Wood Ears on a dead oak. Photo by Green Deane

Wood Ear Mushrooms, Auricularia auricula, Auricularia polytricha. Also called Cloud Ear, Tree Ear, Black fungus, and Jelly Ear, they are in a group known as Jelly Fungus. These are privately found and used in North America though they are a commercial product in Asia and can be bought. There are several species of Wood Ear and they are all used much the same way and look similar. 

We have two nutritional results for Wood Ears, a commercial one and one from a study. The folks who sell dried Wood Ear say they have per 100 grams dried: 357 calories, 85.71 grams carbohydrates, zero protein, zero fat, 57.1 grams fiber, 38.57 mg iron and 143 mg sodium. The study lab says 208.27 calories, 14.12 grams protein, 3.53 grams fat, 31.77 fiber, 97.39 mg iron, 49.42 sodium, 17.65 RE vitamin A, B1 (thiamin) 0.176 mg, B2 (riboflavin) 0.423 mg, B3 (niacin) 2.50. The macrominerals are 758.95 mg potassium, 293 mg phosphorus, and 250 mg calcium.

As you are more likely to use one ounce dried the breakdown is:  59 calories, 4 grams protein, 1 grams fat, 9 fiber, 27.59 mg iron, 14 sodium, 5 RE vitamin A, B1(thiamin) 0.05 mg, B2 (riboflavin) 0.12 mg, B3 (niacin) 0.71 mg. The macrominerals are 215 mg potassium, 83 mg phosphorus, and 71 mg calcium.

When cooked they are firm and crunchy with a musty flavor if you don’t flavor them. One way to do that is to dehydrate them then rehydrate them in some flavor you want to use such as broth, juice… or bourbon. 

Auricularia auricula  redundantly means Little ear ear. In Asia they are known as Yung ngo, Kikurage, Mokurage, and Aragekikurage. Polytricha means having many hairs. 

Green Deane’s Itemized Plant Profile

IDENTIFICATION: Tough, gelatinous, rubbery, flabby, irregular ear- to cup-shaped fruiting bodies with ribs near the point of attachment. Usually dark brown. Spore print white, fertile surface downward. Single or in clusters.

TIME OF YEAR: Year around and or seasonally depending upon where yo live.  

ENVIRONMENT: On hardwood with bark still in place. I look for them on branches of dead oaks.

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Rinse and remove any tough patches. Used for their chewy texture fresh or dry. Soak dry ones in a flavored liquid you like, add them to whatever you are cooking. They work best with foods you are boiling, stir-frying, or sautéing. Use quickly as they don’t store well.

Laporta Canadensis, Canadian Woodnettle, photo by June Ontario.

Laporta canadensis is another plant that gets overlooked because of a famous relative, the Stinging Nettle. Called Canadian Woodnettle this plant also gets confused other plants called “wood nettle.”  So it’s in a relative’s shadow and has an overused common name. To muddy the nomenclature waters Laportea canadensis also used to be called Fleurya canadensis, Urtica canadensis and Urticastrum divaricatum. It got its current botanical bon nom in 1916. More confusingly the genus, Laportea, consists mostly of tropical stinging trees no where near Canada. (For a totally different stinging tree see Chaya.) 

Francois Louis de la Porte

“Laportea” is Dead Latin for “of Laport.” The species was named for Francois Louis de la Porte, the wandering Count of Castelnau. He was a French naturalist born in London who visited North America between 1837 and 1841. An insect specialist, he started in Central Florida and worked his way north to roughly Ontario and Quebec. Then he went to the Amazon area for five years and was in Australia from 1864 to 1877 dying in 1880. He was also big in the bug world. Canadensis means of Canada. The plant is found in the eastern two thirds of North America. Locally it is reported in two western Florida counties, Liberty and Jackson. 

This species can sting mightily. Daniel Austin, author of Florida Ethnobotany, relates about teaching a class and wandering into a patch. He had long pants on so he was in the patch before he got stung. However, students with shorts who followed him actually began crying the sting bit so much. The plant was once used to flog people.

Canadian Woodnettle has distinctive blossoms. Photo by Peter Dziuk.

