Search: horsemint

Southern Wax Myrtle Berries. Photo by Green Deane.

Perhaps only Californians and Texans can appreciate the issues of living in a state more than 400 miles long. The changes in climate and plant life can be significant. Florida goes from temperate to tropical. Mid-state and north this time of year Wax Myrtles are berry-less. Go south two or three hundred miles and you have a tree happily fruiting like the one above in Port Charlotte.

Wax myrtle berries are hard, bitter and waxy. Despite that they do have a couple of uses. One is as a spice. They can be dried, put in a pepper mill, and used on strong-flavored meats such as game. The berries’ wax can also be used to make a smokeless candle that keeps away insects, the original Bayberry Candle. Harvesting the wax however is a messy chore and I suspect only done out of necessity which means only when the insects were really bad did you try to make the candle.  I’ve also heard of people making wine out of the berries but I suspect that was desperate prisoners. The shrub’s leaves are also useful. To read more about the Wax Myrtle go here.

Wild Radish in bloom

Locally the tallish yellow bloom you see roadside this time of year will probably be Wild Radish or Wild Mustard. You will usually find one or the other, not both in the same patch though they can hybridized. Mid-state I see a lot of Wild Radish, along the west coast and southern part of the state it is usually Wild Mustard but those locations are not exclusionary. They are used the same way, resemble each other well, and have the same season. But there are several small differences including growth pattern, blossom placement, veins on blossom petals and position of seeds in their tooth-pick like pods. Each of the articles highlighted above mentions the ways to tell them apart.

Hairy Cowpea, Vigna luteola

Another plant with a yellow blossom starting to be seen again this year is the Hairy Cowpea. Related to Mung Beans and the Black-eye Pea, the Hairy Cowpea is unusual in that it likes to be near water. It doesn’t grow in water but it is rare to find it more than 100 feet or so way from water. Perhaps it likes a certain level or humidity. While the peas are edible cooked they are not great. However, the yellow blossom is edible raw or cooked and tastes like raw peas or green beans. To read more about the Hairy Cowpea go here.

Green Deane Forum

In nearly every class and daily on line I am asked if I can identify a plant if a picture is sent to me. I say I will try and also suggest the sender join the Green Deane Forum.  There’s  a UFO page there, Unidentified Flowering Objects. On the forum we chat about foraging — and other topics — every day along with techniques to harvest and use the bounty you have found. And it’s not just about Florida or the southeast. There are members from all around North America and the world. The link to join is on this page just to the right of this article. You do have to pick a screen name and the forum let members private message each other. There are only three rules: Keep it civil, keep it clean, and try to avoid mentioning Wikipedia (which Green Deane has a significant dislike for.) Recent topics include Wild Possum Grape Jelly, Young People Want Healthier Food, Leather Root? Horsemint, Blueberries in January? UFO Weed, Darryl Patton Herbalist, Duckweed, Shaggy Mushy, Mystery Tree,  Gnarly Mushroom, Brain Tan, and Linguist Overdrive.

Florida Earthskills 2015

We’re a little less than two weeks away  from the Florida Earthskills gathering in Hawthorn Florida, Feb 5-8. It’s an opportunity to learn, share and experience sustainable living skills.  I have taught there for the last two years and will be there again this year, teaching on Friday morning and Saturday morning. That’s intentional so I can attend two mushroom classes in the afternoon. There are virtually dozens of classes to sign up. Other classes include wild medicine, wild foods, didgeridoo making and playing, buckskin sewing, fire making, yoga, insect study, cabbage palm basketry, bow making, bird songs, atlati throwing, permaculture, mushrooms and a whole lot more, several somethings for everyone. To learn more about this Florida Earthskills gathering and sign up go here.

Florida Herbal Conference 2015

Later in February is the Florida Herbal Conference, Feb 27 to March 1st, I’ve taught edible plants there for the last three years and will be there again this year with three classes. I wake folks up with a 7 a.m. class on Saturday and Sunday and a second class on Saturday a 9 a.m. The conference is a must for all southern herbalists and well as those northern ones who want to escape the cold and study their craft in the dead of winter. It always has interesting speakers and great classes. While there is some cross over between Earthskills and Herbalism the conferences are sufficiently different to justify attending both. For more information and to register go here.

Green Deane showing seeds during a foraging class. Photo by Kelly Fagan.

Foraging Classes:   Most of the next six weeks I am attending conferences and the like so my class schedule between now and March will be light. Sunday, February 8th, Boulware Springs Park, 3420 SE 15th St.,  Gainesville, FL 32641. 9 a.m. Meet at the picnic tables next to the pump house. Bring tick spray. Sunday, February 22nd,  Mead Garden: 1500 S. Denning Dr., Winter Park, FL 32789.  9 a.m. Meet to the right (east) of the Bartram sign. For more information or to sign up for a class go here.

I’m past retirement age. I’m also past 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, many deliveries.

We didn’t all drive en mass to the store to buy milk. Milk was delivered, by one man in a milk truck. And milk came in reusable, recyclable bottles that you could also use for other things. Baked goods were  delivered the same way. And vacuum cleaners! 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 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 one 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 blender 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. Nearly everyone cooked their own food, at at home and ate together. Today most people do not cook, do not eat at home and do not eat together. We also 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 beyond use 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.

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 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.

Push Lawn Mower

We walked up stairs because stores did not have elevators or escalators. We mowed the lawn by hand with a push mower. 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 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 phone until I was 20 and in the Army. 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. We were not throwing away billions of hand-held personal devices annually. 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.

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Black Cherry. Notice the leaf on the left with brown hair along the lower mid rib. Photo by Green Deane.

Black Cherries — Prunus serotina — suffer somewhat from a taste issue. When one mentions cherries most folks think of sweet cherries. And Black Cherries are sweet, but they are also bitter. They can be eaten fresh if one likes bitter. Processing, such as drying or making them into wine, reduces the bitterness.

Black Cherries ripen to dark purple or black. Photo by Green Deane

Locally, which of this writing means central Florida, the Black Cherries are in full force, ripening and dropping fruit heavily. Like mulberries they can stain sidewalks and cars purple. A hundred and fifty miles to the north in Jacksonville the fruit is yellow, on its way to red then black. As the season progresses the wave of ripening will move north. In Pownal, Maine, where I grew up I didn’t see Black Cherries but there were plenty of choke cherries to make jelly and wine from. You could not eat those right off the tree. Well… you could try but they were very astringent. Though wild cherries are small and have a large non-edible seed, they were a significant part of many native diets.

Black Cherry were cooked then dried for winter use. Often they were smashed into small cakes before drying. The dried cherries were carried for food while hunting and the dried fruit was also ground into a flour-like material used to make soup. The cherries were eaten raw and sometimes were allowed to ferment. Most unusual for this genus, Prunus serotina twigs were used by the Chippewa to make tea.

