Sun dried clothes smell the best

(1 March 2019. I wrote this more than a decade ago, but it’s still relevant.)

I’m reaching retirement age. I’m also reaching the point of being tired of being told how green we are today and how ungreen we were in the past. Oh? When I was a kid:

One milk truck delivered to many

We didn’t all drive en mass to the store to buy milk. Milk was delivered… by one man in an Oakhurst milk truck. And milk came in reusable, recyclable bottles that you could also use for other things. Baked goods were  delivered the same way, in a Cushing’s Bakery station wagon. And vacuum cleaners sold door to door! How ungreen of us.

Diapers had pins, not tabs

Our neighbor, who raised seven kids, washed cloth diapers because there weren’t disposables then. I wonder why no one champions recycling disposable diapers? We just toss them in land fills, vertical septic systems. And those cloth diapers were dried on a clothes line, an artifact found only in museums and my backyard. We did not use a 220-volt soon-to-wear out machine to dry clothes or start house fires. And kids got hand-me-down clothes, not the latest designed-for-them fashion seasonally. I got new clothes once a year, ordered out of a Sears catalog for school. Rummage sales were community recycling. How ungreen of us.

Three channels in good weather

We didn’t get a TV until I was nine, a small black and white set we put on the window sill. It got three channels if the weather was good and you held the antenna just right. A PSB channel would not be added for a decade. Programming was wholesome and no censoring was needed for kids or grandma. We actually watched it as a family.  One TV, not a TV in every room. It did not have a digital color screen twice the size of the window. How ungreen of us.

Food came from jars not cans

In the kitchen stuff was mixed, blended, chopped and beaten into submission by hand. No blenders, no food processors, no mixers. How many folks are willing to blend their environmentally healthy, nutritious smoothies by hand? What’s the collective carbon footprint of all those blenders macerating food from halfway around the world? We prepared our food by hand rather than buying it prepared. We never bought vegetables in a package, or hardly anything else. We put up food in reusable glass containers. It was called canning, a verb I don’t hear too often these days. And we packaged fragile items for mailing with old newspaper not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. We didn’t own plastic or paper cups or “sporks.” Anything worn out that could burn was put in the kitchen stove, broken chairs to chicken bones. It cooked our food and warmed the house. How ungreen of us.

Nothing was thrown away

The only stuff we threw away was stuff that would grow fungus and  smell. And before that happened it was put outside for the animals. Dead motors were kept for parts, old appliances were cannibalized for cords and wire. All manner of things were taken apart and the nuts and bolts saved. We actually took down a three-car garage and used the boards and timber to build our barn. We pulled nails out of boards, pounded them straight, and reused them at a time when nails were a couple of dollars for a 50-pound keg. My mother made rugs out of rags and had a huge button box filled with buttons off every piece of clothing destined to be a rug. How ungreen of us. (I still have a button box and a nuts, screws and bolts pail.)

You kept a razor for decades

Pens and cigarette lighters were refilled. We put new blades in razors, put tape on the old blades and used them around the house. The whole safety razor was not thrown away just because the blade was too dull to shave with. I still own and use two straight razors. Typewriter ribbons were re-inked, and typewriter technology barely changed every half century rather than computer seasonally.  How ungreen of us.

Outdoor Exercise Machine

We walked up stairs because stores did not have elevators or escalators. We mowed the lawn by hand with a push mower (or watched some domestic animal eat it.) We bought local because it was what we had. Every home had a summer garden and us kids collected return bottles for pocket change. We rolled pennies by hand. Now a machine charges you 8% to do that. I walked or rode my bike several miles to school even the in winter, and shoveled the driveway by hand. We played board game with real humans during those long winters evenings rather than buying a new game when we got bored. How ungreen of us.

Get lost, it makes life interesting

And we didn’t get a telephone until I was 20 and in the Army, and it was a “party line.” Overseas I got to call home once a year. Once. We wrote letters, now a dead art. Not every one had a cell phone or a personal computer in every pocket. How ungreen of us.

And we didn’t need two or more  devices bouncing and triangulating signals over thousands of miles to find the nearest pizza place. We used our nose. How ungreen of us.

I rarely write about toxic plants because this site is about edibles. However there are enough prickly nightshades around to justify an article about them and how to identify them even if they aren’t edible.

