I used to have a friend named Randy Armentrout. He died about 20 years ago of a brain tumor. We knew each other well and attended many a social function together.

But what you should know is that Randy was an extrovert, a big man, a bit overweight as well, a rugby player, and loud. He rode a big Harely motorcycle, wore leather, and chains and keys and generally looked like he could easily be the last man standing in big biker bar fight. He was actually quite gentle, brilliant, and had beguiling sense of humor. Here is something I saw him do many times.

We would be at some social event, and someone, male or female, would make a disparaging remark about someone famous, such as “Oh, I can’t stand Billy Joel”  or “I think Jennifer Aniston is ugly,” or the like. Randy would glare, and as usually was the case, would look way down at the person.

“What did you say?” Randy would ask, clearly looking very angry, very big, and very intense as if it was only with great restraint he had not already pounded the offender through the floor. In the inevitable silence that always followed Randy would add in a very soft voice, nearly trembling with rage: “She’s my cousin.”

I watched many a person melt at that moment, a moment that Randy would let stretch on for four or five seconds and then laugh this great big belly laugh and we’d all get a chuckle from the look of relief on the face of the would-be-victim.

But one area in which Randy was not kidding was motorcycles. I own two motorcycles and 90% of my traveling is on two wheels. But my attitude is laissez-faire. However, anything other than 101 percent approval of them and the riders and the industry uncorked a tidal wave attitude out of Randy. Oddly, it has been my experience that mushroom hunters tend to be the same way.

Do not misunderstand me, I like mushrooms, all kinds, from around the world. But I don’t teach people how to forage for them. When asked why I say the threat to benefit ratio is too high. Personally, I have enough liability right now with green plants without adding the legal burden of including mushrooms. When I mention the threat factor of mushrooms that is often when I get threatened by mushroom foragers, and they’re not joking.

Most mushroom are not toxic, I am told in very angry tones. They are packed with nutrition is the next defensive statement. Mushrooms are woefully misunderstood usually follows.

Sending the defenders to authorities who say otherwise does no good. Like suggesting to Randy that loud pipes really don’t save lives, suggesting that mushrooms are less than perfect foraging food gets you lambasted… always. Intensely. In fact, I generally don’t even broach the topic any more.  Indeed, I try to steer the discussion to lichen which I think has more edibility.

What I can’t understand is why that mushroom-related behavior is so consistent, decade after decade.  Maybe sorting out dangerous mushrooms makes one feel as if they aren’t that bad. Maybe mushrooms really aren’t that difficult or bad. Maybe riding a motorcycle on the Turnpike in a thunderstorm is quite pleasant. (Actually I have done that for nearly 50 miles and it is decidedly not pleasant.)

I am also bothered by the fact that every year or two a very experienced, if not a multi-degreed mycologist dies from eating mushrooms. While it is nice that mushroom hunting is a self-correcting endeavor — like wearing no motorcycle helmet — that they die so often is not encouraging. The only mushroom expert I knew very well actually died in his sleep but was so irresponsible in his own life that I could never trust my life to his mushroom advice.

I think my students are safer for me not teaching about mushrooms. If they want to know I’m sure there’s a mushroom expert (with a better lawyer than mine) who will oblige.

If flowers could think they would view man as an errand boy. That floral perspective would also explain one of man’s more annoying habits.

Triassic dinosaurs

Scientist who study such things tell us that up until about 200 million years ago there were no flowers, or humans. The world was green, leafy and filled with big reptiles. Everything moved slowly, including evolution. The plants pollinated by using wind or water. Plant sex was in a word, boring. It was also by chance. Since wind and water were the only modes of pollen transportation plants also did not spread very far or fast. Life was local. That isolated tranquility exploded when the blossom bust onto the scene, and the world was change, so much we are told that without flowers there would be no humans.

Achaefructus liaoningensis, the first flower?

Imagine if you will a rather drab leafy landscape and then a glimmer of color, a flower. That would certainly attract attention, like a light in the dark. That flower would lure visitors of various sizes and numbers of legs. And then instead of just wind and water would be visitors to spread that plant’s pollen. Thus living things that moved came to serve living things that did not move. Insects, pseudo-mammals, proto-birds, yes, even lizards found function, being the sex salves of flowers. And the flowers responded.