Strawberry Guavas start tart, end sweet. Photo by Green Deane

Also just beginning to ripen locally is the Strawberry Guava. An invasive species in some areas — such as Hawaii — the leaves can be made into tea and the fruit — to some people — have a hint of strawberry flavor. This is a fruit that should be picked when mostly green but showing small splotches of red. They are still semi-hard at this stage, tart and not full of grubs. If you wait until they are totally red and ripe and sweet you will have a lot of wiggling protein in each fruit. I suppose one could control that to some extent by spraying but I’ve never put any pesticides on any of my fruit trees. If you pick the ripening fruit rather than waiting for them to totally ripen you can greatly increase the yield. To read more about the Black Cherry go here, about the Strawberry Guava, here.

Horsemint makes a relaxing tea. Photo by Green Deane

Classes this week ranged from central Florida to the northeast corner of the state. In one area wild cucumbers were not to be found, but abundant in the other. But that is foraging, now and in the past. You gather what you can find. One plant we talked about in the Orlando class is Horsemint. It will be coming into season soon and is worth looking for now. A good tea and spice plant, it’s found in dry areas and will soon be showing off bright pink upper leaves. Those leaves make the plant easy to spot even when driving along the interstate. It’s the southern version of Bee Balm or Oswego Tea. You can read more about it here.

Young Mulberry leaves can be cooked and eaten like greens. Photo by Green Deane

One small success this past week in Jacksonville was identifying a tree I have been pondering for quite sometime. I only saw it a few minutes every couple of months and while familiar it was always just a little off. More s0 it was a tree I expected to see more of as they are quite common in the central part of the state. My mystery tree wasn’t much of a mystery. I finally took some pictures and studied them. While I thought it might have been Basswood it is probably a mulberry. Perhaps the fact that it is growing in deep shade threw me plus only walking past it now and then. The Basswood, or Linden Tree, is also very forager friendly. You can read about it here.

I think these are Oyster Mushrooms but I’m not sure which his why I will be studying mushrooms this weekend at the Intensive. Photo by Green Deane

I will not have a foraging class this weekend because I’ll be a student myself at a 5th Annual Mushroom Intensive in Hawthorne, Florida. It starts at 10 a.m. July 19th and ends at 5 p.m. July 20th. The location is Little Orange Creek Nature Park, 24115 SE Hawthorn Rd. Overnight camping is free. Saturday’s classes are for beginners and Sunday’s classes are more advanced. There’s been a lot of rain and there are a lot of mushrooms to see. Cost is $75 for a day or $125 for the weekend. You can learn more by going to the Facebook page called 5th Annual FL Mushroom Intensive. My next classes will be July 26th and 27th, in Melbourne and Sarasota respectively. You can learn about them by going here. I will not have any classes from then until mid-August because I will be in North Carolina hiking around though I might schedule a Meet & Greet during that time in Boone, N.C. If someone can suggest a location please let me know. Most probable date will be August 9th or 10th.

Randia aculeata, White Indigoberry, photo by the Florida Native Plant Society.

Earlier this month I spent a week or so along Florida’s southwest coast staying in Ft. Myers, Naples and on Sanibel Island. The latter could easily be called Sea Grape Island, Cocoplum Island or Poison Ivy Island. The cocoplums were ripe and everywhere (as was Poison Ivy, apparently enjoying the tropical climate.) This is an area where a frost or freeze is rare so the landscape is populated with many species just not seen further north. This make foraging in Florida interesting with a temperate forest on the north end tropical vegetation on the south end. Among my sightings were the Randia aculeata, or White Indigoberry — barley edible — Foresterea segregata, a so-called wild olive or Florida Privet — not edible — and the Beach Naupaka, or Scaevola taccada whose leaves have been used as famine food. Do not eat the white berries. There were also a lot of Pond Apples growing wild, again barely edible. It’s an area I enjoy and I might look for a (very) small condo there in my retirement…

A great place for foragers to meet.

On the Green Deane Forum we post messages and pictures about foraging all year long. There’s also a UFO page, for Unidentified Flowering Objects so plants can be identified. Recent topics include: the Fifth Annual Mushroom Intensive, Grapes Are On, Oh What The Hail, Sea Purslane So Good, Mushroom ID Field Trip, Cherry Plum?, Sarsaparilla Beer, Blackberry Tea Question, Your Best And Your Kryptonite, Wild Food Crop In Danger?, Mega Mullein, Cutting Your Herbs and Survivalist Entertainment.  The link to join is on the right hand side of this page.

My foraging videos do not include alligators but they do cover dozens of edible plants in North America. The set has nine DVD. Each DVD has 15 videos for 135 in all. Some of these videos are of better quality than my free ones on the Internet. They are the same videos but many people like to have their own copy. I burn and compile the sets myself so if you have any issues I handle it. There are no middle foragers. And I’m working on adding a tenth DVD.  To learn more about the DVDs or to order them click here.

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Over the years, Deane has created 171 short videos, describing natural plants and other foliage around the area to help you identify those that are edible and what to do with it.

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The Seminole-Wekiva Trail in 2018 (as seen from a bicycle GPS.)

Seven-Mile Appetizer

Editor’s note: Since the article was written the trail is now twice as long.

The squirrels are in hog heaven, if you’ll pardon the menagerie metaphor.

Beautyberry

It’s Thanksgiving, 2007 in central Florida and I am starting a bike trip along a reclaimed railroad bed. The Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) has gone from a summer wallflower to a fall blooming idiot. Also known as the French Mulberry, it is in full fruit hoping to ensure another generation of Beautyberries.  The shrub, with fruit clustered along the stem, is extremely popular with squirrels, who will ignore people to get to the berries. Read more about the Beauty Berry and the great jelly it makes by clicking here.

Amaranth

I’m traveling from Altamonte Springs to Lake Mary, and back, a little over 15 miles. At a road crossing where I have to stop for a traffic light — an underground passage was to be finished in 2005 —  I see a few scraggly Amaranth (Amaranthus hybridus.) Like its close cousin, the Spiny Amaranth, it’s a very local opportunist, rarely more than a plant or two here and there. In decades of collecting wild edibles in Florida I’ve never seen enough amaranth in one place to make a good meal (except in my garden.)  Even more rare is its distant and tasty cousin, Lamb’s Quarters or Pig Weed (Chenopodium album.) It’s hard to find here in central Florida except for isolated populations usually in poorly attended orange groves.

