 

Saturday August 17th, Eagle Park Lake, 1800 Keene Road, Largo, FL 33771. 9 a.m. to noon. Meet at the pavilion near the dog park.

Sunday August 18th, Ft. Meade Outdoor Recreation Area, 1639 Frostproof Highway, Fort Meade, FL 33841. (Frostproof Highway is also Route 98.)  9 a.m to noon. Meet at the bathrooms in the middle of the park which is due south from the highway and not near the entrance.

Saturday, August 24th, Bayshore Live Oak Park, Bayshore Drive. Port Charlotte. 9 a.m. to noon. Meet at the parking lot at the intersection of Bayshore Road and Ganyard Street. 9 a.m. to noon.

Sunday, August 25th, Blanchard Park, 10501 Jay Blanchard Trail, Orlando, FL 32817. 9 a.m. to noon. Meet next to the tennis courts by the YMCA building.

Saturday August 31st, Wekiva State Park, 1800 Wekiwa Circle, Apopka, Florida 32712. 9 a.m. to noon. Arrive very early as there will be a lot of people wanting to go to the springs at 8 a.m. to swim. There is a park admission Fee: $6 per vehicle. Limit 8 people per vehicle, $4 for a single occupant vehicle, $2 pedestrians or bicyclists. Meet at the Sand Lake parking lot (road on left after entrance. Go to end of road.) Unlike city parks or the urban area, Wekiva Park is “wild” Florida. There are very few weeds of urbanization. The edibles are mostly native plants and far between. There is a lot of walking in this class. After class you can swim in the spring.

Sunday September 1st, George LeStrange Preserve, 4911 Ralls Road, Fort Pierce, FL, 34981. 9 a.m. to noon. The preserve has no official bathroom or drinking water so take advantage of the various eateries and gas stations before arrival. 

Saturday September 7th, 329 N. Park Avenue, Winter Park. 9 a.m. to noon.  Parking is free in the parking garage behind Panera’s.  This is a class specializing in finding wild edibles in an urban setting.

Sunday September 8th, Ft. Desoto Park, 3500 Pinellas Bayway S. St. Petersburg Fl 33715. Meet by the bathrooms at the parking lot of the “bay” fishing pier (not the “gulf” fishing pier.) 9 a.m. to noon. There is a fee to get into the park. The fishing pier is about halfway along the SW/NE road along the southern end of the park.

Saturday, September 14th, Wickham Park: 2500 Parkway Drive, Melbourne, FL 32935-2335. 9 a.m. to noon.Meet at the “dog park” inside the park.

October 11-12-13, foraging classes at Putney Farm, Honea Path, South Carolina.

Wild mints are prima donnas. Once on stage they hate to get off.  Locally I would expect to see Horsemint, Monarda punctata, in full bloom this month but late rains might have pushed the season back. Horsemint can flower for several months. I have found some unshowy ones located exactly where one would expect to find it: On a dry bank up from a trail. You can also find it in the same area near roads especially roads that cut through a sand hill. Look for the showy pink bracts. If you’re in the Carolinas you’ll be seeing the bright red Monarda didym. Where I grew up in New England the wild mints were called Oswego Tea.

Do you know why the Sweet Gum tree is called that? Because while it tastes mighty bad it is not as bad as the other “gum” trees, one of which is not season yet but is fruiting, the Black Gum. You have to like sour and bitter to like the Black Gum tree.  If you don’t the fruit is offensive and elicits comments that cannot be printed in wholesome publications. This did not stop desperate settlers from adding a lot of sugar to the fruit and making jelly out of it. The seed itself is easy to identify in that under the pulp there are vertical striations covering the seed. I have seen the species in classes in Gainesville and Jacksonville. The tree usually looks gangly and has branches that are often on a 90-degree angle to the trunk.  To read more about the Black Gum and its nearly-offensive but edible relatives click here.

What is that mushroom on your lawn? Locally a toxic mushroom has been flourishing, the Green Spore Parasol also called the Green Parasol and the False Parasol, Chlorophyllum molybdites . It causes more non-fatal mushroom poisonings than any other species in North America. This is because it has some close look alikes that are edible. The Green Spore Parasol is almost unique in that it is one of the very few mushrooms with green spores. If you pull off the stem and lay the cap on a white piece of paper or clear plastic for a few hours to a day it will leave a green spore print. They almost aways pop up on lawns and often in a “troop” or what we used to call a fairy ring. Also called the “Gut Wrencher” a few people seem immune to its toxin but don’t try it. The one death on record involved a two-year old child who ate some raw, had convulsions, then died 17 hours later. Adults usually get go-to-the-hospital diarrhea, among other gastro-intestional symptoms. There is, however, no lasting organ damage. The mushroom is, however, is deadly to horses. (There is one reference to edibility after processing a particular way but I have not tried it.)

