Hornbeam likes to grow near water or damp conditions

Carpinus caroliniana: Musclewood

British author Ray Mears must have been thinking of the Hornbeam when he said a forager mustn’t pass up food no matter how meager.

Not all of the wild edibles can produce the best-tasting and most plentiful foods, but many can make their small contribution. And so it is with the American Hornbeam, Carpinus caroliniana, (kar-PYE-nus kair-oh-lin-ee-AY-nuh.)

Where I grew up it was called Ironwood or Hornbeam (which means hard tree.) Here in the South you’ll hear it called Blue Beech or Water Beech. While it is not a beech per se, its leaves — which turn orange red in the fall —  can remind one of a beech as can its bark. But the hornbeam has its own special look, and it is of a well-muscled, sinewy tree.

Hornbeam has a weightlifter’s look

Hornbeam looks taut, cut and buff, as if it goes to the forest gym twice a day and lifts … iron. Hence its other common name: Musclewood. Once you have the look of a Hornbeam inside your head you will always recognize it easily.

Hornbeam never grows to a huge size, perhaps six or seven inches through on average. But, it is strong and dense, 45 pounds per cubic foot. It’s been used for tool handles and support poles and

as well as bowls and dishes because it does not crack or split or have any flavor.  It used to be favored to make charcoal powder.

Related to the Alders, Birches, Filberts, and Hophornbeams, the edible part are small nutlets,

Leaves resemble a beech tree

though the bark does have some medicinal uses and the leaves have been employed as an astringent. There are some 33,000 seeds to a pound, though every three to five years the tree will produce larger crops than usual. A heavily seeding tree is between 25 and 50 years old.  As fare goes, the nutlets are neither great nor awful, but they are small, which is why they are diminished by most writers. They can be eaten raw or roasted. Ray Mears also reports the sprouts are edible.

As for its scientific name, Caroliniana (like Virginiana) means North America, or at least central North America. Carpinus is the classical Latin name for the Hornbeam, and comes from “carpentum” a Roman horse-drawn vehicle with hard-wood wheels.

The Hornbeam grows throughout eastern North American, from Florida to Quebec, Louisiana north to Ontario  It is also found in Texas, Arkansas, central and southern Mexico, Guatemala,

Rub pappery wing off nutlet

and western Honduras. In timberland the Hornbeam is considered a tough weed because it is too small for commercial use. However, it makes a good firewood.

Seeds of the Hornbeam are an important food for squirrels. Seeds, buds, and or catkins are consumed by many birds: Ruffed grouse, ring-necked pheasants, bobwhite, turkey, ducks and warblers. The fox will eat the seeds as well. Leaves, twigs, and larger stems are eaten by cottontails, beaver, and white-tailed deer. Deer will eat the shoots but it is not a preferred food. The Hornbeam, however, is heavily used by beaver because it is common their habitat.  It is also the larval host of several butterflies including the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Striped hairstreak, Red-spotted Purple, and Tiger Swallow-tail.

Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant Profile

IDENTIFICATION: A small tree, nearly shrubby, to 25 feet,rounded crown, twisted trunk. Leaves alternate, simple, elliptical to oval, 3 to 5 inches long, smaller on younger trees, pinnately veined, tip tapers to a sharp point, long and short teeth on leaves, smooth green above, paler below. Seeds, small, quarter to one third inch, ribbed nutlet on a 3-lobed, slightly folded leafy bract (resembles a maple seed), clustered on a long hanging stalk.

TIME OF YEAR: Flowers March to May, nutlets late August to winter. Wind can disperse them up to 64 feet from the tree.

ENVIRONMENT: Moist areas of established forests, occasionally fields.  Makes a nice small yard tree, slow growing.

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Nutlets raw or roasted, boiled or ground to add to other flours or food.  Take the papery bracts and rub them between you hands to free the nutlets.

Conyza canadensis: Herb, Fire, Food

Conyza will light your fire!

If you’ve ever made fire with a bow and drill — you know, the Boy Scout way — you also know that choosing (or finding) the right materials is absolutely essential for you to create fire. Add to that a medicinal herb and some culinary uses and “horseweed” deserves a place among the useful weeds we should know about.