My first introduction to “Pig Weed” as an edible came in 1960. My parents had built a house the year before and as was common the next spring they threw hay chaff on the ground to start a lawn. That summer only two kinds of plants grew on the lawn: Wild mustard — see a later article on that — and Pig Weed.  A neighbor, Bill Gowen, who was also quite an amazing vegetable gardener, was visiting one day and saw the six-foot high Pig Weed and asked if he could have some. Getting a yes, he pulled out a half a dozen plants taller than himself and carried them home for supper.  He was absolutely full of joy

Pokeweed

over what he was about to eat, and with good reason. Only the Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) comes close to Lamb’s Quarters in flavor. For many years I was fortunate in that a field near me in Maitland, Fl., grew Lamb’s Quarters profusely, though smaller than in temperate climes. But, that field is now a housing development and not one Lamb’s Quarters seed, save for my garden, seems to have survived. That cannot be said of its more malodorous cousin, Mexican Tea (Chenopodium ambrosioides, sometimes referred to as Chenopodium anthelminticum though now is has been changed by some to Teloxys ambrosiodes.  In this case, the word “tea” is used to mean an infusion, not a pleasant drink. Chenopodium ambrodsiodes, by the way, means ‘Goose Foot Food of the Gods.’ That should give you some idea.

Epazote

Unmistakably smelling of varnish, the cultivated version is a common spice in Mexican cooking called Epazote, which in Nahuatl, the Aztec language, means skunk sweat or skunk dirt. It is well-named. One does not need to cultivate Epazote in Florida. It grows quite happily everywhere and all along the trail I am biking, especially near Lake Mary. It is one plant I don’t stop to look at, or rub unless I want to smell like a cleaned paint brush. I might have a different view of Epazote if I had tried it cooked sometime. But, I also don’t have internal worms, another use for the “tea.” And I really don’t want to find out if the line between spice and worm killer is thin.

Turks Cap

On my over-sized road bike I puff past many plants that are not high on the food chain for humans but edible in one fashion or another: Huge Camphor trees, relatives of the cinnamon; Pines, their needles make a Vitamin C rich tea and the inner bark edible; the aforementioned Pokeweed, red and rank this time of year but delicious in the spring when prepared correctly, deadly when not; Reindeer Moss, a true survival food; escaped Honeysuckle and Turks Caps; various cactus with edible pads and flower buds;  Bull Brier, a Smilax with berries that can be chewed like gum when green. The root of its cousin made the original Sarsaparilla. Ubiquitous on the trail  and very weedy, is Bidens alba.

Begger’s Ticks, Spanish Needles

Known as Beggars’ Ticks and  “Spanish Needles” for its two-tooth seeds, Bidens is the third largest source of honey nectar in Florida. All honey from Florida is part Bidens Alba.  The flowers and cooked young leaves and plants are edible. It has all kinds of medicinal applications from gout to urinary infections. Near the Bidens are some sandspurs though the correct term is sandburs, (Cenchrus echinatus.)  I burn off their spines and parch them at the same time. Tasty.

Florida Betony

About half way between Altamonte Springs and Lake Mary I pass a lawn that is too close to the trail and spy a bed of plants that would make Florida gourmets grab a shovel if they knew what was there: Florida Betony (Stachys Floridana). Its cousin, Stachys Affinis, is called Crosnes or Chinese Artichokes and a few other names. They are described as very expensive and called hard-to-find. Betony is the bane of most Florida lawns.

Purslane

Also in nearby lawns as I pedal by I see two other edibles, one very esteemed and the other rarely known on this side of the world. First is purslane (Portulaca oleracea). In fact, its very name, oleracea, means cultivated and it has been for thousands of years. Invading the lawns along with the purslane is Pennywort, sometimes the native Hydocotyle bonariensis and sometimes its imported cousin, Centella asiatica, both quite edible. The Pennywort likes its feet wet and one usually finds it around lawn sprinklers or where water puddles on lawns.

This year Thanksgiving in Florida is a warm, pleasant day and I brake to read the historic markers.  The trail I’m on, The Seminole Wekiva Trail, built on the former Orange Belt Railway, was at one time the longest railroad in the United States. It was started in 1885, about the same time both my grandfathers were born. In 1893 — the decade of my grandmothers —

Bitter Gourd

it became the Sanford – St. Petersburg railroad then became part of the Atlantic Coast Railroad line and finally merged in 1967 into the current Seaboard Coast Line Railroad. It cut across the state higher up than the current east-west interstate then went down Florida’s west coast, with one of the stops in the Greek community of Tarpon Springs, where I got my Purslane. Many important communities along the railroad a century ago and worthy of a station are gone, only noted by the cast iron tombstones: An inn stood over there; winter visitors went to a spring-fed spar across the road; a freeze ended a citrus community here the night of 29 Dec 1894. Occasionally an area is fenced off, and on many of those fences are ripening Balsam Pears (.) They are edible when young and are one of the few wild edibles I see people picking. 

Wild Grapes

As I pedal through Longwood — President Calvin Coolidge stopped here in 1929 to visit the “Senator” the largest Cypress tree in the country, now burned down —   I notice the grapes are way past season save for some stragglers. The grapes were not prolific this year, but in 2006 they were abundant. There are at least three or four  kinds of ‘wild’ grapes in Florida, two native and two or so escaped and semi-naturalized cultivars. It is easy to tell their ancestry: If the vine’s tendril has one tip, it is native; if the tendril is forked  it’s an escape artist (although future botanists might those designations.) Along here most of the grapes are Vitis shuttleworthii and Vitis munsoniana.  However, at one point overhanging the trail there are some abandoned 1930-era red and white hybrids. Larger and sweeter, they make the trip pleasant. I can just reach a last few from my bike as I go by.

Florida  — as of this writing and perhaps for sometime to come   — cannot grow wines like California or France because of Pierce’s Disease. The disease kills non-native grapes within a decade of planting by essentially clogging their veins and making them wither. So far its been lethal to over 300 varieties of grape. Only common varieties that have been crossed with native grapes can survive, which the state did in the early 1900s. Since the native grapes are very fruity, hybrid Florida wine, like New York State wine, is a differentiated product, a fancy way of saying it has its own muscadine flavor. If Pierce’s Disease can be conquered — they’re working on it — the South could become a major grape-growing region of well-known varietals.

3,500 year old tree destroyed by a match.

As I enjoy my grapes and pedal along I think about the “Senator.” A core ring count said it was some 3,000 years old. When it was 600 years old Socrates was arguing against democracy — why he was later executed — and Plato was a bright kid with a large derriere (didn’t you ever wonder what “Plato” means in the original Greek?)  By the time the Senator celebrated its 1,500th birthday, King Arthur was becoming a legend in his own mind. I wonder how many hurricanes has that king of cypresses endured in 3,500 years, and which one blew its top off with the help of lightning now and then. (Editor’s note: An addict climbed over the security fence January 16, 2012, then lit a fire inside the trunk so she could see what drugs she wanted to use. The resulting fire burned down the tree. A clone has replaced it.)

