Sorting Out Species

Sorting out wild lettuce is one of the more difficult foraging tasks and may require you to watch a plant all season. Complicating the issues are different leaf shapes, presence of hair or spines, and many closely related edibles.  This page is an aid to identification. See other lettuce entries for more information.

Lactuca floridana, Woodland Lettuce

Lactuca floridana: Woodland Lettuce, triangular leaf stem (V-shaped) pure white sap, usually a line of hair on the bottom of the mid-rib of older (lower) leaves. Stems, to seven feet tall, purple on lower portions, smooth, single from base, branching inflorescence.  Blossoms look similar to chicory, 11 to 17 petals, no central disk. Leaves – alternate, long petiole, not clasping the stem. Basal leaves toothed, pinnately lobed, to six inches long and 3.5 wide, lateral lobes round to lance-shaped terminal lobe arrow-shaped. Vase-shape blossoms have overlapping vertical bracts with purple tips.

Click here for more photos of Lactuca floridana.

Lactuca canadensis, Canadian Lettuce, Yellow Lettuce, Wild Lettuce

Lactuca canadensis: Canadian Lettuce, Yellow Lettuce, Wild Lettuce,  Similar to L. floridana, but notable differences.  Leaf stems triangle (V-shaped) yellow flowers and a milky sap that quickly turns tan. Line of hair along bottom of leaf midrib. Leaves lobed, often sharply so, ending in a lance-shaped point. Younger leaves less lobs, pointed, often wavy. Leaf edges not spiny. Can be clasping. Some variations have small sparse hairs on and along the underside of the entire main leaf. Can have basal rosette first year, stalk the second year. While blossoms are yellow they also can be pinkish on tips. Blackish, flat dry seed with only one obvious line on each side.

Click here to see more photos of Lactuca canadensis.

Lactuca scariola, L. serriola

Lactuca scariola, aka, L. serriola, and prickly lettuce, leaves alternating, grasping the stem, lobed or not, six inches long, 3 inches wide, distinct white midrib, hairless, whitish, edges spiny, bottom of midrid had numerous spines, quite prickly. Leaves have terminal lobes larger than lateral lobes, entire leaves usually oblong.  Leaves often have red around the edges. Ray flowers yellow, no disk.  Sap is pure white, and can be irritating. Plant will turn leaves toward the sun and often be on the same plane (vertical.)  The plant resembles the spiny sow thistle (Sonchus asper) but has a solid stem where as sow thistles have hollow stems. Also the sow thistle does not have spines or hairs along the underside of the leaf midrib. Modern Greeks call this petromaroulo.

Click here to see more photos of Lactuca scariola.

Lactuca graminifolia, Wild lettuce

Lactuca graminifolia: Wild lettuce with skinny glass-like leaves, some teeth/lobes on basal leaves. Bluish or white ray flowers, not disks. Found in dry fields and woods, to three feet tall. Smooth, greenish to reddish, milky sap.

Click here to see more photos of Lactuca graminifolia.

Byrsonima lucida: Food and Medicine

Byrsonima lucida

The Locusberry rises to the occasion.  When the soil is poor it is a foot-high tree. When the soil is good, it can be ten feet high. And much father south, it’s a grown up tree.

The variability of the Locusberry, Byrsonima lucida (bur-SO-nim-uh LOO-sid-uh) doesn’t stop there.  When it first flowers, the blossoms are are white. Then they turn to pink and then to crimson. This is an interesting strategy: The different colors attract different butterflies to assure pollination. Also the oil glans on the underside of the petals change color from green to yellow.  Bees visit the blossoms, but not to pollinate per se. They take oil from the glands to make their nests. The fruit turns from green to red-brown, or brown-red,  and persists on the tree. Some think they taste like cranberries, others think they taste soapy.

There are over 135 different Byrsonima from southern Mexico to southeastern Florida, the Caribbean down to Brazil. B. crassifolia (krass-ih-FOH-lee-uh) is considered the best.  The fleshy fruits are called nance and are an underutilized crop in Latin America. In Brazil they are called muruci. The fruits are also important to wildlife including the Golden Conure, moth-butterflies, the Tehuantepec Jackrabbit, an endangered species, and the Florida Box Turtle which thinks the seeds are just great and does its best to spread them around. Byrsonima is from two Greek words, Byrsa meaning hide, and nema, meaning thread. It is a reference to the bark of some of the species. Lucida means bright. clear, lustrous, crassifolia, thick leaves. The bark is often used as a dye which appears to also be antibacterial. .

 Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant Profile

IDENTIFICATION: Shrub or a small tree to 25 feet, smooth light brown bark, leaves opposite, spatulate to obovate, one to two inches long, thin, glossy above, dull below, flowers white or pink changing to yellow or rose, five petals, half inch wide, terminal clusters. Fruit oblong or cylindrical, close to an inch long, dark purple or black.

TIME OF YEAR: Nearly all year

ENVIRONMENT: Rocky pine lands and hammocks

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Ripe fruit edible raw.  They can be made into juices, wine and even ice cream, but only if you find a good tree and you like the taste.

HERB BLURB:

They have been used medicinally. The bark makes a cough medicine and has been used to treat tuberculosis and other bronchial issues. The berries are antidysenteric and astringent. With some of species the bark and berries are mildly laxative. Some are diuretic and emetic. They have also been used against syphilis.

The inner starch of red mangrove propagules is edible cooked. Photo by Green Deane

Mangroves: Marvelous Muck Masters

Red Mangrove cigar-like seed pod

I did an unknown favor close to 30 years ago that may stump some stuffy botanist in the near or distant future, and a mangrove helped me.

Mangroves are coastal trees that don’t mind wet salty feet. Well… that’s not exactly accurate. They tolerate salt. The Red Mangrove is found at or in the water, and endures flooding.  The Black Mangrove is found just above the water and can take occasional flooding well.  

Many years ago I lived in the center of the state (Florida) in an apartment complex that had swales. One particular swale always flooded and what ever bush the complex planted there died. On one of my foraging trips I brought back a Black Mangrove seedling, raised it a bit on my balcony then planted it with a stake in the wet spot. When last I checked it was still happily growing 26 years later. Mangroves used to grow inland in ancient times but have been coastal dweller for eons. I can’t help but wonder if some day some researcher will find that tree, or its remains, and wonder how it got so far inland.

Red Mangrove roots help the tree “walk.”

The Red Mangrove is Rhizophora mangle (rye-ZOFF-for-ruh MAN-glee.) When one mentions costal bushes walking on water it’s the Red Mangrove that comes to mind. Their seed pods litter the beaches at certain times of the year. In central Florida they are bushes but the farther south one goes towards the equator the larger they become eventually reaching tree status. Its dried leaves make a nice tea with tannin, 11.68% tannin. The same leaves have also been used as tobacco and make wine, as can young fruit.  Further, its fruit is actually not a fruit at all but a propagule, an embryonic root. It starts out as a bud but grows somewhat like a curved, thin-ringed cigar and when dry can be smoked like one, if you snip off each end. You can also make a whistle out of it. The bitter inner portion of the same hypocotyl when green can be eaten as an emergency food cooked well in a lot of water. By the way, they can float for a year in salt water before rooting. Recent research shows extracts made from the bark of the Red Mangrove can reduce gastric ulcers, is antimicrobial and contains antioxidants. Red Mangrove twigs can be used to clean teeth.

Red Mangrove distribution.

The leaves made into a meal make good cattle food (if calcium carbonate is added) and are 7.5% protein, 3.6% fat, 13.9% fiber and 2.8% carotene. Per 100 grams the leaf meal has 1.35 grams of calcium,  0.88 grams magnesium, 0.65 grams potassium, 0.14 grams phosphorus, 54 mg of iodine, manganese 30 mg, 15 mg of iron, 4.3 mg of zinc, 3.5 mg of copper,  ,13 mg of B1 (thiamin) 19 mg of B2 (riboflavin) B3 (niacin) 240 mg, B5 (pantothenic acid 5.3 mg) 32 mg of B9 (folic acid)  0.52 mg cobalt and 46 mg of choline. Amino acids in descending amounts were arginine, lysine, glycine, methionine and cystine. 

Supplemental 106 grain tablets were made of red mangrove leaves in the early 1950s. An analysis showed per 100 grams they had calcium 1.35 grams, iodine 53.60 mg, magnesium 880 mg, phosphorus 138 mg, potassium 650 mg, sulphur 790 mg, copper 8.30 mg, sodium 920 mg, zinc 4.30 mg, iron 15.20 mg, manganese 30 mg, boron 8.30 mg chlorophyll 2.24 mcg per gram, folic acid 0.68 mcg per gram, cobalt 5.20 ppm, fluorine 144 ppm and crude fiber 10.3%. 

Black Mangrove distribution.

The leaves at one time were considered a source material once for human protein but that was sidelined by the plants high tannin content. 

Its botanical name, Rhizophora mangle, is in part from Greek and part Taino. Rhizo means root; phora, from pherein, means to bear. Mangle (via Potuguese) comes from the word, mangue, which is what the Taino called the Red Mangrove. The word “mangrove” also comes from mangue.