Red Soda Apple, photo by Hugh Nicholson, rainforest publishing.

The Red Soda Apple, Solanum capsicoides, might be a native Floridian. Botanists can’t agree. It is now found in most warm areas of the world. Outside of North America S. capsidoides  is often confused with Solanum aculeastissimum. Or… botanists being what they are… S. aculeastissimum and S. capsidoides might be the same species, or a close variation. At any rate it is a thorny, large-leafed plant to a yard high with spines all over it including the leaves, which can be shiny. The round green fruit resemble a striped water melon. When ripe it is red and slightly smaller than a ping-pong ball. One is safe saying the fruit is not edible because it certainly is toxic at some stage. Yet, one can find snippets of references here and there to the opposite. Usually they say the ripe flesh is edible but not the skin nor seeds which have the highest concentration of toxins. If the flesh is eaten it is only in small amounts. Loaded with steroids and precursors of steroid hormones it has been associated with abortions and other things steroids can do to your body. Ripe cut fruit is used as cockroach bait.  Some botanists would argue S. aculeastissimum is African and all the nasty stuff is about that plant not S. capsicoides which they say is Brazilian. It is a dangerous family and best avoided. The easy answer is the Red Soda Apple is not edible. That is my position until someone can demonstrated in person otherwise.

Tropical Soda Apple, photo by Northcoast Weeds

The Tropical Soda Apple, Solanum viarum,  is similar to the Red Soda Apple except its fruit turns bright yellow when ripe. And if I remember correctly the riper the fruit gets the more toxic it gets. And while it is similar-looking to the Red Soda Apple it’s oak-shaped leaves are dull green, never shiny. A lot more is written about the Tropical Soda Apple. For a toxic plant cattle and feral hogs spread the plant’s seeds around in their droppings. Growing to six feet high it has thorns on the tops sides of the leaves, underside of the leaves and all along the stem. It can grow year around as long as it stays warm. The blossoms are creamy white with petals and a yellow center. Its sweet-smelling fruit is one inch in diameter containing up to 400 brown seeds. The plant can produce some 50,000 seeds a year. They think its seeds came to south Florida in the tummies of cattle from Brazil around 1988. It became such an invasive that some ranchers were spending as much as 40% of their working time on controlling the plant costing some $16 million in 2007 dollars. Biological controls were implemented in 2003 with the release of Gratiana boliviana a beetle that only eats Tropical Soda Apple.  It is currently found in Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Pennsylvania. All reports say it is toxic. Avoid it.

Horse Nettles, photo by Illinois Wildflowers

Horsenettle, Solanum Carolinense, is similar looking to the Tropical Soda Apple but is a smaller plant. The Tropical Soda Apple has larger leaves and long thorns and is more shrubby. Horsenettle flowers can be purple or white where Tropical Soda Apple has only white blossoms. And while the Horsenettle also has yellow fruit they tend to be wrinkled when ripe. The Horsenettle also has a potato-like odor when a leaf is crushed and the leaf stems are are covered with star-shaped hairs. Yellow fruits are half-enclosed in a paper calyx. The Horsenettle is found in most of the United States and Eastern Canada. It skips Nevada, Colorado, North Dakota, Montana and all of Canada west of Ontario. Not edible. A close relative, the Robust Horsenettle (Solanum dimidiatum) which has rounder leaves  than the Horsenettle, also is not edible.

Aquatic Soda Apple, photo by Invasive.Org

The Aquatic Tropical Apple,  Solanum tampicense, typically prefers wetlands. Much of southwest Florida have been invaded by it. Once established, it forms large, tangled, dense stands along river banks, cypress swamps, open marsh, and relatively undisturbed wetlands. It’s native to the West Indies, Mexico, and Central America and blooms in the fall. A straggly, sprawling prickly shrub, woody below, herbaceous above, has green stems to 16 feet long. Leaves: Alternate, simple, leafs longer than wide, 10-inches wide, three inches wide deeply round-indented edges, recurved or straight prickles on veins, and stellate hairs. Flowers are small, three to 11 individual flowers in stalked, branched clusters at leaf axils. Petals are white; stamens with yellow anthers held closely and erect in center of flower. Fruit: A small, spherical, tomato-like berry to almost half-an-inch, shiny solid green turning orange then bright red at maturity, with 10 to 60 yellowish, flat-round seeds. Not edible.