Monarda punctata, Bee balm

Not far from the grapes, before a long grade that challenges my low-carb knees, grows Spotted Horsemint, also known as Spotted Beebalm (Monarda punctata.) Frankly, given its name and appearance I think they missed a linguistic opportunity. They should have called it Pinto Mint.  It can be found near the trail for about two miles. It’s a plant one doesn’t notice until fall when it gets pink and white showy. Last year on private property near the old line, I dug up one small bush of it and successfully transplanted it into my small yard. It’s pretty and makes a nice tea. The bees are happy, too.

Common along the trail are Live Oaks, (Quercus virginiana) which are according heavily, if one can conjure such a verb.  In the white oak family, Live Oaks have the least amount of tannin in their acorns. But, it also varies from tree to tree. One can often find a Live Oak with acorns that are edible without leeching, a convenient and time saving arrangement. Acorn meal  — free of tannins or otherwise leeched of them — has many uses in the kitchen not the least in making bread.

Wild Persimmons

Less common along the bike path are native Persimmons (Diospyros virginiana) which means Fruit of the Gods. They are usually small trees that like to grow on edges of fields and roads, and fortunately, old railroad beds. I counted no less than eight Persimmon trees, several with fruit. There is very little to not like about the Persimmon, which is actually a North American ebony. The fruit is edible and can be used in any way banana is used, one for one. The fruit skin can be used to make a fruit “leather.” The seeds can be roasted, ground, and used to stretch coffee. The leaves make a tea rich in vitamin C, though the taste is bland if not “green.” And the wood can be worked.

On the shy side, the native Persimmon can be small and very astringent. There are many rules of thumb about how and when they can be picked for ripeness and non-astringency. In my experience, the best persimmons are the ones you have to fight the ants for.

Sassafras

On my return leg I stop half way and watch a place that has, of all things for suburbia, a few milking goats (If you must know, Capra hircus.)  Of Greek heritage and a farm boy,  I like goats and have often fed them some grass that’s just out of reach through the fence. In fact, while feeding them one day I saw a Sassafras rootling (Sassafras albidum) looking for a new home. The transplant was successful and I am probably the only homeowner in Florida with an intentional Sassafras tree in my front yard. It makes me feel special. I also have a  Zanthoxylum clava-herculis rescued more than a decade ago from a bull dozer in Daytona Beach. Should I have a tooth ache it will come in handy because its leaves have a natural novacaine.  Between the Sassafras and the Hercules Club my yard has to be a rarity.

As I near where I started I cross a small brook that eventually ends up in the Atlantic at Jacksonville. A plant growing in it reminds me books can be very wrong on edibility. I know that from personal experience. Some 20 years ago I thoroughly research a particular aquatic plant here in central Florida and found several authoritative references to it being edible. While preparing it for cooking my hands began to burn severely. Only washing with Naphtha Soap stopped the burning (every forager should carry Naphtha Soap with him.) 

Since this is my inaugural article* following entries will be shorter, I promise. Oh, and for Thanksgiving, I cooked a duck and had homemade elderberry wine. 

* This first newsletter  was written on Thanksgiving Day 2007. As of this editing — November 2018 — there have been some 1000 articles and 331  newsletters, first monthly then weekly.

Horsemint is in full fall foliage. Photo by Green Deane

The horsemint is happy. Most of the year the plant is visually nondescript, keeping its presence a secret. But starting around September its bracts turn a lavender/pink brightening every clump of herb and attracting swarms of I’m sure appreciative insects. Like several other plants covered in this newsletter the horsemint seems to be early this year by a few weeks. One cannot drive along a country road and not see it blossoming profusely. I stop so often to take pictures of the annual display I need a bumper sticker that says “I BRAKE FOR HORSEMINT.”  Farther north its relatives are called Beebalm and Oswego Tea. They’re used in similar ways. To read more about this seductive mint go here.

Everything is edible about the Kudzu except the seeds. Photo by Green Deane

While the horsemint is offering a feast for the eyes Kudzu is teasing the nose. The aroma of blossoming Kudzu is unmistakable: It smells just like grape bubble gum. You can catch the aroma of a patch of blossoming Kudzu from hundreds of feet away. All of the Kudzu is edible except for the seeds. The blossoms make a wonderful jelly. Unfortunately the leaves have a texture issue that one just has to accept. And getting starch out of the roots is a Herculean task, not exactly calorie positive. The state of Florida asserts that Kudzu has been eliminated locally but I find it all the time. Perhaps they should pay me to locate it.  To read more about Kudzu click here.

The Bunya Pines are done dropping seeds for the season. Photo by Green Deane

Foraging classes this week were in soggy Sarasota and Port Charlotte. It’s not only coastal rain but rain over the interior of Florida that’s flodding out southern areas of the state. In Sarasota normally dry foraging spots were flooded but we managed to rummage around anyway. In fact we did in Sarasota what we always do in Port Charlotte which is visit some of the neighboring residential areas for edibles. That produced a heavily fruiting Cocoplum and a Simpson Stopper, all earlier features in this newsletter. Port Charlotte also produced those fruits along with some late-season ground cherries. There was some Seablite but it was fast fading. It’s my favorite coastal green but very seasonal.  At these two classes I managed to distribute some of my last Bunya pine nuts of the season, either for eating or growing. To see my schedule of upcoming classes go here.

Ganoderma curtisii, a medicinal polypore.

The fungal find of the week is not so much edible as medicinal, Ganoderma curtisii. (If you are going to study fungi you have to comes to terms with using Dead Latin in that most mushrooms do not have common names.) The Ganoderma curtisii and the Ganoderma zonatum (the latter found only on palms) are our local versions of the famous medicinal Reishi mushrooms. I personally have not use them but I know a few folks who do. That said I am not an expert on mushrooms by any means. Definitely seek a more qualified opinion than mine. It’s just that I got a second microscope — a more powerful one capable of looking a mushrooms spores — 2000x — so I’ve playing with the new toy and making slides. My discovery this past week is that the bitter, non-edible Sarcodon has spores that look like crumpled bits of translucent green paper. One deadly Amanita spores I looked at resembled slush and snowballs. Fascinating. On a related topic you will read that there are no toxic shelf mushrooms with pores growing on wood. That is mushroom dogma. There is at least one polypore that is toxic, the Hapalopilus nidulans. It can cause kidney dysfunction and brain damage. This information is via herbalist Susan Marynowski of the Gainesville Mushroom Hunters group. Thanks Susan. Fortunately this polypore is easy to identify with a little chemical testing.