Want to identify a plant? Perhaps you’re looking for a foraging reference? You might have a UFO, an Unidentified Flowering Object you want identified. On the Green Deane Forum we — including Green Deane and some 8,000 others from around the world — chat about foraging all year. And it’s not just about warm-weather plants or just North American flora. Many nations share common weeds so there’s a lot to talk about, such as the one to the left. There’s also more than weeds. The reference section has information for foraging around the world. There are also articles on food preservation, and forgotten skills from making bows to fermenting food. Recent topics include: Roadside Plant. Weed In Garden. Those Special Places. Yellow Fruit Found Along River. Bee Humor. Pretty Purple Plant. Cultivated Apios Americana, Mushroom Identification Tips, Another Bolete: Edible? Wood Potato, Chocolate Mushie, Are All Crown Berries Edible? Keeping our cells young,  Apple-like fruit on a vine, Square stem and balls of flowers, Is the saw Palmetto supposed to be bitter? Is This A Young Dandelion? Looks Like A Thistle Flower. Mint? Is This A Gopher Apple? and No Flower Too Wrong. You can join the forum by clicking on the button on the upper right hand side of this page.

We shouldn’t forage along railroad tracks and you can blame it all on the Russian Thistle. This species, best known as the tumble weed that rolls across the wild west in movies, came with immigrants to southern South Dakota in the early 1870’s. Best guess is it contaminated their flax seed. By 1895  it reached New Jersey and California. The question was how? A professor who worked for the Department of Agriculture figured out the trains were spreading the seeds coast to coast. It was a remarkable idea at the time and brought him much fame. His solution to the unintentional distribution? Kill plants long railroad tracks. Thus began the practice of putting down some mighty and long-lasting chemicals to kill weeds sprouting amongst the iron rails. Railroad tracks are, however, a good source of exotic seeds.

All My Videos are available for free on You Tube. They do have ads on them so every time you watch a Green Deane video I get a quarter of one cent. Four views, one cent. Not exactly a large money-maker but it helps pays for this newsletter. If you want to see the videos without ads and some in slightly better quality you can order the DVD set. It is nine DVDs with 15 videos on each for a total of 135 videos.  Many people want their own copy of the videos or they have a slow service and its easier to order then to watch them on-line. The DVDs make a good gift for that forager you know especially as spring is … springing. Individual DVDs can also be ordered or you can pick and choose. You can order them by clicking on the button on the top right hand side of this page (if your window is open wide enough.)  Or you can go here.

Donations to upgrade EatTheWeeds.com and fund a book have gone well. Thank you to all who have contributed to either via the Go Fund Me link, the PayPal donation link  or by writing to Green Deane POB 941793 Maitland FL, 32794.  Recent upgrades have been paid now the Forum needs work and several function 

This is weekly newsletter 367. You can sign up for this free newsletter by clicking on menu (or find in the command line) Newsletter Sign-up.

I am in the need for a part-time webmaster who knows WordPress and who would like to exchange web work for foraging classes. The job would consist up upgrading or resolving some current issues — mostly minor – to solving future issues as they arise. 

Couscous cuddling up to a Bunya Bunya cone. Photo by Green Deane

Norfolk Island Pine has edible seeds.

Bunya Bunya get no respect in countries where people have plenty of food. The falling large cones — about this time of year — are consider a legal hazard and the trees are often cut down (as they were at the entrance to Bok Tower in Lake Wales. That plant preserve is the last place one would think they would be removed.) The bigger the cone the more likely it will have kernels in the shells. It is a bit of work to get the enclosed nuts out of their green husks. As the kernel taste more like chestnuts than pine nuts I prefer to roast them. This also makes the outer shell more brittle and easier to crack. You can read more about the Bunya-Buya here.    A reasonably close relative with edible seeds is the Norfolk Island Pine. They used to be standard landscaping fare and are far more common. Also called the Norfolk Pine, the species is common in warm, humid coastal areas because the species is quite salt tolerant (though there is one down the street from me in the middle of the state.)  At one time the greater family included a huge amount of species ranging over much of the earth. Botanists tell us that most of them died out along with the dinosaurs leaving just a few species ranging from South America to Australia. While in its native habitat the Norfolk Pine can reach 150 feet high and 10 feet through in North America it is often a house or office plant popular because it somewhat resembles a stringy Christmas tree.

Black Gum seeds are easy to identify. Photo by Green Deane

Do you know why the Sweet Gum tree is called that? Because while it tastes mighty bad it is not as bad as the other “gum” trees, one of which, the Black Gum, is not yet in season but is fruiting. You have to like sour and bitter to like the Black Gum tree.  You also have to wade about in wet spots as the tree likes to be damp. The fruit is offensive (you hae been warned) and elicits comments that cannot be printed in wholesome publications. This did not stop settlers, however, from adding a lot of sugar to the fruit and making jelly out of it. The seed itself is easy to identify in that under the pulp as it has vertical striations. The tree usually looks gangly and has branches that are often at a 90-degree angle to the trunk.  To read more about the Black Gum and its nearly-offensive but edible relatives click here.

Hackberries, or sugarberries, are usually burnt orange in color.