Nipplefruit, photo by Prota4u

Among the more unusual prickly non-edibles is the Nipplefruit Nightshade, Solanum mammosum. While it is naturalized in Puerto Rico it also escaped from back yards in peninsula Florida south coastal Texas. I’m not quite sure why one would plant it. Not edible, prickly, and irregular in flowering and fruiting. The fruit contains solanine saponine, mallic and gallic acids, and solamargine, a glycoalkaloid. It is purgative. There is one Malaysian report that the unripe fruit is edible. I’d have to see it to believe it. The plant resembles a thorny eggplant but can grow to the size of a small tree.

Jamaician Nightshade

The Jamaican Nightshade (Solanum jamaicense) is found in only a few central Florida counties. It’s a prickly, perennial, invasive shrub in central and southern peninsular Florida and was first seen in the state in 1930 near St. Cloud. Jamaican nightshade is usually found in woodlands where it can dominant the understory. Occasionally it grows in isolated patches in the open. Like other nightshades in this article it is armed with short curved spines. Leaves are in subequal pairs, with dense stellate hairs, somewhat diamond-shaped, flowers white, yellow anthers; fruit is an red-orange berry to about a third of an inch.

The Toxic Buffalobur. photo by FireflyForest

Very few people would mistake the Buffalobur, Solanum rostratum, as edible but it is a prickly, toxic nightshade often seen.  The small fruit is totally encased in a spiny calyx. It is an erect, branching annual found in fields, pastures, fence rows, roadsides and wastes sites. The leaves have with prominent white veins. The plants, especially the leaves and green fruit, are poisonous and contain the glycoalkaloid solanine as well as other tropane alkaloids. The plants can also accumulate toxic levels of nitrates from the soil. Stinging or Itching – The numerous sharp spines on the plants and burs can cause intense, lingering pain if touched. Animals are also affected, and even after the burs are removed, dogs will continue to lick and chew on their feet because of the pain.

Before we move on to an edible prickly nightshade, why the term “soda apple?” Soda through Middle English, Middle French and Middle Latin is probably from the Arabic word Suwwad (saltwort) which was a plant alkaloids were gotten from perhaps for soap making. And most of these non-edible plants have alkaloids. So instead of thinking Soda Apple or Tropical Soda Apple think Alkaloid Apple, a good reason to avoid said.  Lastly there is one local prickly Solanum that is a tomato and definitely edible, the Litchi tomato. To read more about it go here.   There is also a lesser edible, the Turkey Berry, read about it go here.

The controversial two-leaf nightshade. Photo by Green Deane

And what are we to do with the Two-Leaf Nightshade, Solanum diphyllum? This native to Mexico and Central America was first spied in the United States in Miami in the early to mid-1960s. It has spread since then and is a common shrub in south and Central Florida as well as parts of Texas and in southern France, Italy and Taiwan. It’s almost always reported as toxic. I wrote “almost” because some people say they have eaten a few ripe berries without noticeable issue.  Our usual sources of plant expertise are no help with this greenery: Daniel Austin in his tome Florida Ethnobotany doesn’t mention the plant though he was a professor of botany in south Florida when the species was proliferating. His University of Miami boss, the crusty Julia Morton, doesn’t do us much better.

In her book Plants Poisonous To People in Florida she calls it Amatillo. Instead of having it in the main section of the book it’s in the back under “other toxins.” After a description she writes: “The ripe fruit is sweetish, not acrid like the Jerusalem Cherry, but the green fruit and leave probably contain solanine.” She adds “In one pasture, where there were several of these bushes, a horse had optical abnormality, was staggering and weak in the hindquarters and may have grazed on the foliage.” I think that means don’t eat the leaves. Morton finishes her entry with “We must regard it with suspicion until we have actual evidence of toxicity.”  I would add the species in not mentioned in the Journal of Economic Botany which spans some seven decades and was created to bring lesser-known plants to public attention and use.  I know several people who eat a few of the ripe fruits at a time. I have eaten two at a time, several times, and as far as I know it as not bothered me. If you have arthritis avoid the ripe fruit. Solanine is known to aggravate arthritis.