Black Mangroves propagules are edible, too.

The sprouting propagules of the Black Mangrove, Avicennia germinans, (av-ih-SEN-ee-uh JER-min-ans) can also be used as a famine food, if cooked. They are toxic raw and resemble huge pointed lima beans. The Black Mangrove’s leaves are often coated with salt, which makes collecting convenient should you be needing salt. Avicennia means “of Avicenna.” Avinenna was an Arabian physician in the tenth century AD. The genus was named after him. Germinans is germinating, starting to root while on the tree.

Traditionally nothing is edible on the White Mangrove, Laguncularia racemosa, la-gun-koo-LAY-ree-uh ray-sem-OH-sa.) Its bark has a long herbal history for treating various ailments. The shurb’s high tannin content makes it astringent. It was used as a fever tonic to treat scurvy, dysentery, and skin ulcers. It is reported to have anti-tumor activity.  Enthobotanical studies do not show native Indians eating the leaves of the White Mangrove in the Northern Hemisphere. There is a report (Hocking 1997) that the leaves are boiled for greens in Scandinavia and Great Britain. Since they do not grow there they must be imported.  Laguncuiaria means like a Lagunculo, for its flask-shaped seed.  Racemosa is racime-like, think of a flower spike shaped like a tail.

White mangrove fruit are not edible.

And the poor Buttonwood, Conocarpus erectus, (kawn-oh-KAR-pus ee-RECK-tus)  never viewed on its own. The Buttonwood makes a nice landscape tree, is high in tannin and can be used to make a smokeless, high grade charcoal. The wood of the C. erectus and C. erectus var. sericeus can be used to smoke fish and meat.  Conocarpus means cone shaped fruit and erectus, upright. Sericeus (suh-REE-see-uhs) means silky.

Warning: In Australia there is a white mangrove (Excoecaria agallocha) the sap of which can make you blind.

Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant Profile

Red Mangroves propagule cooked.You scrape out the starch-like material.

IDENTIFICATION: The Red Mangrove has cigar-like fruit and ovate to lanceolate leaves slightly wider at the end. The  Black Mangrove, also called the Honey Mangrove, has seeds that resemble gigantic lima beans and small ovate leaves. 

TIME OF YEAR: Mangroves can seed all year but they favor spring. As evergreens the leaves are available year round.  

ENVIRONMENT: If you’re not standing in smelly tidal muck with all kinds of insects bothering you you are not in the right environment. Salty coastal areas of salt and brackish water.

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Red: leaves for tea, smoking or wine, fruit for wine, smoking, inner starchy core for survival food. Black: Sprouting seeds boiled, salt off leaves.

Maples: How Sweet It Is

It’s amazing what you can do with two trees and a cow: Maple walnut ice cream. It was the prime ice cream of choice when I was young. It can still be found regionally, sometimes, and never overseas. Then I have to settle for chocolate ice cream, another marriage between bovine and bark.

Maple leaf, think Canadian Flag

While maples are associated with colder climates, several species of maples grow in the South and at least four of them in Florida, two of them reportedly better for making syrup than the famous sugar maples of Vermont.

To anyone who grew up in northern climes, finding maples in Florida is a bit of a challenge because they aren’t the huge, craggy trees of up country. But, they are here; shorter, thinner, but just as welcoming to the forager. With one exception They all provide the same edibles: Sap, seeds, inner bark and sweet young leaves. (You did know there was more to the maples than syrup.)

Maple seeds with wings

The four maples commonly found in Florida include the Florida Maple (Acer floridanum AY-ser flor-i-DANE-um) sugar maple (Acer saccharum  AY-ser sack-uh-RYE-num)  red maple (Acer rubrum  AY-ser ROO-brum ) and the Box Elder (Acer negundo AY-ser nuh-GUHN-doe)  with the first and last lauded for sugar production. There may also be a smattering of other maples as well, such as variations on the Southern Sugar Maple, the Chalk Maple and assorted imports such as Japanese maples. In usage, most maples are the same, no matter where they are.

The most famous maple product is maple syrup. I never “sugared” as a young man but I had a neighbor who did, Bill Gowan, and I helped him often. He had about a dozen sugar maples, and seven kids to feed. He also heated and cooked with coal so there was always a hot kitchen stove to boil the sap down to syrup, a 30-to-1 reduction in a good year.  Every spring for many years I helped him collect the sap, a daily ritual that including emptying buckets brimming with the clear liquid. Inside the kitchen his wife, Maxine nee Lambert, kept a huge two-burner copper pot boiling all day long to reduce the sap, leaving their house very humid. For my labors I always got a quart of fantastic home-made maple syrup. That on buckwheat pancakes was probably as close to gastronomic heaven as I will ever get. 