Although edible the plant has been used far more as fiber being some 50 times stronger than cotton of the same size.  Several tribes also used it medicinally. The Muskogean reported using it as a decoction to lower fever. The Iroquois employed it as a “love potion” and a tea to ease childbirth, the Meskwaki to treat incontinence and as a diuretic (which are actually opposite problems.) The Ojibwa used it for urinary issues. The stinging hairs break upon puncturing the skin and contain histamine-like substances. The Potawatomi ease the rash with juice of the Jewel Weed, the Rappahannock used urine or salt water. 

While the plant is edible published reports are few and it tends to not be in standard texts.  The nutritional value of Laportea canadensis is also generally not known. Most, if not all, internet references borrow nutritional values from its relative, the Stinging Nettle. Stinging Nettles have vitamin A, potassium, magnesium, and calcium. The latter comes in with 481 mg per 100 gram serving. Next is potassium at 334 mg, followed by phosphorus 71 mg and magnesium 57 mg. Vitamin A, as beta carotene, is at 2011 IU.There are traces of zinc, copper, manganese, selenium and some B3 and B6. In micrograms there’s 4178 mcg of the vision twins, Lutein+zeaxathin, and interestingly 498 mcg of Vitamin K, phylloquinone. Again, those values are for the Stinging Nettle. 

Green Deane Itemized Plant Profile

IDENTIFICATION: To four feet tall, branched or unbranching, stems light green covered with white hairs. Lower to middle leaves alternate, upper leaves are opposite, they are to six inches long, four inches wide, medium to dark green, oval to ovate, serrated. Young leaves are densely hairy, and wrinkled, older leaves less hairy. Stems up to four inches long, also covered with stinging hairs. Male and female flowers, greenish white, wind pollenated. Blooms mid- to late summer. While this plant has alternative leaves — the only nettle that does —  the Stinging Nettle, see separate entry, has opposite leaves only.  Do not confuse Canadian woodnettle with the non-stinging Rough Snakeroot, Ageratina altissima (which killed Abraham Lincoln’s mother, Nancy Hanks.) Rough Snakeroot has opposite leaves, where as Canadian Woodnettle has alternating leaves (leaves are in pairs.) Rough Snakeroot does not sting. 

TIME OF YEAR: Whenever there are young leaves (blooms between June and September)

ENVIRONMENT: Likes partial sun to medium shade, moist conditions and loamy soil. If cultivated it makes a good privacy fence. It likes to grow with Maples and Basswood perhaps because of nitrogen and or phosphorus provided by the trees’ leaves. They do not like clay. 

METHOD OF PREPARATION:  Cooked shoots, young tops  and or young leaves. Leaves usually picked before the species blossoms.  After blossoming its tea might be more medicinal. Older plants can be retted for fiber. If peeled the young plant is edible but bitter.  If you rinse the leaves before using dry thoroughly. Leaves can also be dried. Cooking reduces them significantly. My favorite way to prepare Stinging Nettle leaves (Urtica dioica) is to dry them next to a camp fire. That also takes the sting out. 

Skunk cabbage in springtime

The first eight years of my formal education was spent in one-room school houses without running water. The 7th and 8th grade-school house was in the center of Pownal, Maine. There was a pine-covered hill behind it to the east no doubt over a ledge, and a gully to the north of it. There I saw skunk cabbage and trilliums in early May, both of which smelled like Budweiser beer (which is an adult, hindsight observation as neither of my parents drank.)  

Young skunk cabbage. Photo by Derek Ramsey

I was in that particular school house in the early 60’s including November 22nd 1963. A decade earlier Merritt Fernald of Maine was writing about skunk cabbage and apparently there was some ethnic controversy about it. He wrote on page 118 and 119 of Edible Wild Plants of Eastern North America “The roots of skunk cabbage have had a repute among the eastern Indians as a source of bread, in regions where the plant thrives the roots are abundant but difficult to dig; and obviously, for many reasons, only an enthusiast will try to secure them. It is probable that drying or baking before final use will dispel the acrid properties, as in Peltandra and Arisaema, but our own experience show that three weeks of drying is insufficient to dispel the peppery quality. The bread made from the flour dried for three weeks is palatable, having a suggestion of cocoa flavor, but a few minutes after it has been eaten the mouth stings with the perculiar burning and puckering sensation familiar to all who have tasted the fresh root of the Jack-i-the-Pulpit. One average root gives about half a cup of flour.