There is a tree you should be scouting for now so when the fruit ripens next month you’ll have some already located. As in real estate so in foraging: Location, location, location. Hackberries (also widely know as Sugarberries) like to be near but not in fresh water. You can often find them about 10 feet above the local water table but I’ve seen them as low as three feet. Usually you can find them up the bank from the water. Older Hackberry bark will often be warty, sometimes heavily so. Leaves have uneven shoulders, and on the back side of the leaf notice three prominent veins at the base, unusual for tree leaves. The small-pea sized fruit is green this time of year but will ripen to a burnt orange. The entire fruit is edible though the seed is hard. To read more about them go here.

Boerhavia erecta

Foraging is like treasure hunting. While pedaling along a bike trail I had to stop at an intersection and noticed some Boerhavia diffusa. It’s a common marginal edible probably from India or somewhere near there. One usually finds it in somewhat trashy ground such as sidewalk cracks, parking lots, and dumps. So when I stopped at the intersection it was no surprise to see Boerhavia growing there. But growing next to it was a white Boerhavia, B. erecta. The leaves are more pointed than the common species and it’s a Florida native. B. erecta, the “Erect Spiderling” or “Erect Boerhavia”  has spread to other parts of the world and is reportedly edible and medicinal like B. difussa. You can read about the ruby-blossomed B. diffusa here.

Green Deane Forum

Want to identify a plant? Need to identify a plant? Looking for a foraging reference? Maybe you have a UFO, an Unidentified Flowering Object, you want identified. On the Green Deane Forum we — including Green Deane — chat about foraging all year. And it’s not just about warm-weather plants or just North American flora. Many nations share common weeds so there’s a lot to talk about. There’s also more than weeds. The reference section has information for foraging around the world. There are articles on food preservation, and forgotten skills from making bows to fermenting food. Topics have included: Tea, Salt and Amla, Small Bush and Flower, Ragweed? Pine Cough Drops and Needles, Odd Vine? Hunting and Trapping Ethics. Knife Accidents. Some Kind of Lespendeza and Survival Garden. You can join the forum by clicking on the button in the menu line.

135 videos

All of Green Deane’s videos available for free on You Tube. They do have ads on them so every time you watch a Green Deane video I get a quarter of one cent. Four views, one cent. Not exactly a large money-maker but it helps pays for this newsletter. If you want to see the videos without ads and some in slightly better quality you can order the DVD set. It is nine DVDs with 15 videos on each.  Many people want their own copy of the videos or they have a slow service and its easier to order then to watch them on-line. They make a good gift for that forager you know. Individual DVDs can also be ordered. You can order them by clicking on the button on the top right of this page or you can go here.

Classes are held rain or shine (or fog when in the mountains.)

Saturday, August 18th, Wekiva State Park, 1800 Wekiwa Circle, Apopka, Florida 32712. 9 a.m. Besides cost of the class there is a park admission Fee: $6 per vehicle.  $4 for a single occupant vehicle, $2 pedestrians or bicyclists. Meet at the Sand Lake parking lot (after you pay pass the parking lot on your left then turn left at the Y. Go to the end. This is a rustic walk, no water, no bathrooms, and a hot time of year. The class is three hours or less.) I recommend you arrive early as the park fills with bathers. 

Sunday August 19th, Eagle Park Lake, 1800 Keene Road, Largo, FL33771. 9 a.m. Meet at the pavilion near the dog park.

Monday, August 27th, 1624 Taylor Road, Honea Path, South Carolina, 10 a.m., rain or shine (except hurricanes.) All of Green Deane’s classes are hands on, walking outside. Wild edible plants, medicinals and perhaps a mushroom or two will be on the agenda (as Green Deane is in the Carolinas that week studying local mushrooms.) Donations to Putney Farm are appreciated as they are hosting the event. For more information you can contact Putney Farm on Facebook or Green Deane at GreenDeane@gmail.com. 

Saturday, September 1st, Jervey Gantt Recreation Complex, 2390 SE 36th Ave., Ocala, FL, 34471. Meet at the entrance to the pool, aka Aquatic Fun Center.  9 a.m.

Sunday, September 2nd, Red Bug Slough Preserve, 5200 Beneva Road, Sarasota, FL, 34233. 9 a.m.

Saturday, September 8th, Blanchard Park, 10501 Jay Blanchard Trail, Orlando, FL 32817. 9 a.m. Meet at the pavilion east of the tennis courts near the YMCA.

For more information about classes or to pay go here.

Donations to upgrade EatTheWeeds.com and fund a book have gone well and made it past the half way mark. Thank you to all (Peggy last week) who have contributed to either via the Go Fund Me link, the PayPal donation link or by writing to Green Deane POB 941793 Maitland FL, 32794.  The Forum needs work and several function problems need to be fixed specifically the search and categories ( a partial solution is that when you do a search other finds are directly below the main one shown. Scroll down.)  A continuing problem is finding  an indexing program or function for a real book. Writing programs used to do it automatically if you designated a term for indexing. Now that most books are ebooks most writing programs do not provide and indexing function. The hunt continues. 

This is weekly issue 317. There will be no newsletter August 28, 2018. I will be in the Carolinas studying mushrooms. 