Masking tape around the cut edges reduces the chances of a “paper” cut. Photo and arils picked by Green Deane

Podpcarpus wine is one of my ongoing projects so I am still collecting arils. They are in season now. If you don’t like the idea of making wine the arils can be eaten as is or made into jelly or pies. Just remember the seeds are mildly toxic. We eat the aril only. Collecting them, as with most fruit, requires a little bit of technique (you don’t pick apples and oranges the same way!) If you can look for Podocarpus with large arils. Since you have to go through the same mechanical action with every one you pick selecting larger arils fills the pail faster. You can pick the entire fruit with either hand then use your thumbs to knock the toxic seed off. Or you can hold them in one hand and roll the seed off with the other. Let me repeat: Only the aril is eaten. To have both hand free you can make a berry pail from items you probably have around the house. I use a quarter-cut gallon milk jug and the shoulder strap from a long unused lap top carrying case. Lap top shoulder straps are good because they are – -for me at least — just the right waist length and they have swivel snaps on the end making them easy to work with. I put the entire contraption on like a belt with the jug waist high, perfect for dropping berries into and hands free. As all the Podocarpus arils don’t ripen at the same time I just keep freezing “pickings” until I have enough for whatever project I’m working on.

Susan Weed

I’ve always like the word Salmagundi, meaning a hodgepodge. We’ve reached the Salmagundi time of the newsletter. The Florida Herbal Conference 2014 will be held in Deland again this coming February. Susan Weed will be the among featured speakers. And again there is an early bird special for those who sign up before Oct. 31 and use the code EATTHEWEEDS. Not only will I be doing weed walks at the herbal conference but I also be leading weed walks at the Florida Earthskills gathering also in February. Closer to home I will be talking at a Native Plant Society conference in November in Orlando and in Tampa in March there’s a begonia conference I’ll be addressing. Busy.  This is a reminder that we discuss edible wild plants all the time on the Green Deane Forum. It’s a friendly, wholesome environment and we even identify some Unknown Flowering Objects now and then. It’s a bit of a challenge but I still read every post and answer my own email. We also have many on-going conversation about herbal applications as well.

And that’s it until next week.

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Eat The Weeds DVDs are now available.

Even though my foraging videos are for free on the internet some foragers like to have their own copy. My nine DVDs have 15 videos each, from 01 to 135, and come in nine cases each with a picture of yours truly on it. In the process of moving the videos to DVS some of them were enhanced slightly from the version on the Internet. In a few months I hope to have volume 10 available as well. I print and compile the sets myself so if you have any issues I handle it personally. There are no middle men. To learn more about them or to order the DVS click here.

If you’re a bee or a forager the huge Cereus blossom is quite inviting. Photo by Green Deane

It is time get Cereus … or at least the fruit. And while the fruit of the genus is edible the difficult part is figuring out which Cereus you have. In fact, there is such a mishmash of names some of the species might not even exist. The point is moot however as long as you have the fruit.

Local morning walks have been decorated with the large graceful blossoms of the Cereus. These in turn become green then red fruit which are edible like other cactus fruit which means the pulp and ground seeds. Raw whole seeds destroy teeth because they are so hard. Don’t forget cactus are native to 46 of the 50 US states and have been exported around the world for centuries. A commercial version of the Cereus bounty grown in Israel is called “Dragon Fruit.”  To read more about the confusing genus go here.

Our local horse mint gets showy.

Our local “Bee Balm” is called Horsemint, botanically Monarda punctata.  It will be soon putting on showy bracts making it easier to identify even from a speeding car. Your local species will vary but they are essentially used the same way, as medicine and a spice. Here’s n article about the genus from “Natural News” written by Tony Isaacs.

“Bee balm plants are a showy and fragrant group of plants indigenous to northeastern North America which have long been prized for their medicinal and culinary properties as well as showy flowers which attract hummingbirds and butterflies. Bee balm plants are members of the genus Monarda and grow best in zones 4 – 9. Their showy, spiky flowers are typically crowded into head-like clusters and range in color from pink to crimson red, red and light purple hues.

Monarda didyma bee balm has bright, carmine red blossoms and is commonly known as Oswego Tea. Monarda fistulosa, commonly known as Wild Bergamot, has lavender or smoky pink flowers. Monarda citriodora and Monarda pectinata have light lavender to lilac-colored blooms and have slightly decreased flower quantities. Both species are commonly referred to as “Lemon Mint.”

Monarda didyma or as we called it back home Oswego Tea.

Bee balm is the natural source of the antiseptic thymol, the main active ingredient in modern commercial mouthwash formulas. Several bee balm species, including M. fistulosa and M. didyma, have a long history of use as medicinal plants by Native Americans including the Blackfoot, Menominee, Ojibwa and Winnebago. The Blackfoot Indians recognized the plants’ strong antiseptic properties and used bee balm poultices for skin infections and minor wounds. Bee balm tea was used to treat mouth and throat infections caused by dental caries and gingivitis. The Winnebago used a tea made from bee balm as a general stimulant. Bee balm was also used as a carminative herb and an infusion of crushed bee balm leaves in boiling water has been used to treat headaches and fevers.

Bee balm is a member of the mint family with fragrant minty leaves and flower buds which taste like a mix of spearmint and peppermint with oregano. Bee balm was traditionally used by Native Americans as a seasoning for wild game, particularly fowl. Today, bee balm can be used to spice up a variety of foods.

That’s me sitting amongst poppies near the Acropolis in Athens.

This is a shameless reminder that 135 of my 143 videos are now available on nine DVDs. As soon as I get seven more done it will be a 10 DVD set. What I am tempted to do with my new video camera is go back and redo some of those earlier ones in high definition. The problem, of course, is that sometimes life gets in the way of living and time grows short. To learn more about the DVDs go here.

Upcoming foraging classes:

Saturday, Aug. 3rd, Spruce Creek Park, 6250 Ridgewood Ave. Port Orange, FL., 32127, 9 a.m.

Sunday, Aug. 4th, Florida State College, south campus, 11901 Beach Blvd., Jacksonville, FL., 32246.

Saturday, Aug 10th., John Chestnut State Park: 2200 East Lake Road, Palm Harbor, FL 34685, 9 a.m.

Sunday, Aug. 11th, Mead Garden, 1500 S. Denning Dr., Winter Park, FL 32789, 9 a.m.

Florida has two anise shrubs, red and yellow, Illicium floridanum, and Illicium parviflorum respectively. Regarding the Red there is agreement: It is all toxic; fruit, leaves, flowers, and wood. But what of the Yellow Anise? The smaller of the two it is native to the headwaters of the St. John’s River but has been extensively promoted for native landscaping. One finds it as hedges, often around hospitals and public bathrooms… no, I have no idea why.

Dick Deuerling on a Native Plant Society dig in 1993

All references I have today say the Yellow Anise is toxic like the Red Anise. Yet some 20 years ago, about when the accompanying picture of Dick Deuerling was taken, he told me I could make a tea out of the leaves. Based on that I planted one in my yard 13 years ago. By last year I had not tried it as tea. It’s not that I procrastinate; there’s just so much to do. After reading anew all the dire warnings I called Dick and asked him about it. Then 91 he said he couldn’t remember particulars about that tree and because of knee replacements didn’t get out in the woods much any more. So is it tea-able or not? I have no idea. I’m quite sure I heard him correctly but perhaps he thought I asked about some other shrub so the answer is right but were both mistaken. Thus I have not tried it — not wishing to be ill — but the Yellow Anise is still in my back yard. Unfortunately, however, Dick is no longer with us having passed away last week.