Conyza’s leaves appear to grow in a whorl but don’t

A native of North America, Conyza canadensis is now found around the world. First listed in North America in 1640 it was in France 13 years later (presumably via seeds on beaver pelts from Canada.) Native Americans used a tea from the leaves to treat dysentery and a tea from the boiled root for menstrual issues. It’s a diuretic and can make you sweat. Horseweed has also been called Fleabane because the leaves put in pets’ beds help to get rid of fleas.

As for food, young leafy seedlings  and young leaves can be eaten after boiling, dried leaves can be used as a seasoning with a flavor similar to tarragon. American Indians pulverized the young tops and leaves, eating them raw, similar to using an onion. Per 100g of dry weight the leaves have a small amount of protein and fat, more fiber, good amount of carbohydrates, 8.2 grams ash, 1010 mg of calcium, 280 mg phosphorus, and 2610 mg potassium. An essential oil of Conyza is used to flavor candy, condiments and soda. Fresh leaves contain 0.2 – 0.66% essential oil.

Botanically Conyza canadensis (CON-knee-zah, con-KNEE-zah, con-NEIGH-zah kan-ah-DENSE-iss) means flea from Canada. Conyza comes from the Greek word konops, meaning flea. Pliny used the name for a fleabane, which was put in pet and human beds to keep away fleas.

Conyza branches on top before flowering

Conyza canadensis can easily be confused with Conyza sumatrensis and Conyza bonariensis. Conyza canadensis is distinguished by hairless or nearly hairless bracts which lack a red dot at the top but have a brownish inner surface. Conyza sumatrensis has hairy bracts but there are no long hairs near the top of the bracts. Also inner surface of bracts are reddish brown. Conyza bonariensis has densely hairy bracts, and is especially hairy on the stems and around the leaf axils.

While native to North America C. canadensis can be found in The European part of the former USSR, the Caucasus, Western and Eastern Siberia, the Far East, Central Asia, Scandinavia, Middle and Atlantic Europe, the Mediterranean, Asia Minor, Iran, Mongolia, Japan, China, and Australia.

The horseweed is also one of the best, if not the best local material for a drill when making fire with friction. Actually too fragile to be used with a bow, it works very well using the hand method. As you might expect, choose tall straight plants, let dry, remove leaves, and you’re ready. Horsetail is so good often you don’t even need a V-notch to collect a coal, it will produce one in just a depression.

 Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant Profile

IDENTIFICATION: Annual, one to seven feet tall, unbranched except for the flowering stems near top. Central stem ridged, covered with long white hairs; leaves alternate around this stem appearing whorled, similar length, 3-4″ long and ½” across, narrowly lanceolate or oblanceolate, a few teeth toward outer tips, fine white hairs along the edge. Smaller leaves near the blossoms more linear and less likely to have teeth. Many composite blossoms less than 1/8 of an inch across, lasting several weeks.

TIME OF YEAR: Summer to fall

ENVIRONMENT: Prefers full sun and good soil, well watered. But it can grow nearly anywhere, often forms colonies. Drought resistant.

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Dried leaves as a spice, very young leaves and shoots as a green boiled. Stem makes good drill for fire starting.

Indian Strawberry, Potentilla indica

Potentilla indica: Mistaken Identity

One of the first things my uncle’s second wife said to me when I moved from Maine to Florida was “they have strawberries here with no taste.” And she was right, almost.

The Potentilla indica, (poh-ten-TIL-ah  inn-DEE-kuh)  the India Strawberry, indeed has little flavor but it’s not a Southern speciality. It grows in Canada.  In fact, it is found in most places except the Rocky Mountain states* and upper New England. Flavorless or not my cousins and I ate a lot of them.