Spanish Cherry fruit is edible and is related to Monkey’s Apple

Foraging is treasure hunting for adults. Not only is finding food fun but finding new food you didn’t know about is a joy as well. That happens reasonably often during my foraging classes in sub-tropical south Florida.

The ripe fruit ranges from yellow to orange to red.

As far as I know there is no complete accounting of all the plants in Dreher Park, West Palm Beach. And it suffered significant storm damage particularly hurricanes a decade ago but also Hurricane Irma last year. I had been teaching in the park for several years and had walked past this particular tree many times, at the end of a street near a foot entrance (that might be a clue to finding other “treasures.”) This time, however, the ground was covered with orange orbs. Hundreds of inch-long “bullet”-shaped fruit that resemble a small persimmon except longer (and the calyx was different and a key identifier.) As you can imagine doing a Goggle search for “Florida fruit orange” was not helpful. I eventually identified it as the south Asia native Mimusops elengi, Spanish Cherry, Bullet Wood, and Malabar Plum. Oddly it is not listed in the good book “Tropical Trees of Florida and the Virgin Islands.” Its central native range is India and surrounding areas where it is called Bakul along with over one hundred local names (yes, I counted them.) Interestingly it has a relative that is also cultivated in south Florida and like warm areas, Monkey Apples, or M. coriacea. They are both in the greater Soursop group.

As for the botanical name, Mimusops (MIM-you-sops) comes from the Greek words, mimo meaning ape, and ops meaning resembling. In English we would say “looks like a monkey.” “Elangi” — ee-LAN-gee — is from the common Malabari name for this tree and flower though it is also called the Tanjong Tree.

The evergreen tree is quite valuable commercially and otherwise. The wood is hard — is that why it is called Bullet Wood or possibly because of the shape of the fruit — and is deep red. The fruit is orange to red and edible. Various parts of the tree have also been used in Ayurvedic medicine (see Herb Blurb below.) It’s considered a prize addition to gardens for its fruit and fragrant flowers. The tree won’t grow in temperate climates but can survive subtropical areas and is tolerant of light frosts but not salty areas. The fruit reminds one of small persimmons in color and mild taste when ripe but a different texture, mealy.  The tree’s bark resembles an oak but the leaves favor a Magnolia look and at one time the tree was named in that genus. Definitely a tree to look out for (I even brought home a seed for pot planting.) I think Mr. Dreher, Superintendent of Parks, would be proud.

Dreher Park was the main project of Paul Dreher, a German immigrant, who came to the United States in the 1920s from Wurttenberg. (He had an aunt who was among the pioneer settlers of Delray Beach in 1895.) Thus a foraging fellow from a cold climate got a chance to create a park in a warm place before the advent of lawyers and rabid municipal liability. The “Johnny Appleseed” of West Palm Beach, Dreher had a degree in horticulture from the University of Hohen-Heim in Stuttgart. He was hired for 25 cent an hour then later $5 a day. His projects included picking thousands of trees for the city’s streets, Flager Park, Currie Park, Phillips Park, and Bacon Park. In 1951 Dreher convinced the city to buy 108 acres for a park. The city came up with $100 to buy the land but would not fund its development. Dreher scrounged plants for ten years, rummaging around landscapers’ dumps and taking donations. That became the basis for what is now Dreher Park. (The loud interstate to the west, I-95, was not built until the 1964.) Six farm animals Dreher had on the property — a goat, two chickens, two ducks and a goose, valued at $18 total — became the beginning of the Palm Beach Zoo. Dreher, whose hobby was collecting rocks in rockless Florida, also was involved after his retirement in the landscaping of the city of Palm Beach Gardens, the PGA National Golf Course and Lion Country Safari. He died in 1993, at age 90. His wife of 63 years, Alice Irene Owen, died nine years later in 2002, age 92. Dreher’s philosophy was “Anything green that grows is good. You just have to control it.”

Green Deane’s Itemized Plant Profile

IDENTIFICATION: A large glabrous evergreen tree from 50 to 90 feet, with a relatively short trunk and a compact leafy crown, bark smooth, scaly, and gray, Leaves spirally arranged, four inches long, and inch wide, elliptic shortly acuminate, glabrous, base acute or rounded, flower star-shaped, white, fragrant, solitary buds, fruit about an inch long, similar to a small olive, ovoid, yellow to red when ripe, seed solitary, ovoid, compressed, brown, shiny. The wood is very hard.