Skunk Cabbage tolerates northern  weather.

“A more available food is found in the “cabbage” or young tuft of leaves, which in spite of inevitable prejudice on account of the odor of the bruised plant, makes not wholly unpalatable vegetable. During boiling no trace of the characteristic, disagreeable ordor is given off, but the cabbage should be cooked in several waters to which has been added a pinch of baking soda. Serve with vinegar and butter or other sauce. Our Italian immigrants often make use of these greens which, if prejudice were forgotten, might abundantly serve as large population. Our experience indicates that the plants vary, sometimes being quite mild, sometimes peppery. If one is in luck he will cook only the former.”

Fernald goes on to warn to not mistakenly collect the White Hellebore or Indian Poke (Veratrum viride) which grows in the same environment and is a “violent poison.”  As for the skunky Trilliums the cooked leaves are edible but the roots are highly emetic and the berries questionable. Also know that nutritional information on the Internet supposedly for “skunk cabbage” is actually that of a totally different plant “swamp cabbage.” 

Symplocarpus foetidus was coined by controversial British botanist Richard Anthony Salisbury nee Markham (1761-1829) and is from the Greek σνμπλοκη symplokee for “connection” and καρπος  carpos for “fruit” referring to the ovaries connecting into a compound fruit. Foetidus is from Dead Latin meaning foul smelling. 

Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant Profile

IDENTIFICATION: Low growing, foul smelling to three feet tall growing.  Roots are fleshy, tuberous, two inches long and an inch through,  dark brown on the outside, white or yellowish inside.

TIME OF YEAR: Early spring, February in the southern end, end of spring northern end.

ENVIRONMENT: Swamps, wet woods, by streams, and or other wet, low areas, gullies.

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Dried leaves later boiled in changes of water, roots long-term dried edible. None edible raw. The roots are between one and three feet down, older ones have ring-like wrinkles. 

Distribution of skunk cabbage in North America

Texas Ebony seed pods. Photo by Wynn Anderson

A lifetime ago I used to fly to Dallas Texas in an executive jet from Orlando. It was a 150-minute flight take off to touch down. One could see the Mississippi river for 40 minutes. One of the first things you notice in Texas is the plants are different and things tend to be named Texas this or Texas that even if it is just a thistle. Thus that the Texas Ebony is not an Ebony is no surprise and could easily be called the Mexican Ebony. It is edible no matter what its name is. 

The seeds are toasted, young pods are cooked like a vegetable. The seed coat was used for a coffee substitute. It also has edible relatives: P. lobatum has seeds that are edible raw or cooked. Young flowers, leaves and fruit are eaten. The seeds are a source of starch. The seed and aril of P. dulce are eaten and the seeds produce a useable oil. (See a separate entry for P. dulce, aka Camachile.) 

Texas Ebony blossom.

The seeds of E. ebano are about 35% protein which is comparable to legumes though they are larger than chickpeas. Carbohydrates in 100 grams (before processing) are 29.36 grams, fat 28.16 grams but fiber quite low, 0.51 grams per 100 grams. That’s all about 500 calories. Cooking increases the available protein by some 12% and reduces anti-nutrient phytate 35% and protein inhibitors 96% overall increasing the nutrition. The most common amino acids are leucine, lysine, valine, isoleucine and treosine.    

Originally Pithecellobium flexicaule it is now Ebenopsis ebano. As that is mostly Greek it can be translated in several close ways. Pithecellobium flexicaule is easy: Monkey’s Earring with Bent Stem. Ebenopsis ebano has more possibilities because of -opsis. That’s often translated into “view” but the original Greek means more like a spectacle, something impressive you would see on stage or the like, something that makes you go “wow!” So I’d say Spectacular Black Ebony.  That’s better than Monkey’s Earring with Bent Stem. 

Green Deane’s Itemized Plant Profile

IDENTIFICATION: A large tree to 50 feet, trunks up to 10 feet in circumference, branches very spiny and zig-zag at every node, dark green foliage, white to yellow fragrant flowers starting in May or June creating four to six inch pods. Hardy down to 25F, perhaps lower.

TIME OF YEAR: Pods in fall. 

ENVIRONMENT: Well-drained clay, loam or sand. Full sun. Very drought tolerant.

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Seeds cooked, young pods boiled.