The entire Yellow Anise shrub smells like liquorice.

Decades ago if you were interested in wild edibles in Florida one name was always mentioned first, Dick Deuerling (said DER-ling.) He was the co-author with Peggy Lantz of Florida’s Incredible Edibles. A retired postman, who in another life would have been a plant taxonomist, he was active in Boy Scouts, the Native Plant Society and who knows what else.  In fact one time the local Boy Scout troop took up the challenge to hike Florida (Titusville to Tampa) camping out for two weeks and eating only what they could forage. Dick was mighty pleased that his students actually gained weight on the hike! (Can you imagine the outcry of lawyers, officials and some parents if the Scouts attempted a hike like that today?) I think Dick knew where a lot of edibles were because his job got him out and about local environs. I harvested wild garlic this spring from a spot he told me about decades ago.

I can well remember several things Dick said often. One was “I only eat the good stuff.” By that he meant there were a lot of edible plants but he wasn’t interested in marginal flora.  It has to taste like real food or he didn’t eat it. He didn’t like, as he called it, “a scruffy tongue.” But I know in fact he like cactus fruit as mentioned above. He told a story once about camping in Texas where foraging was illegal and severely punished. Yet when he woke one morning some cactus fruit somehow accidentally fell into his foraging bucket overnight.

The other thing he said I often refer to in my classes and articles as the “Dick Deuerling Method.”  When someone told Dick they thought a particular plant was edible and he didn’t think so he’s say: “Well, let me come over and watch you harvest it, let me watch you prepare it, and let me watch you eat it. And if you’re still alive in a couple of weeks I might consider it.” We might call that putting your food where your mouth is.

His funeral was well-attended with many wearing red suspenders, Dick’s signature attire. My personal debt to Richard Joseph Deuerling cannot be paid and I am sure many who knew him feel the same way. All I can say is thank you and I hope the foraging is good.

Maypops aren’t ripe yet locally but they soon will be. Photo by Green Deane

Maypops are a greatly under-rated plant. Their fruit is tasty, the vine long-producing, and a couple of medicines can be made out of it as well. Any down side? One of the identifying characteristics is the leaves smell like a degrading rubber sneaker.

The species starts producing in the spring and will continue until cold weather knocks them out.  They sprouted locally about two months ago and are now putting on fruit. The above photo was taken along the Seminole-Wekiva Bike Trail in Lake Mary, FL. Production of green egg shaped fruit is continuous with ripening fruit on the older vine and new fruit near the growing tip. Green fruit can be eaten cooked, ripe yellow fruit raw. While the entire raw ripe fruit is edible the highly esteemed part is the sweet-sour pulp inside. To read more about the Maypop click here.

Yucca blossoms are edible once debugged and cooked. Photo by Green Deane

Also blossoming now are our local yucca, Yucca filamentosa. Just as the Maypop is perhaps an under-rated plant the Yucca is perhaps over-rated. You will read in many foraging books that the blossoms are edible raw. I have never found that so with our local yucca. Raw they have a wonderful texture and initial flavor but then a natural soap kicks in and leaves a bitter aftertaste. Cooked flowers, however, are quite tasty though you always have too knock out a lot of insect first. The flower spike is also edible when young.  Other parts are famine food. To read more about the yucca go here.

Pawpaw blossoms can be ruby to cream colored. Photo by Green Deane

Pawpaws are ratty in Florida, ranging from runty dwarfs to gangly, small understory trees. Their blossoms often appear a bit exotic. The fruit is hard to find primarily because woodland creatures like them. You won’t read this in foraging books but the most common location I find papaws is at the base of pine trees in scrubs. They are quite common. Another place to find pawpaws is in pastures and along the pasture fences. Often along the fence will be the dwarf pawpaw and in the pasture a larger species. Further north pawpaws become good size trees.  If you want to read more about pawpaws click here.

Black Cherry ripen unevenly. Photo by Green Deane

Black Cherries are in full fruit now, ranging from still unripe ones to dark semi-sweet racemes. I say semi-sweet because no matter how ripe they always have a bit of a bitter kick back.  Making wine or syrup out of the cherries usually gets rid of the bitter aftertaste. While several kinds of cherries are reported to grow in Florida I have only ever seen the Black Cherry, Prunus serotina. It’s fairly to identify because of the hair along the mid-rib of older leaves. Whether your cherry tree will have fruit is up to the woodland creatures. In some areas ripe fruit is stripped as soon as it is edible, in others you can collect most of the fruit yourself. You have to be careful, however, not to now confuse the Black Cherry with the Laurel Cherry, Prunus carolinana which is deadly. To read more about the cherries, go here

While ripe American Nightshade berries are edible ripe check for bitterness. Photo by Green Deane

Also fruiting now is the most controversial American Black Nightshade, Solanum americanum.  Several genus have one foot in edible and the other in toxic. The Nightshade is one such family, as is the Honeysuckle and the Peas. I eat S. americanum berries as a trail side nibble often to the aghast of students or even other foragers. It’s a family with a lot of misunderstanding but also justified warnings about toxicity. If I have a problem with the S. americanum it is that the fruit is not consistent. Sometimes you find some very ripe but bitter fruit. Don’t eat those. Sometimes that are also larger than usual fruit and bitter. Perhaps there is some cross pollinating going on. Always taste a ripe berry first and wait a minute or two to see if any bitterness shows up. The green berries are definitely toxic. To read more about the American Nightshade go here.

Upcoming classes this week include a familiar site, Mead Garden on Sunday, and a new location Saturday, Seminiole-Wekiva Bike Trail, and upland area with a lot of interesting edibles.

Saturday, June 8th, Seminole Wekiva Bike Trail, Longwood, FL., 32779. Meet at the Jones Trail head parking lot which is at the southeast corner of the intersection of Markham Woods Road and Long Pond Road.  9 a.m.

Sunday, June 9th,  Mead Garden: 1500 S. Denning Dr., Winter Park, FL 32789, 9 a.m.

Seminole-Wekiva Bike Trail. Photo by Green Deane

Seminole-Wekiva is an active bike trail. There are no lakes or ponds along the trail so there are no aquatic plants where we will be. But what edibles we do see we will see often. Among them are maypops, yucca, black cherry, horsemint, spurge nettle, gopher apples, reindeer moss, pawpaws, sassafras, persimmons, winged yams and elderberries.

Tasty, salty Seablite, coming to a shore line near you!