If you would like to donate to Eat The Weeds please click here. Or you can use my Go Fund Me  link, or by writing to Green Deane POB 941793 Maitland FL, 32794.

Cocoplums come in three colors but one flavor. Photo by Green Deane

Our foraging class in Port Charlotte this past week was above and beyond if you like fruit. First we found ripe Cocoplums. They are not a true plum but are about the right size to be called that. They come in three colors, red, white and dark blue/purple. We found the purple ones. Cocoplums are not everyone’s favorite but I like them and the seed tastes like granola. Many folks do not like the outer pulp for texture reasons but it all tastes good to me. 

Ripe Jambul fruit is slightly astringent. Photo by Green Deane

Another fruiting star of the day was the Jambul Tree, which like the Cocoplum comes in three colors, white, red and dark purple. It’s a large commercial product in the Asian part of the world. Even when totally ripe and sweet there is a bit of astringency. While there seems to be several fruiting trees in the Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda area, I know of only one in greater Orlando.That’s at the southwest corner of  Aragon Avenue and Miles Avenue in Winter Park. I also know they grow in West Palm Beach with three of them just north of the garden center building in Dreher Park. As they are somewhat cold tolerant I am surprised they didn’t become a commercial crop in Florida. Perhaps citrus was king. When mature Jambuls make a large, well-shaped shade tree.  We also saw several mango trees dropping ripe fruit. They were all the Mexican cultivar “Champagne Mangoes.” It makes one wonder if the mangos and the Jambul trees were all part of the same riverside property at one time. This is also where the story takes a personal turn. As mangoes are closely related to poison Ivy when I first found these trees I did not know if I had an allergy to mangos or not. Well into my 60’s and I had never actually eaten the fruit. So I brought several home and tried them. No allergy and I like the flavor… too much. 

As the Ground Cherry ripens inside  the husk turns golden outside.

Also for the finding were Ground Cherries. Like the “plums” mentioned above Ground Cherries are not cherries but more closely related to tomatillos. We found ripe ones in two places so everyone got a chance to taste the fruit. They can produce all year but tend to have two seasons, before and after the summer heat. For many years I could not tell apart two ground cherries, Physalis walteri and Physalis viscosa. Individually they were mentioned in different books. The pictures were different, too, and the descriptions. Then one day I bought a third book and the mystery was solved. It said both species were the same plant. Both previous authors, in their egotistic little ways, failed to mention the plant had a synonym. And while they both described the plant each chose which details to include and how exacting to be. And as it were, the pictures each included showed a yellow flower pointing down. One can guess why: Sometimes the blossom has a ruby throat and sometimes it does not. That was something those two authors failed to mention but the third did along with including the synonyms. Mystery solved. As for the photos looking differently, plants of the same species can look different depending up many things such as daylight conditions or different environmental factors from one location to another. Some mistakes, however, are not so forgivable.

Foraging classes are held rain or shine, heat or cold.

Foraging classes this weekend vary a lot. One is a familiar place, Florida State College in Jacksonville, always productive. We meet by the administration building. Our Sunday class is closer to home, Venetans Gardens in Leesburg, not a location I visit too often. The Leesburgians had a bright idea one day regarding what to do about several low islands on west end of Lake Harris. They added small bridges, fix it up some, and called it Venetian Gardens. We meet in the parking lot near the pool. 

Saturday, July 28th, Florida State College,  south campus, 11901 Beach Blvd.,  Jacksonville, 32246.  We will meet at building “D”  next to the administration parking lot. 9 a.m.

Sunday, July 29th, Venetian Gardens, 201 E. Dixie Ave, Leesburg, FL 34748. 9 a.m. Meet at the parking lot near the pool. 

Saturday, August 4th, Blanchard Park, 10501 Jay Blanchard Trail, Orlando, FL 32817. 9 a.m. Meet at the pavilion east of the tennis courts near the YMCA.

Sunday, August 5th, Boulware Springs Park, 3420 SE 15th St., Gainesville, FL 32641. Meet at the picnic tables next to the pump house. 9 a.m.

Saturday, August 11th, Dreher Park, 1200 Southern Blvd., West Palm Beach, 33405. As this is the hot summer time do you want to meet at 8 a.m.? Just north of the science center.

Monday, August 27th, 1624 Taylor Road, Honea Path, South Carolina. Ever want to meet Green Deane but he never seems to come to your neck of the woods? Then mark Monday, August 27th, on your calendar. Green Deane will have a free foraging class in Honea Path, South Carolina, at the Putney Farm, 1624 Taylor Road. The foraging begins at 10 a.m., rain or shine (except hurricanes.) All of Green Deane’s classes are hands on, walking outside. Wild edible plants, medicinals and perhaps a mushroom or two will be on the agenda (as Green Deane is in the Carolinas that week studying local mushrooms.) Donations to Putney Farm are appreciated as they are hosting the event. For more information you can contact Putney Farm on Facebook or Green Deane at GreenDeane@gmail.com. 

For more class information or to sign up go here. 

Fermenting the mushrooms turned them from white to gray.