Dandelion as a bug sees it and how we see it

Flowers developed special parts to attract various visitors: Color, shape, fruits, seeds, sugars and proteins. They even tapped into different wave lengths of light to create landing patterns only insects could see. Dandelions lose their familiar color if you can see other wavelenghts of light. Flowers exxentially made the world move, and change. Flowering plants spread faster than those that did not, and more creatures started spreading all the things flowers were

Female Fig Wasp

offering. In response the spreaders even specialized, the fig wasp that only pollenates figs, the Dufourea novae-angliae bee that only services the pickerel weed, and the Melipona bee that seems to be the only insect who knows how to sneak inside a vanilla blossom. Also among those spreading creatures was man.

As a mammal man’s role in all this was quite clear, take parts of a plant from here, deposit there, deposition usually in the form of an on-the-spot rest room, occasionally

Dog with burdocks

perhaps seeds or pollen on hair. Flowers started it all and the relationship between them and man continued up to modern times. We know, for example, what folksback in ancient times ate by studying their trash heaps and bathrooms: Nuts, fruits, and vegetables. We don’t find grains or legumes until later times. Those required cooking and that required something to cook in and or a fire. But it’s hard to find roasted wheat groats in the ashes of a fire.

Most people stopped foraging about a century ago. Man also stopped depositing seeds willy-nilly longer ago than that. But until suburbia man did his share of spreading seeds around. Now indoor plumbing is common and any seed eaten by man most likely does not make it through the treatment plant. So not only has man stopped spreading wild seeds around but he is is trapping what seeds he does eat. That certain alters the environment some. But ,the past dies hard because he is still selectively spreading seeds around.

Instead of spreading around seeds of foraged fauna man is distributing those of ornamental flowers and agricultural crops. Pretty flowers and vegetable crops still have man engaged in spreading their seed, even if only from garden to garden. One could say these plants are still manipulating man by making him preserve their seeds (note the seed bank recently created in the arctic circle. Most weeds did not make the cut. )  So whether plants are still manipulating man, or man plants, is a bit of a debate. But there is one other aspect.

As a boy growing up in rural Maine, I wondered why apples trees always grew next to the road, not out in the field. Some of my favorite “wild” apples grew next to woods roads, never just in the woods like other trees. The apple trees grew next to roads because people tossed apple cores away. It’s interesting to realize that someone’s littering decades ago is now a tree you’re enjoying. It also implies more.

Perhaps littering is a natural instinct, a bit of the flower’s directive still operating within us. Throwing away the seeds of a fruit 40 thousand years ago was doing a plant a favor, maybe its bidding. Tossing the apple core beside the road is no different. We may just have a litter gene developed by flowers. Think of it! Most littering comes after eating food products. We consume and toss. That litter along the road side might be an evolutionary echo from long ago, a bit of our distant foraging past still with us. I think the flowers would agree.

Why sudy with someone? Because student foragers see what they want to see rather than what’s in front of them. Let me give you a consistent example.

There are two plants which really do not resemble each other save for one feature: Each has tiny stinging hairs. Otherwise the plants are quite different. One tends to have small oval to lance shaped leaves with teeth, the other has large hand-shaped leaves without teeth. One likes a moist environment, the other a dry one. Their size can vary greatly. Their blossoms are very different. They are also in different families. They really do not look alike.

Confusing these plants is not like confusing a large pony for a small horse. It’s on par with confusing a wolf and a mountain lion because they each have yellow eyes. Yet in less than six months I have had three reports of this confusing happening, all because of the stinging hairs. The reports also have one other amazing aspect in common: No one died, or even got sick from eating the wrong part of the misidentified plant. In fact, they liked it.

Urtica dioica, common stinging nettle

Whenever one can add another weed, or part of a weed, to the edible list that is good. The two plants that are being confused are the common nettle (Urtica dioica) and the spurge nettle (Cnidoscolus stimulosus.) The Urtica clan grows around the world and has been used by man where ever it is found, not only for food but as cordage and as a medicine. The stinging hairs present quite a problem. Most folks boil the leaves for a few minutes to render them harmless. The entire plant, however, can be wilted before a fire and made edible without having to boil it. There isn’t much mystery left to the Urticas as they have been used for thousands of years and are well-recorded.