TIME OF YEAR: Blossoms in Fall, fruit is the new year here in Florida, or, it can blossom in the spring and fruit in early summer.

ENVIRONMENT: Full sun, average water, dryer areas than wetter areas, it does not like its wet feet. Grows year round, evergreen. Does not like to be close to the sea shore. Inland a few miles is fine. Endures high winds well.

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Fruit edible raw, cooked, pickled, seed oil is used for cooking but also used for lamps. The fatty acid line up is oleic acid 64%, linoleic acid 14.5%, palmitic acid 11%, stearic acid 10% and behenic acid 0.5%. Bark oil is used in making perfume. Blossoms are used for potpourris.

HERB BLURB

The bark is acrid and sweet; cooling, cardiotonic, alexipharmic, stomachic, anthelmintic, astringent; cures biliousness and diseases of the gum and teeth[1],[2]. The flowers are sweet, acrid, oleagenous; cooling, astringent to the bowels; good for the teeth, causes flatulence. They are used as expectorant; cures biliousness, liver complaints, diseases of the nose, headache, and their smoke is good in asthma[3]. The seeds fix loose teeth; as an errhine cures nasal congestion and headache[4]. The root is sweet and sour; aphrodisiac, diuretic, astringent to the bowels; good for gonorrhoea; as a gargle, strengthens the gums[1]. The fruits are sweet and sour, aphrodisiac, diuretic, astringent to the bowels, good in gonorrhoea. The pulp of the ripe fruits is sweetish and astringent and has been successfully used in curing chronic dysentery[1],[5]. The leaves are well known for analgesic and antipyretic

Viola affinis: Florida’s Sweet Violet

My introduction to violets was seeing my mother eat “Piss-a-beds” in the spring  (Viola rafinesquii. VYE-oh-lah raff-a-NESK-kee-eye.)  They grew in the shade near the smelly cellar drain and were, as you might guess, a diuretic.

Colony of violets in Florida

For all their presence in Florida I did not see violets for quite a while. More so, they show great variation so getting the right identification can be a bit irritating. Pictured here, I think, is Viola sororia/affinis. (VYE-oh-lah-ROR-ee-uh / aff-EYE-niss.) However, violets are like oak and pine trees, you really don’t need to know which exact species it is as long as you have the right genus. (And just to make sure, we are not talking about African Violets, which are in a different genus completely.)

Violets leaves can be used raw in salads or cooked like spinach. Their flowers can be eaten raw, or candied, the dried leaves can be used to make tea. Violets can also be added to soups as a thickener. In fact, in the 1800’s that was the most common reference for them. While they traditionally blossom in the spring, warmer areas can see them blossom in the spring and late fall. In Central Florida’s winter, Christmas to Valentines, they are quite happy and blooming.

Native Americans had various medicinal uses for some 17 species of violets. Surprisingly there is little record of them eating violets with only three western tribes doing so. They did, however, used violets as poultices for headaches and boils, as an infusion for dysentery, kidney problems, bladder issues, heart pain, colds and coughs (they are high in vitamins A and C.) They were also used for skin problems, as application research confirmed in 1995.

Violet roots, however, are not user friendly. They can clean you out. The Indians soaked them with corn seeds as a pre-planting insecticide. Indeed, violets have long been associated with chemistry. Before there was the “litmus” test there was the violet test for acids and alkalis. And of course, recreating the aroma of violets was a major challenge of the perfume industry.

The name “violet” is often given as from Dead Latin, and it is. However, there is Greek behind that Dead Latin. Contemporary Greeks say violetta  — adapted from English — or menekseis. The English word “violet” is from the Dead Latin “viola” the Roman’s name for the plant. However, viola came from the Greek word Vion, which is a variation of Io, (EEoh… Ιω…) the beautiful daughter of Inachus, King of Argos. Io was also priestess to Zeus’ wife Hera.  According to Greek legend, Zeus was so smitten by Io that he seduced her after much pursuit and rejection by her. The seduction made his wife, Hera, quite angry. To protect Io from Hera Zeus transformed her into a white heifer. (Ain’t that nice: You’re young, beautiful, you’re seduced by the most powerful god around and then get turned into a cow.) As a heifer, however, Io wept because she had to eat coarse grass. To compensate her for her suffering Zeus changed her tears into sweet-smelling, dainty violets for her to eat. However, Hera was not without her means and caused the earth-wandering Io/heifer to be incessantly bothered by a gadfly.