Did some experimenting this past month. Locally we have a couple of mushrooms that are way too peppery to eat. They are both in the Lactifluus genus, L. piperatus and L. glaucscens. Sometimes in foraging you have to go to different cultures to get a different view of a plant species. A plant Americans might call toxic the Spanish might call worth cultivating as a commercial crop. A mushroom the British call “oily” the Russians might call “buttery.” I had read that in places like Russia and Finland et cetera they fermented these peppery mushrooms rendering them edible. So… I lacto-fermented two Lactifluus piperatus (var. piperatus) for a month. And indeed they are no longer peppery. Oddly they are not sour either. They also shrunk about 33% in size and went from white to gray. I tasted them but did not consume. But, for certain, the burning went away. Next step: Ferment some more and perhaps try a tiny bit. 

Blue Porterweed blossoms taste like raw mushrooms.

Do you like mushrooms but want to avoid the complexities of fungi foraging? Then there is a subtle solution: Blue Porterweed. Found in flower gardens around the world and native to Florida the Blue Porterweed earned its name as a source for tea that tasted like porter beer. Someone had the fermenting idea to add yeast and sugar to a lot of tea and get a brew that tastes similar to porter beer, hence the name. The flower garden variety usually grows up and the local native grows horizontally. The blue flowers, raw, have a subtle flavor of mushrooms. You can read more about the Blue Porterweed here. Oh, and how did porter beer get its name? The same way porter steak did. Porters — baggage handles in old central London — worked all hours and needed quick food. Shops set up to meet that need and out of them came several dishes and named items.

Green Deane DVD Set

All of Green Deane’s videos available for free on You Tube. They do have ads on them so every time you watch a Green Deane video I get a quarter of one cent. Four views, one cent. Not exactly a large money-maker but it helps pays for this newsletter. If you want to see the videos without ads and some in slightly better quality you can order the DVD set. It is nine DVDs with 15 videos on each.  Many people want their own copy of the videos or they have a slow service and its easier to order then to watch them on-line. They make a good gift for that forager you know. Individual DVDs can also be ordered. You can order them by clicking on the button on the top right of this page or you can go here.

Green Deane Forum

Want to identify a plant? Need to identify a plant? Looking for a foraging reference? Maybe you have a UFO, an Unidentified Flowering Object, you want identified. On the Green Deane Forum we — including Green Deane — chat about foraging all year. And it’s not just about warm-weather plants or just North American flora. Many nations share common weeds so there’s a lot to talk about. There’s also more than weeds. The reference section has information for foraging around the world. There are articles on food preservation, and forgotten skills from making bows to fermenting food. Topics have included: Tea, Salt and Amla, Small Bush and Flower, Ragweed? Pine Cough Drops and Needles, Odd Vine? Hunting and Trapping Ethics. Knife Accidents. Some Kind of Lespendeza and Survival Garden. You can join the forum by clicking on the button in the menu line.

This is weekly issue 314.

If you would like to donate to Eat The Weeds please click here. Or you can use my Go Fund Me  link, or by writing to Green Deane POB 941793 Maitland FL, 32794.

Food is where the water is

My 13-foot, 55-pound pirogue.

It makes no difference whether that water is fresh or salt. The flora and fauna will change but food is where the water is. How to get on that water is a different issue. Getting wet while getting food is not a huge issue in the good ol’ summer time. It’s another matter in chilblain winter. Kayaks are light and maneuverable but can’t carry much and don’t lend themselves to leaning for that choice plant. A small canoe is good but can be tippy, and a big canoe, while stable, can be heavy. This is said with some experience. I have a 12-foot kayak and an 18-foot canoe. Catch a big fish in the kayak and it’s in your lap. What little storage space there is for wild edibles is a rocky twist behind you  in the stern. My huge canoe is great for a month in the wilderness and can hold a lot of cargo. But it is hard to navigate in small places and at 85 pounds it’s a bit for one man to portage to and fro. Lately I’ve been trying out a pirogue (said PEE-row or PEE-rog.) Pirogues are Cajun flat-bottom canoes with angled, low sides.  Small, stable, easy to maneuver, and light they also have a shallow draft. They are inexpensive, far less than canoes or kayaks. Pirogues are for ponds, slow streams, and shallow marshes, exactly where a forager and some fishermen go.  The one on the left is rated for two adults but they had better weight no more than 150 pounds apiece. This particular pirogue easily holds the paddler, a cooler, tackle box and a dog in front. Green Deane is raiding local lakes with it.