Cnidoscolus stimulosus, spurge nettle

Then there is the “spurge nettle” related in name only. It comes from a family (Cnidoscolus) commonly found in the warmer areas of the Americas. In the southern United States there are two “spurge nettles” basically one east of the Mississippi river, and one west of the Mississippi river. The C. stimulosus is east of the mighty muddy, and the C. texanus west, with some overlap. What we know about the C. stimulosus is that its root can be eaten after being boiled. What we know about the C. texanus is that its seeds can be eaten after being roasted (or otherwise cooked.) But we don’t know if the C. stimulosus seeds are edible or if the roots of the C. texanus are edible. However, there was a 1954 study that suggested there were no toxins in the C. texanus root and it should be investigated as a possible food source. A 1957 study also looked at the seed oil of the C. Texanus. It was higher linoleic acid and lower in saturated fat than cottonseed oil, has antioxidants, is high in protein but absent of carotine and ascorbic acid. Specifically the oil was 71% linoleic acid, 15·5 % oleic acid, 10 % palmitic acid, and 3 % stearic acid.

At this point we have two minor mysteries, is the seed of the C. stimulosus edible and is the root of the C. texanus edible? It would be a tad odd that these two closely related species would have dissimilar edible parts though admittedly the great Mississippi was barrier enough so that over time two species did arise. Being in the same genus does not confer edibility, some times a variation within a species can make an edible plant not edible, the Dioscorea bulbifera might be a good example.

If the respective seeds and roots of these two species were not mystery enough then we add three reports to me in 2009 from people saying they ate the leaves of the C. stimulosus! (Amounts and size of persons is unreported.) One put them through a blender, made a smoothie, and drank them raw, the other boiled them then enjoyed. Each thought they had consumed an Urtica. (One showed a friend the plant who knew the difference, and the other sometime later noticed the Urtica and Cnidoscolus were different species.) They both reported them good and neither person reported any ill effects. This is not beyond the realm of possible. The third person told me he and his grandmother used to fry the leaves and eat them.

The leaves of a Central American relative, the chaya (Cnidoscolus chayamansa), are edible if cooked or mashed up and allowed to sit for a few hours to remove some cyanide. (As blending is total cellular disruption it might speed up the curing process.) Since the leaves of the chaya are used as a food, and two people have eaten leaves of the C. stimulosus, this would suggest we investigate the C. stimulosus leaves as a possible wild food. And if the leaves of the C. stimulosus are edible, what of the leaves of the C. texanus?

Let us suppose for a moment that it is all true, that the roots, seeds and leaves of both the C. stimulosus and C. texanus are edible.  If so, how was that information lost, if ever known?

I can understand native peoples not eating the foliage of either because of the stinging hairs, and they do sting badly. (Some chayas have stingers and some do not.) Yet these same people ate Urticas, which also sting. The seeds of C. texanus are encased in a very well-armed seed pod, yet they, too, are known to be edible. One saving grace of the C. texanus seeds is that they can be roasted rather than boiled (unlike perhaps leaves) so primitive man with fire might have learned of the seed’s edibility. Clearly stingers have not excluded plants or parts as food. The question maker, in practical terms, is the C. texanus root.

Roots are prime wild food, now and in the past, especially in the past. Roots and creatures that moved sustained humanity. We know the C. stimulosus, which produces a small root in comparison to the C. texanus, is edible. That knowledge was passed down from the first foragers. More so, the C. texanus roots grows quite large.  That means it should have been an important food root to the first foragers if it is edible. Such an important root surely would have been mentioned. It would seem highly unlikely that early foragers would have discovered the edibility of the C. texanus seeds but not its root yet know of the edibility of the C. stimulosus root but not its seeds. That’s all rather irrational if all is edible.

Another possible explanation for these mysteries could be early historians or — gasp –botanists. Were these two plants always known as separate species? Who did the historians and/or botanists talk to and where and when? Was the information lost, just parsed out and missed, or are different parts not edible? Did the first foragers know of the edibility and did the knowledge die with them because someone did not ask the right questions about the right plant? It might be worth a PhD thesis.

So we have several mysteries. We have a plant that grows a large root (C. texanus) that would have been very valuable to the first foragers that is not known as edible but research suggests it is edible and a potential large food source. To the contrary we know the smaller root of its species sibling, C. stimulous, was eaten (I have had a few. The flavor resembles pasta.) Then the seeds of the C. texanus are known to be edible and are reported to be very tasty. Regarding the edibility of the seeds of the C. stimulosus, we know little or nothing though they are as obvious on the plants as on their relative.