Mythology notwithstanding, violets have quite a history. Violets were first cultivated in Greece around 400 BC or about the time of Socrates, Hippocrates, and the building of the Acropolis. ( so-CRA-tis, i-po-CRA-tis, a-CROP-po-li ) In fact they were the first commercial flower product. Athens was known as the “violet-crowned city.” The Romans liked violet-flavored wine so much they spent more time cultivating violets than olives, much to the irritation of Horace (65-8 BC.)  Violets, associated with resurrection, were secretly planted on Nero’s grave. And when Chopin died in Paris his student, Jane Stirling, bought all the violets she could find in Paris and put them on his grave. That tradition lasts to this day with visitors to his grave leaving violets. [Note: Chopin’s body is in Paris but his heart was removed and resides in Warsaw.] Napoleon was nicknamed the Caporal Violette which he used as a nom de plume along with Pere La Violette. When he died he was wearing a locket of violets taken from the grave of his wife, Josephine. They were her favorite flower, and that of England’s Queen Victoria’s, too.  Until the early 1900’s violets were associated with  St. Valentine’s Day, not roses.  According to the legend, Valentine crushed the violet blossoms growing near his cell to make ink to write messages on violet leaves to his friends, delivered by a dove.  He was executed on 14 February 269 A.D.

The state flower of Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Illinois and New Jersey, there are some 850 species of violets, in two large groups, sweet and wood. Sweet is strongly scented, wood less scented but larger than the sweets.  At least three violets are native to Florida, V. conspersa, sororia and bicolor.  Affinis means “similar to” and is a synonym for sororia, sometimes a variation.  Conspersa (kons-PER-sa) is sprinkled, sororia sisterly, and bicolor two colored.

Nutritionally violets have 15,000 to 20,000 IUs of vitamin A per 100 grams serving.  See recipes below.

 Green Deane’s “Itemized Plant Profile”

IDENTIFICATION: Blossoms blue, violet, yellow, white, shades in between and multi-colored. Five petals, with lowest petal heavily veined and going back into a spur. Low growing, there is a wide variety in the leaf shape. Sweet violets are the most aromatic, wood violets tend to be larger.

TIME OF YEAR: Varies slightly. Sweet violets first in spring, the wood violets. In warmer climates they can blossom again in fall

ENVIRONMENT: Moist shaded areas, partial sun.

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Leaves raw, dried or cooked. Blossoms raw or candied. Yellow violets can be mildly laxative.

Violet Jelly

2 cups fresh violets

2 cups boiling water

Juice of one lemon

1 pack pectin

4 cups sugar

Place the violets blossoms in a glass jar and cover them with the boiling water. Make an infusion with violets and water by placing your blossoms in a glass jar and covering them with boiling water. Put a lid on the jar, and set aside for anywhere between 2-24 hours. The water will turn to an aqua blue. Strain and discard the spent flowers. Add the lemon juice and the mix will change to a pretty pink. (After you do this a time or two, you can sort of judge how much lemon juice to add to get a color that `suits’ you.) Stir in pectin, and bring to a boil. Add sugar, bring to a boil again, and boil vigorously for one minute. Skim if necessary. Pour into sterile jars and seal. Makes approximately 2 1/2 cups jelly.

 Violet Syrup

4 cups of violets

2 cups boiling water

6 cups sugar

Juice of one lemon

2 cups water

Place violet flowers in a mason jar and pour boiling water over them. Let sit 24 hours. Strain liquid into a bowl (not aluminum!) squeezing out all the goodness from the flowers. Place sugar, lemon juice and water in a saucepan and boil into a very thick syrup, near the candy stage. Add violet water and bring to a rolling boil. Boil 10 minutes or until thickened. Pour into sterile bottles. Allow to cool, then seal and refrigerate. Serve with club soda or as pancake topping, or brush on baked goods.