This week saw a private class at Haulover Canal, always an interesting and challenging area to find wild edibles, especially this time of year. While we can forage year round in Florida the cool dry time between Christmas and Valentine’s Day is our scrounging season. The short canal, while fairly north in Florida terms, is near the ocean and between two large inland waterways. This helps to moderate not only cool weather but the arid landscape. It is also a challenge in that there are no permanent facilities and as part of the Kennedy Space Center can be closed anytime without notice, including the only draw bridge on the only road. (This was intentional. The government wanted to be able to sever all land traffic to the space center and did so with four draw bridges, three by road, one by rail.)

Peppergrass and sandspurs were in profusion, as were Spanish Needles and the debatable Brazilian Pepper. Oddly there was still-identifiable horsemint with its bright pink bracts. It’s usually seen in the fall. Also slightly out of season were some fruiting ground cherries. They, too, favor the fall. Papayas, the Toothache Tree and Australian Pines were also in residence. Perhaps the best find of the day, however, was Seablite.

Haulover Canal looking southwest, photo by Heidi Brown

Seablite has everything going for it except its name. The green is mild but tasty, has excellent texture, can be eaten raw or cooked though cooked is the usual way because that lowers the salty flavor. Seablite is nutritious, stores well, looks good, easily grows in salty ground (read unused land) and feels good to hand and mouth.  In the Chinopodium family it competes well near the ocean or salt licks though you could easily grow it in your unsalty backyard. Because of where it grows Seablite has a high sodium content but boiling reduces that significantly. It’s good for stuffing a fish or a chicken before cooking. The salt leaves the green and flavors the meat. You end up with a delicious green and entree. If you live anywhere near the ocean or inland salty areas, now and the next few months is the time to go looking for Seablite and its inland relative, seepweed. To read more about Seablite click here.

Florida Manatee, photo by manatee.net

On a personal note it was at Haulover Canal where I had my first post-war fright back in the ’70s. The canal is basically a cut through limestone, 20-feet deep near the middle, perhaps 200 feet wide. It has rocky edges rather than a bank. You can stand on these platform-like ledges just inches above the water, kind of like tossing in your line from the edge of a pool. I was fishing there one day when this incredibly huge creature surfaced not a yard from me making a hellacious noise. My legs did their duty while my pubococcygeal musculature did not (ahem…)  When I finally looked back I had no idea what it was. When I got home my relatives told me it was a manatee. I had never heard of manatees. Did not know they existed. Later I would go snorkeling with them in Crystal River. They are elephant-size puppy dogs but that day when I first saw one I thought for a moment I was lunch.

The human mind has a propensity to classify. It helps us think. Every time we see an animal we don’t have to think about its parts if we can put the whole creature into a class such as four legs, two wings, fins et cetera. When wondering about a bird we don’t have think about fish parts then exclude them. The classifying does it for us. This happens with plants as well, sometime for the good, sometimes not particularly with names. Pigweed is a good example.

Horseradish

Some people will read that “pigweed” is edible and think their “pigweed” is edible as well. The brain creates a class called Pigweed/edible and off they go. Unfortunately some pigweeds are edible and other pigweeds are deadly. A slightly different example is “horse” as in horseradish, horse weed, and horse chestnut. The wrong class the mind creates is “it means horses can eat it.” I actually heard (a supposedly) professional herbalist say that recently. I am NOT going to take that person’s herbal advice. In this case the word “horse” means either large or rough not equine edible. The classifying problem also created when talking about genus.

, photo by Brandeis University

Generally said plants are classified in the same genus because they share certain characteristics. Sea-grapes, a tree, and smartweed,  a small herb, are both in the greater buckwheat family based on plant characteristics. They are, however, different enough that no one classifies them together except botanists. Elderberries are a different issue. There the classifying propensity rises again and some assume all elderberries are edible when they are not. Each elderberry is its own chemical factory. Species within a genus can have unique features. That can include different chemical compositions leaving one elderberry species edible and another elderberry species not.

Crimson clover produces grain

What prompted this newsletter entry was a question whether crimson clover is edible by humans. Clover is from Eurasia. It’s not native to North America. We have quite a few clovers in America among them Sweet, White, Red and Crimson. If tea is the goal then usually it is the white clover blossoms one wants, very fresh or dried quickly. If it is grain then Crimson clover. Some clover leaves can be eaten raw, sparingly, others should be cooked. Too many raw clover leaves can make you pray to the porcelain god. There’s no good rule even among some close genus siblings. One can’t make a good class out of clovers.

Lactuca floridana has a blue blossom

With spring around the calender corner sow thistles will begin to populated parks and lawns. There’s always some confusion for three reasons. First is part of the name “thistle.” They get confused with true thistles which are also green and growing this time of year. There are also some wild lettuce asprouting now. And then there are three different species of sow thistles growing in the area. The three genera — true thistles, sow thistles and wild lettuce — are easy to sort out, the species take a bit more work.

Bull Thistle Basal Rosette

True thistles are mean. They produce either green basal rosettes with painful spines or basal rosettes with a fat stalk covered with painful spines and shaving-brush blossoms. Best time to harvest them is when the rosette is huge or when the stalk is still small. Wild lettuce — which is perpetually bitter — is tougher. They, like the thistle, have a basal rosette and or rosette and stalk as well but no spines. The lettuce leaf stalk is V-shaped and a single line of hair can be found along the underside of the main leaf vein. The sap can be white, salmon-colored or white turning to salmon. You can read about wild lettuce here.

Common Sow Thistle

Sow thistles come in three varieties locally, or I should say within the state. The common sow thistle and the spiny sow thistle are found throughout most of the state. The field sow thistle is a northern resident that just gets into Florida. Of the two more often found sow thistles the Common Sow Thistle (Sonchus oleraceus) is the preferred. It’s edible until a fairly good size. It has smooth, soft leaves. The Spiny Sow Thistle (Sonchus asper) is also fine when gathered young. When older its leaves develop pseudo-spines which usually soften on cooking. But some people don’t like the texture. You can read about the sow thistles here.

The Florida Herbal Conference is just a month way, still plenty of time to sign up. Held in Deleon Springs February 15-17 it’s sure to be a grand time. I will be teaching a class or two there.  For more information go to: Florida Herbal Conference.

The U.S. drought persists.

Why do we forage? Here’s one headline why: Start That Gluten-Free Diet: Wheat Will Be More Expensive This Year.  The Department of Agriculture has declared much of southern and central United States as a natural disaster area due to a continuing drought. Crop conditions for winter wheat were the worst on record in early December, the most recent figures available. Some experts say up to a quarter of the crop will be lost. Winter wheat is the dominant wheat variety in country. It’s planted in the fall, sprouts then lies dormant during the winter. It starts regrowing when the weather warms up and is harvested before summer. It’s predicted that wheat-based food will become much more expensive this year. Similarities shortages for corn and soybeans. Not only is agricultural production falling but Mississippi barge shipping is coming to a halt from the low water. Facing such potential food shortages why are we putting most of our corn in to cars via ethanol (which cars don’t run well on it either.)

To donate to the Green Deane Newsletter click here.