Green Lantana camara berries are toxic. Photo by Green Deane

Two pages of “Plants Poisonous To People” by Julia Morton detail how the Lantana camara is toxic. Morton, a professor of botany at the University of Miami, wrote extensively about edible wild plants, medicinal plants and toxic plants. Page 80 of the aforementioned book has three long paragraphs. The middle one tells us Lantana is highly toxic to grazing animals. The toxin, Lantanine, is broken down by the liver which produces phylloerythrin which causes photosensitization. This leads to jaundice, yellowing of the eyes, swollen head, kidney congestion, and death. Dogs that eat the leaves have liver damage. Morton tells us children are made ill eating the fruit. She presents a case history of a child dying of neuro-circulatory collapse after chewing and swallowing a quantity of unripe green berries. Symptoms can include vomiting, diarrhea, weakness, lethargy, cyanosis, labored slow respiration, dilated pupils, photophobia, ataxia, coma and depressed deep tendon reflexes. Even touching the plant can cause dermatitis and itching. In short we get the picture: Leave Lantana alone. But she also writes on page 80: “The ripe fruit are eaten by natives wherever the plant grows.”

Julia Morton, University of Miami

Huh? Natives eat the berries? Yes, the ripe, metallic-blue colored berries. The green berries are indeed toxic, the ripe blue ones are not (also turn the berry over to make sure it is ripe on bottom.) One can understand why we know the green berries are toxic. Why don’t we know more about the ripe berries being edible? One possible reason is their quality can vary. I’ve eaten sweet ones with few seeds and medicinal tasting ones with a large seed. They also don’t ripen at the same time and have to be individually picked. That does not make them user-friendly. I would like to see a list of nutritional elements to learn if they have substantial contributions there.

Lantana camara have blossoms of different colors. Photo by Green Deane

Lantana is not mention in Facciola’s Cornucopia II nor in Moerman’s Native American Food Plants. Dr. Daniel Austin, whom one gathers was under the administrative thumb of Morton at the University of Miami, takes a few swipes at her in his book Florida Ethnobotany. (She was by the account of folks who knew her, a crusty Vermonter of whom Austin said “she will eat anything.” But she also lost her husband rather young from lung cancer thus she was a leading critic of tobacco and was always on the look out for plant-based cancer palliatives.) Austin notes there are many medicinal uses for the Lantana genus. As to edibility he writes on page 398  “in spite of its poisonous chemicals, some cultures still eat the fruits.” This edibility information, by the way, applies only to the native Lantana camara which has multiple colored blossoms. They are not all pink or all yellow or all orange. Those are man-made varieties. The edibility of those berries is unknown, at least to me. Always make sure you have a Lantana with multiple color blossoms (and again, turn the berry over to make sure it is totally ripe.) To read more about the Lantana go here.

Wild Pineapples produce fruit some people can eat. Photo by Green Deane

One cannot forage long without discovering many botanists have their head intentionally buried in distributional sand. This can be quite true about non-native plants they don’t want to recognize as either existing or growing in certain areas. Kudzu is one, which is up now but not blossoming yet. (If you are in a natural setting and smell an intense aroma of a third-grade class chewing cheap grape bubble gum there is a blossoming Kudzu nearby.) Another iffy botanical locally is Wild Pineapple. It isn’t “here” but you can’t miss it either. Its leaves et cetera take on brilliant hues and you can see why this plant that is not “here” is here: It’s pretty. The fruit is edible by some. I think it’s a genetic thing. Some people can eat it with no problem. If I eat a fruit I can’t taste anything for a few hours. You can read more about Wild Pineapple here.

Fern stolons are puckery. Photo by Green Deane

After heavy rains two things are worth looking for: The first is edible mushrooms. The rain entices fungi to send up their reproductive parts we call mushrooms. There are about 90 different edible species of mushrooms in Florida. The other edible are the swollen stolons of Sword Ferns. Theses epiphytes save water for dry days so after rains they are busy storing water in their brown, fuzzy nodules. While there are five sword ferns locally only one — the non-native — stores water. Their foreign origin a great comeback when someone challenges you for pulling them up: “They’re an invasive non-native. I’m doing my civic duty. Want to help?” You can read about Sword Ferns here.

FORAGING CLASSES: Our foraging class last week in Port Charlotte produced some nice seasonal finds. Sea Blite it near the height of its season. We found enough of it to take pictures and get a taste. This is a member of the Goosefoot family that should be a commercial crop. We also got a chance to taste some Sea Purslane, Beach Carpet, and a few Surinam Cherries. Another nice plant is the Blue Porter Weed which has blossoms that taste like raw mushrooms.  We also saw Simpson Stoppers in blossom. This week’s class is in east Orlando at Blanchard Park. It has a nice representation of wild edibles and we also get a chance to see the very deadly Water Hemlock.

Classes are held rain or shine.

Saturday, May 6th, Blanchard Park, 10501 Jay Blanchard Trail, Orlando, FL 32817. 9 a.m. Meet east side of the tennis courts near the YMCA building.

Saturday, May 13th, Wickham Park: 2500 Parkway Drive, Melbourne, FL 32935-2335. 9 a.m. Meet at the “dog park” inside the park (turn right after entrance, go 1/4 mile, dog run on right, parking at run or on previous left.)

Saturday, May 20th, Dreher Park, 1200 Southern Blvd., West Palm Beach, 33405. We meet just north of the science center in the northern part of the park. 9 a.m.

Saturday, May 27th, Boulware Springs Park, 3420 SE 15th St.,  Gainesville, FL 32641. 9 a.m. Meet next to the spring house.