On first glance the P. indica looks like you have found yourself a brilliantly red, juicy strawberry. And that is probably the public relations problem P. indica has. It’s not what people expect so a lot of commentators dismiss it as worthless, but that’s a bit unfair. The fruit is 3.4% sugar, 1.5% protein and 1.6% ash. It has 6.3 mg of Vitamin C per 100 ml of juice.  An eight-foot patch will produce about 5.5 ounces fruit annually, about the same as wild strawberries, and you can cook the leaves as a green, or use them for tea. Some folks think the fruit has a hint of watermelon flavor. Others say it is sour so there may be some genetic diversity there, either in the plant or our taste buds. There is certainly no harm adding some of the plant to your wilderness stew.

Be forewarned though, there is descent into negative exaggeration. Many sites state the fruit is edible but tasteless. Others translate “edible but tasteless” into “not suitable for human consumption.” Some translate “not suitable for human consumption” into not edible. Others translate “not edible” into poisonous. Ph.d, herbalist and researcher James Duke, PhD., addressed the issue specifically in his “Handbook of Medical Weeds.” He says the plant is “often described as ‘poisonous.’ I have eaten hundreds and find the word insipid more accurate.”  As far back as 1914 author Harrison Garman, writing about weeds of Kentucky, said the fruit was edible and “their appearance leading one to expect them to be more palatable.”

I have eaten many and seem to still be here.  Some 31 years after I had swallowed my first Potentilla indica (then called Duchesnea indica) I read in John Wizeman’s SAS Survival Handbook the berries are “highly poisonous, sometimes fatally.”  I think there is an error somewhere or two differnet varieties for there is an Indian herbalist who calls the P. indica mildly poisonous and a treatment for cancer. In my experience the leaves, besides a potherb, dried make a nice tea. The berries can help stretch other berries when making jam and jelly. On their own they make a mild jelly or juice for those hot summer days.

There are …. blooms… of inaccuracy on the internet. As mentioned one is that the Indian Strawberry is toxic. The FDA Poisonous Plant database puts that rumor to rest. It is not toxic.  Another is that it affects blood. There apparently is no research on that. Some herbal traditions say it increases blood flow and others that it decreases blood flow. There is, however, modern research that suggests the species can stimulate the immune system (in mice at least.)

Potentilla means strong, powerful, and the plant and many of its relatives in a family considered to have good medical value. Indica means from India though the plant is native to southern Asia (though some also think it is native to North America… does it really many any difference?)

* In the fall of 2011 I received an email from “Becky” in Boulder, Colorado, definitely a Rocky Mountain state, and she said she uses Indian Stawberry as a ground cover. It not only thrives, she says, but is good at driving out other plants. Ground cover, food and gets rid of non-edible weeds. Not bad.

Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant Profile

IDENTIFICATION: Low, trailing vine, roots at the nodes. Single flower on long stem,  five yellow petals are notched at tip, five sepals. Long-stemmed leaves have three blunt-toothed leaflets, strawberry-like fruit, seeds on outside.

TIME OF YEAR: Fruits in September in temperate climes, sooner in warm areas.

ENVIRONMENT: Prefers moist, well-draind soil, sunny location with passing shade, can be invasive, spreading freely by runners, more or less evergreen in southern ranges.

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Berries raw, leaves raw in salads, leaves cooked as a green, leaves dried for tea.

Huckleberry, Gaylussacia frondosa

Gaylussacia: Huckleberry History

What’s the difference between a blueberry and a huckleberry?

Gaylussacia dumosa

There’s almost an easy answer. The huckleberry looks like a black blueberry, and it has exactly 10 seeds inside. Also, if you have a magnifying lens with you the underside of the huckleberry leaves will have little yellow dots that sparkle. There are also blue huckleberries, but they still have 10 seeds and the leaves still have little yellow oil glands on the bottom of the leaves. The stony seeds make the huckleberries crunchier. If you want to get technical, blueberries are true berries whereas huckleberries are drupes, but they are also an exception to the drupe rule by having 10 seeds not one, like an olive.

Despite all that huckleberries resemble blueberries and they are used like blueberries, though they are often sweeter. Huckleberries, like blueberries, are in the heath family. There’s 50 species or so in the genus and are found in North and South America, most of them in South America.