Fruit best eaten when between green and red.

I have good news and bad news: The Strawberry Guava is about to blossom. The bad news is that if you live in some areas of Florida, the Caribbean, or Hawaii — especially Hawaii — that invasive species will be producing more seeds and taking over more land.

It took several seasons of my Strawberry Guava fruiting for me to learn to time it just right. The fruit starts out green, then turns mottled with green and red and finally a dull red. And they go, in taste, from not palatable to sweet/tart then just sweet. Plus the fruit’s skin transforms from tough to hard to very soft. At the latter stage, if one has a bit of imagination they can taste slightly strawberry-esque. Personally I think they taste like Strawberry Guava. Why folks have to name them like some other fruit is beyond me. But that’s not the real issue. The real issue, besides it being an invasive species and naturalized, is worms, larvae really.

When green, the skin is too tough for most flies to lay their eggs through. But when ripening, they are quite soft. If you let your strawberry guava fruit fully ripen before you eat them, you will get a lot of larvae in each fruit. Depending upon your turn of mind, that might be free protein or disgusting. While the seeds are edible, they are quite hard so teeth beware. Also the leaves can be used to make a nice tea.

Pregnancy and wild plants. In his book The Green Pharmacy James Duke, PhD, lists several wild edible plants to be avoided while pregnant. They are: juniper berries, mugwort, , mayapple, and evening primrose. Add to them Southern Wax Myrtle as well. There are also quite a few herbs to avoid as well including barberry root, cascara sagradea, feverfew, pokeroot, rue, senna, southernwood, tansy, thuja, mountain mint and St. Johns Wort. Carrot seed, incidentally, should not be consumed if you want to conceive. It has a chemical that prevents fertilized eggs from implanting.

Recently added article: Dad’s Applewood Pipes, Edible Flowers Part Twenty, Junipers. Updates: Nettles can be used for allergies, Horsemint for memory loss, Dog liver is toxic,

Desmarestia ligulata has hydrochloric acid.

Is all Seaweed edible? No, but most of them are.  Two non-edibles one might encounter in North America are Desmarestia ligulata (pictured left) particularly found on the northwest coast, and Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) found in the Caribbean linked to ciguarera poisoning. D. ligulata accumulates hydrochloric acid, making it non-edible. However, they do use the acid for pickling. As for the alga it is why one is not supposed to eat barracuda any longer than your forearm. They think the fish collects some chemical in the alga making it toxic when an adult. So if in warm seas, avoid blue-green blobs and if in cold water a seaweed burns you, have D. ligulata. There might be some toxic red seaweed in the Southseas as well. But other than those two mentioned the seaweed found around North America should be edible.

Since most seaweed is edible, and nutritious, why isn’t it consumed more often? Taste and texture. I’ve collected sargassum here in Florida and entertained several ways to prepare it. Semi-drying and frying isn’t too bad but… bladderwrack is better, sea lettuce better still. 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. Here are some of my articles on seaweed: Bladderwrack, Caulpera,  Codium,   Gracilaria,   Sargassum,  Sea Lettuce, and tape seagrass.

The question was asked nearly a century ago but began in earnest some 40 years later. The United States entered WWI in 1917 and got out in early 1919. That same year lyricists Joe Young and Sam Lewis with song writer Water Donaldson wrote “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down On The Farm.” It was, as we say today, a smash hit.  If you want to hear a jazzy dixieland version of the same song recorded in 1967 by Benny Goodman click here. The relevant verse is:

How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree’? How ya gonna keep ’em away from Broadway, jazzin’ around and paintin’ the town. How ya gonna keep ’em away from harm, that’s a mystery. They’ll never want to see a rake or plow. And who the deuce can parleyvous a cow? How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree’?

Some historians argue that WWI and WWII were actually just one war with a 20-year recess. Whether two wars or one, they or it made a huge difference in how Americans lived. Prior to WWI America was a rural country. Most folks lived on farms. After WWII came suburbia, housing developments, and lawns, the largest crop in America today. One might argue that WWI showed Americans there was a life off the farm — as the song suggests — and the boon after WWII showed them how to move off the farm permanently. Interestingly two related issues made their appearance then.

Prior to WWI nearly everyone raised their own food, and nearly everyone foraged for food. But in the boon after WWII people really did move off the farm. When people did move they separated themselves from their food. Foraging died out because the know-how was not passed on and their farming knowledge became a twisted echo of the past. It was difficult for folks to stop growing things after doing it for so long. But, instead of raising food in suburbia they choose to raise lawn grass and ornamentals, most of them toxic.  It was almost a collective cultural statement of arriving by saying “I don’t have to forage or grow food anymore. I’m so modern I can raise non-edible plants.”

Millennia of knowledge on how to forage was allowed to wither and centuries of experience on how to raise food was diverted into raising grass and ornamentals. America became Mom, Dad, two kids, a dog, a station wagon and a lawn. Historically lawns were uncommon. But between the world wars what may have tipped the balance was the invention of the motor-powered lawn mower. It proliferated lawns which until then were cut by hand or by sheep or goats as the White House lawn was kept. It also made a big difference to trees. To listen to an editorial I wrote and read for National Dutch Radio (in English) about lawns and trees click here.

I have several neighbors who would be successful and well-fed farmers if their energies were put into an edible landscape rather than decapitated grass and poisonous flowers. One neighbor of mine has had an insect problem with his lawn for several years. Much time and money has been spent to fight the invertebrate invasion.  It looks like this year he finally won and has to show for it… a patch of grass. And did you know 60% of drinkable water in suburbia goes to watering lawns? Or that millions of gallons of gasoline and oil are spilt every year while maintaining those lawns? Studies show lawn slaves use 10 times more herbicides and fertilizer than vegetable farmers. Facts I point out when I am asked if lawn grass is edible.

As I say in my NDR editorial, lawns are not green. Fortunately zoning regulations — prodded on by shortages of drinking water — are now changing. Local regulations are changing, but only slowly and often after law suits. But who knows, perhaps in the not too distant future if you want a patch of decapitated grass you will have to pay a lawn tax, by the square foot, rounded up, of course.

If you think Home Owner Associations are bad then Code Enforcment Boards aren’t far behind. This one in Tulsa, Okalahoma, does not care for the rule of law. Without legal cause they eliminated an edible landscape. HOA and CEB remind me that some folks have dictator personalities.  To read the story click here.

And if that is not enough, here’s another one mentioned in the Green Deane Forum. In this case a man is being harrassed by city officials who have no legal grounds to do so. Click here and or here.

Classes This Week:

Saturday, June 23rd, Jervey Gantt Recreation Complex, 2390 SE 36th Ave., Ocala, FL, 34471, 9 a.m.

Sunday, June 24th,  Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge, 2045 Mud Lake Road, DeLeon Springs, FL.9 a.m.

To donate to the Green Deane Newsletter click here.