And lastly the leaves… taken at  face value, we have two different people reporting they mistook the C. stimulosus for an Urtica and consumed it with no ill effects, one blending, one boiling. And one report of eating them without any identity mistake. Are they really edible? And if so, what of the leaves of the C. texanus? The consumption of the chaya suggests it is possible. Again, was such edibility unknown, or unreported? Or perhaps the leaves are not edible. I would also think they should not be wilted even if edible for while that might render the sting stingless it probably would not take care of the cyanide issue.

You see, not all is known even now about the wild edibles around us.  I just wish folks would be more careful about identifying plants. Dogs and cats do look different.

Properly cared for cast iron pots can last for centuries

When Europeans began to migrate into tracts of North America what was the one thing they had the native Americans wanted more than anything else? Rifles? Axes? Horses? No, none of those. The one thing the “Indians” coveted the most was the metal cooking pot.  That tells you two or three things. First that eating was more on their minds than fighting, and that sometimes historical facts can get lost when history is rewritten. It also suggests that squaws had more to say in matters than one is led to think.

Mary Ball, mother of George Washington, inherited her mother's cast iron pans.

The metal cooking pot may not be up there with the invention of the wheel, but it’s close. It probably safe to say there are few kitchens in the world without at least one metal cooking pot.  We rightfully worry today about having enough food to feed humanity. A decade without new pots to replace old ones could be as devastating as lack of food. Cooking without a pot is not impossible, but it ain’t easy, either. And perhaps that is why every home should have at least one cast iron pot or pan. Treated well they literally last for generations. George Washington’s grandmother, Mary Hewes, thought so much of her cast iron pot and frying pan she willed them to her daughter Mary Ball, Washington’s mother.

Fish Baked In Clay

One facet of foraging is learning how to cook wild foods without pots and pans, such as dry roasting roots, wilting greens, and baking in various kinds of pits. That’s what cooking was before there were pots. Boiling food was not a handy option. Rocks had to be heated and then put into wooden bowls or skin bags. Sometimes skin bags of water were suspended over fires. As long as they have water in them they don’t burn through. Boiling was not a prime culinary technique. That suggests that food that needed to be boiled were not prime eats either, such as pokeweed. Indeed, the Alabama Indians referred to pokeweed as the plant white men ate (as the Alabamians did not eat it.) I suspect boiling was limited to making medicine which was more important at times than food thus worth the energy.

Camp Ovens have legs, Dutch Ovens Do Not

Metal pots revolutionized cooking, and the prime material for several hundred years was cast iron. Some will argue, when all things are considered, it is still the prime cooking material. It’s inexpensive, cooks well, and will outlive whoever currently owns it.  Many a cast iron skillet has been passed down from mother to daughter to grand daughter and beyond. And as cooking without pots is a skill to learn, so, too, is cooking with cast iron and an open fire. That is why I like cast iron cookware: I can use it in my kitchen, with my fireplace when the power goes out yet again, or when camping.

Cooking wild foods in cast iron over an open fire is how many of our ancestors cooked even a century ago. There’s past in the pan. A chuck wagon wasn’t a chuck wagon without cast iron pans. Colonists sailing to American carried their cast iron cookery with them. We all have ancestors who cooked with cast iron. From about 1865 to WWII nearly every bride, no matter how poor she was, could count on a least a cast iron skillet and dutch oven for a wedding present. It was essential to life.

I cook with cast iron and will admit to collecting cast iron cookware, from the no name to the coveted, but I usually find mine at garage sales, flea markets and recycle centers.  Indeed, I recently got a Griswold dutch oven lid in a salvage yard for $1.41. While that might not mean much to many readers it was one heck of a find. Of all my cast iron cookery I think I bought only two items new, and that was years ago.

In my mind foraging and cast iron pans complement each other, two methods of eating, long ago without pots and pans and then with metal pots, an evolution of food before the chemist got involved. And I must admit, there is very little in the way of modern cookware in my kitchen that I’d like to pass on. But my mother has a couple of my grandmother’s cast iron muffin pans. Some day they will be mine. And as I have no children I will pass them on to much younger cousins. They will have a pan their great great grandmother used. Up against history like that, teflon doesn’t have a chance.

To read about cast iron cookware click here. To read about cooking before pots and pans click here and or here.