To read more about the foraging classes go here. 

Do you know this edible fruit? You would if you read the Green Deane Forum. Photo by GD

Want to identify a plant? Looking for a foraging reference? Do you have a UFO, an Unidentified Flowering Object you want identified? On the Green Deane Forum we chat about foraging all year. And it’s not just about warm-weather plants or just North American flora. Many nations around the world share common weeds so there’s a lot to talk about. There’s also more than weeds. The reference section has information for foraging around the world. There are also articles on food preservation, and forgotten skills from making bows to fermenting food. One special section is “From the Frightening Mail Bag” where we learn from people’s mistakes. You can join the forum by clicking on the button on the upper right hand side of this page.

The Nine-DVD set includes 135 videos.

Spring orders have started their annual  increase. All of Green Dane’s videos available for free on You Tube. They do have ads on them so every time you watch a Green Deane video I get a quarter of one cent. Four views, one cent. Not exactly a large money-maker but it helps pays for this newsletter. If you want to see the videos without ads and some in slightly better quality you can order the DVD set. It is nine DVDs with 15 videos on each.  Many people want their own copy of the videos or they have a slow service and its easier to order then to watch them on-line. They make a good gift for that forager you know. Individual DVDs can also be ordered. You can order them by clicking on the button on the top right of this page or you can go here.

Some are allergic to Birch and Bananas. Photo by Green Deane

Did you know: If you’re allergic to bananas you are also probably allergic to birch trees, and vice versa. No one really knows why. Probably a genetic component someplace. Seven other species for different reasons often cause an allergic reaction in the same person because they are closely related. They are: Poison Ivy, Poison Sumac, Brazilian Pepper, Mangos, edible Sumac, Cashews, and Pistachio. A close Poison Ivy/Mangos allergy is quite common. It is also curious that only three groups get poison ivy: Humans, some monkeys, and guinea pigs.  They are also the only three that cannot make their own vitamin C.

A Yellow Commelina, C. africana

From a 2011 newsletter:  …One of my long-time students, Maryann Pugliesi, during a foraging class happened to spot a Commelina I had not seen in my several decades of traipsing around America. Three-petaled Dayflowers are usually blue, or blue and white. This was mustard, or yellow. A bit of research showed that it is the Yellow Commelina, Commelina africana, from South Africa and once imported as a ground cover. Edible cooked. I am now of the opinion all edible Commelinas need to be cooked, save for the blossoms. How it got to be in Tampa seems to be a mystery. For the historical record it was found on the north shore of the western-most lake to the country club at 8401 New tampa Boulevard, Tampa FL. To read about the Dayflowers click here.

This is issue 255

If you would like to donate to Eat The Weeds please click here.

Ripe Jambul (Syzygium cumini) fruit. Photo by Green Deane

Terminal leaves are always in pairs. Photo by Green Deane

I have never found a chokecherry tree near me but I have found the Jambul. The fruit of one species reminds one of the puckery chokecherry, sweet and astringent at the same time. From a distance one might mistake the Jambul for a Mango but the leaves are skinnier and terminate in a pair of leaves. There is one in Winter Park just north of Orlando, perhaps a record. I have seen them in West Palm Beach and in Port Charlotte. There is one almost directly across the street there where my foraging classes meet. We had a chance to taste the fruit this weekend which is more pleasing to the eye than the palate but can be prepared in many tasty ways. One species in the genus provides us with a common spice. To read more about the mighty Jambul go here.

Norfolk Pine, relative to the Bunya Bunya. Photo by Green Deane

A tree that is more common than the Jambul and with a far greater range is the Norfolk Pine. They used to be standard landscaping fare and have edible seeds in their pineapple-shaped cones. The Norfolk Island Pine, also Norfolk Pine, are common in warm, humid coastal areas because the species is quite salt tolerant (though there is one down the street from me in the middle of the state.)  At one time the greater family included a huge amount of species ranging over much of the earth. Botanists tell us that most of them died out along with the dinosaurs leaving just a few species ranging from South America to Australia. While in its native habitat the Norfolk Pine can reach 150 feet high and 10 feet through in North America it is often a house or office plant popular because it somewhat resembles a stringy Christmas tree.

The pointed foliage of the Norfolk Pine. Photo by Green Deane

The Norfolk Pine, which is not actually a pine, is banned in some areas. Heavy frost can cause the tree to drop limbs leaving a naked trunk that also often dies causing work for city crews. The tree is on the state’s invasive species list. There is one where my foraging class meets in Port Charlotte. A heavy rain the night before washed a lot of seed hulls into the parking lot. They closely resemble the Bunya Bunya seeds. Botanically the Norfolk Pine is Araucaria columnaris. (It had a recent name change.) A relative, Araucaria angustifolia also has edible seeds.