Gaylussacia mosieri

Growing up in New England, all the huckleberries I saw where about the same size in height as all the blueberries, and looked similar in leaf structure. Here in the South huckleberries can be small trees with large leaves. You have to look for the fruit and the gold spots on the underside of the leaves. That said there some small versions but I’ve rarely seen them. Locally there are the Gaylussacia frondosa, Gaylussacia dumosa, and Gaylussacia mosieri.

Huckleberry are food for deer, birds, rodents, insects, and bears. Huckleberries are one of the grizzly bear’s favorite foods, comprising up to one third of their diet.  Bears will travel great distances to find them. If you do go huckleberry picking be aware that you may be in some bear’s favorite patch. In fact I was holding a class one day with about a dozen students and I said we could encounter bear and we did in the huckleberry patch, a good-sized black bear who decided a dozen to one was bad odds.

Louis Joseph Gay-Lussac, 1778-1859

The species was named for French chemist Louis Joseph Gay-Lussac, 1778-1859. He discovered the law of combining volumes of gasses. The genus is pronounced Gay-lus-SAY-shee-uh. The species  dew-MOE-sa  (bushy shrubby)  fron-DOE-sa (leafy, fernlike) and moe-see-ERR-ee, named for Charles A. Mosier, 1871-1936, first superintendent of Florida’s first state park, the Royal Palm State Park.

The word “huckleberry” came from a mistake, according none the less than Henry David Thoreau. He said it came from hurtleberry which was a corruption of heart-berg, or hart’s berry. Hurtleberry was also Whurtleberry and Whurtles. Some folks still call blueberries/blackberries Whortles, Wurtles, Wurts and Hurts.  Even some botanical publications when talking about blueberries (Vacciniums) will call them huckleberries. (To read about blueberries go here.) 

Huckleberries where much used by Native Americans. In the Journals of Lewis and Clark, they wrote of Indians using dried berries extensively.  On reaching the Shoshone Tribe on 15 August 1805, Lewis wrote:

Meriwether Lewis, 1774 – 1809

“This morning I arose very early and as hungry as a wolf. I had eaten nothing yesterday except one scant meal of the flour and berries, except the dried cakes of berries, which did not appear to satisfy my appetite as they appeared to do those of my Indian friends. I found on inquire of McNeal that we had only about two pounds of flour remaining. This I directed him to divide into two equal parts and to cook the one half this morning in a kind of pudding with the berries as he had done yesterday, and reserve the balance for the evening. On this new-fashioned pudding four of us breakfasted, giving a pretty good allowance also to the chief, who declared it the best thing he had tasted for a long time. . .”

The tribes made rakes of salmon backbones to strip huckleberries off the bushes. They dried the berries in the sun or smoked them, mashed them into cakes and wrapped these in leaves or bark for storage.

Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant Profile

IDENTIFICATION: G. dumosa is a small shrub seldom larger than two feet. G. frondosa grows larger to about five feet, but is sparely covered with leaves. They will have black to blue berries that resemble blueberries. Look for gold dots on the underside of leaves. They are tiny. You will need a lens. All huckleberries have these spots and ten seeds.  Flowers are bell shaped. G. frondosa is often tall scraggly, G. dumosa, tiny and hidden. G.mosieri to 3 feet, distinguished by the long glandular hairs on the hypanthium, bracts, pedicels, and twigs: 1-1.5 mm versus less than 0.5 mm for the other species.

TIME OF YEAR: Blooms in late May, fruit in the summer, June to August depending on area.

ENVIRONMENT: In northern areas bogs and wet sandy soils, in southern areas dry or moist sands. Here in Florida they tend to be a tiny bush in saw palmetto prairies and pine flat woods. However, the larger version can be found with more moisture and shade.

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Use like blueberries.

Hucklberry Pie

2 tablespoons flour

¾ cup sugar

3 cups huckleberries, washed carefully

Sift flour and sugar together, add berries and mix well. Pour into pastry-lined pie tin, moisten edge of dough with water, cover with top crust and make openings for steam to escape. Press pastry well over edge and trim. Bake in moderately hot oven for about 45 minutes or until crust is brown. (If cannedberries are used, measure a scant ½ cup sugar.)

USDA Forest Service 1954:40 The Lookout Cookbook