Hairy Cow Pea is a climbing vine found near water. Photo by Green Deane

An often overlooked but easily found wild edible is the Hairy Cowpea, or Vigna luteola. It has two better-known relatives, the Black Eye Pea and the Mung Bean. One can reliably find Hairy Cowpeas near sunny bodies of fresh or brackish water; stream banks, pond edges, ditches, lakes, bays, coves, inlets and the like. Hairy cowpea’s seeds are edible cooked — not that good of a taste though — and the yellow blossoms are edible raw or cooked. Much better than the seeds.  One note about yellow flowers in general: They tend to have a laxative effect. Go easy on them. To read more about the Hairy Cowpea, go here.

Sliding magnifying glasses can be 5X of 10X in power. Photo by Green Deane

I always carry three things while teaching a foraging class: A good, sharp pocket knife in the right pocket, a mushroom knife for mushrooms and toxic plants in the left pocket, and a magnifying glass. Small magnifying glasses used to be called “jeweler’s loupe” because they were made like an eye cup and were attached to an open spring wire that went around the head to hold the magnifying glass in place. This left two hands free to work on jewelry, watches and the like. Those do not fit in pockets well. Swing folding tube magnifying glasses while offering a variety of magnification sizes are difficult to work with in the field. They are so small they don’t let in much light making it difficult to see what you are looking at. I use a sliding magnifying glass designed to look at coins and stamps. They are five to 10 powered, have a large amount of glass to let in a lot of light, and slide closed keeping clean and neat in the pocket. They can be bought in most coin or stamp stores for under $10.

Are they blueberries or huckleberries? A loop will help you tell. Photo by Green Deane

Why would I want a loupe? Usually to sort out species. Consider the difference between Blueberries and Huckleberry. Blueberries can be black and Huckleberries, usually black, can be blue. But on the back of every huckleberry leave are brilliant gold glands that you can see with a loop. Also huckleberries have exactly 10 seeds. The number of blueberry seeds vary. Identifying trees sometimes requires a loop. The easy-to-find difference between a Red Bay and a Swamp Bay is the hair on the stem. It is standing up or lying down? I can think of two cherry trees and one plum that is much easier to identify with a lens. Consider adding one to your foraging equipment and trips.

Classes are held rain or shine.

Upcoming foraging classes: 

Sunday, July 31st, Blanchard Park, 10501 Jay Blanchard Trail, Orlando, FL 32817, 9 a.m. Meet next to the tennis courts.

Sunday, Aug. 7th, Florida State College, south campus, 11901 Beach Blvd., Jacksonville, 32246. 9 a.m. We meet in front of building “D.”

Sunday, Aug 14th, Jervey Gantt Recreation Complex, 2390 SE 36th Ave., Ocala, FL, 34471. 9 a.m.

For more information about the foraging classes go here. 

The Nine-DVD set includes 135 videos.

All of Green Deane’s videos are available for free on You Tube. They do have ads on them so every time you watch a Green Deane video I get a quarter of one cent. Four views, one cent. Not exactly a large money-maker but it helps pays for the newsletter. If you want to see the videos without ads and some in lightly better quality you can order the DVD set. It is nine DVDs with 15 videos on each. Many people want their own copy of the videos or they have a slow service and its easier to order then to watch them on-line. They make a good gift for that forager you know. Individual videos can also be ordered. You can order them by clicking on the button on the top right of this page or you can go here.

Do you know why this pineapple is yellow? You would if you read the Green Deane Forum. Photo by Green Deane

Want to identify a plant? Perhaps you’re looking for a foraging reference? You might have a UFO, an Unidentified Flowering Object you want identified. On the Green Deane Forum we — including Green Deane and some 8,000 others from around the world — chat about foraging all year. And it’s not just about warm-weather plants or just North American flora. Many nations share common weeds so there’s a lot to talk about, such as the one to the left. There’s also more than weeds. The reference section has information for foraging around the world. There are also articles on food preservation, and forgotten skills from making bows to fermenting food. Recent topics include: Cultivated Apios Americana, What is it? Weed? Stay In One Place Long Enough. Newbie from CT. Mushroom Identification Tips, Another Bolete: Edible? Wood Potato, Chocolate Mushie, Are All Crown Berries Edible? Keeping our cells young,  Apple-like fruit on a vine, Square stem and balls of flowers, Is the saw Palmetto supposed to be bitter? Is This A Young Dandelion? Looks Like A Thistle Flower. Mint? Is This A Gopher Apple? and No Flower Too Wrong. You can join the forum by clicking on the button on the upper right hand side of this page.

Simpson Stopper fruit taste similar to marmalade. Photo by Green Deane

A foraging afterthought: This newsletter has mentioned Simpson Stopper a few times this year particularly when the shrubs is heavy with fruit in the late spring. However the season can expand beyond that. One place that happens frequently is in hedges. Hedge plants are usually commercially raised and planted at various times of the year. If the conditions are right the Stopper will fruit even if the bush next to it in the same hedge does not. This past week in Port Charlotte the Simpson Stopper was low on fruit but producing enough for a few to taste. On a bike ride today in Seminole County, about 160 miles to the north, several bushes in a hedge were fruiting heavily. Plants don’t always go by the book. To learn more about the Stopper go here.

This is Newsletter 218. 

If you would like to donate to Eat The Weeds please click here.