The “Box Elder” is a Maple

All the maples will produce sap for sugaring, but they vary in amount and quality. The odd-man-out maple, one that does not look like a maple, is Acer negundo, the Box Elder. It  was more esteemed than the sugar maples and was a major source of sugar in the South. In fact, until sorghum and sugarcane were cultivated maple trees were the main source of sugar in the New World.  Somehow Europeans never discovered how to tap their own maples. Distilling the sap is a dissertation unto itself. Box Elder seeds are NOT edible They contain hypoglycin A, the same toxin that’s found in Ackee.

Regardless of species — there are over 200 including Birch, Hickories, Sycamore and Ashes — tapping trees is done the same way. You either bore a small hole into the foot-wide or more tree, on an upward slant, and tap in a hollow spigot. Another way is  driving in a half-tube metal spigot. Driving the metal spigot makes enough of a wound to get sap without drilling a hole. A bucket is hung from either tap and collects the sap. At the end of the season the tap or spigot is removed. Drilled holes are filled with a hardwood dowel. Next year you tap in a different spot.

Next on the list of maple edibles, in nutritional terms, are the winged seeds, actually samaras. To eat them you removed the wings and then parch, roast or boil them. Each winged helicopter pair produces two seeds. You can also eat them raw and should try one first. If it is bitter you can leach the seeds to reduce the bitterness. If they don’t taste good, take heart. Like acorns, they can vary tree to tree so try another one if they are not palatable. Again the seeds of the Box Elder (Acer negundo) are toxic. 

The inner bark, the cambium, is next on the maple nutrition list, the same bark that delivers the sap. It can be eaten raw, boiled or roasted. Indians also dried it then pounded it into a powder, as they did inner barks of several trees including pine. Left over fiber can be sifted out. Lastly, young leaves can be eaten raw or cooked. They are sweet and delicate. But like all greens, provide the least amount of nutrition. By the way, dry or hwited red maple (Acer rubrum) leaves are toxic to horses.They can have pyrogallol which inhibits the ability of red blood cells to carry oxygen. 

Euopeans never tapped their maple trees or sycamores.

Acer is the Dead Latin name for the Maple and literally means “sharp” perhaps because it was used to make spears and lances. Floridanum means Florida. Rubrum means red. Saccharum, sweet, and Negundo, which is from the Sanskrit word nirgundi which literally means “that which protects the body from diseases.” The Box Elder maple did not get that name because it was good at reducing disease but because it resembled another plant that does, the Vitex negundo.  The word “maple” started out as mapulder in Old Saxon then mapultreow in Old English then mapel in Middle English.

Maple Beer

Francois Andre Michaux, 1770 – 1855

The following was written by botanist F. A. Michaux, left,  in 1853, in his book “North American Sylva.” “Upon four gallons of boiling water pour one quart of Maple molasses [syrup] add a little yeast or leaven to excite the fermentation, and a spoonful of the essence of spruce: A very pleasant and salutary drink is thus obtained.” Francois is the son of  Andre Michaux, also a famous botanist, and for whom Gopher Apples got their botanical name, Licania Michauxii. Many Internet amateurs get the two botanists confused and say the photo at the left from 1851 is of the senior Michaux. Don’t think so. The senior Michaux died in 1802 some 20 years before the first photograph was made. To see a younger rendition of Francois read Gopher Apples.

Maple Seeds Taste Like Peas

To collect seeds run your hand down the branch stripping them. One at a time peel off the outer skin, what we called the “whirlygig” when I was a kid. Cut the end and squeeze out the seed. There is a seed on each “wing.” They resemble peas or beans. Taste some seeds, if they are not bitter enjoy them raw, or roast them, or even boil them. If they are bitter — that varies with species and when harvested — you will need to leach them like acorns either soaking in several changes of cold water or cooking in boiled water. To roast seeds put them in a 350 F oven for 10 minutes or less. You can also dehydrate the seeds. Roasted or dry seeds can be ground into flour. Don’t eat the Acer nugundo seeds. 

Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant Profile

IDENTIFICATION: There are two groups of maples. One usually has opposite leaves, lobed, think Canadian Flag. The others have alder shaped leaves, ovals often with teeth. The leaves of the Box Elder can be  green and white mixed.

TIME OF YEAR: For sugaring and collecting inner bark, the spring with warm days and cold nights. Seeds in the late winter/early spring, young leaves when ever present, best in spring. Bark as needed. Here in Florida maples can be seeding in late December to early January. Much later in the spring farther north.

ENVIRONMENT: Southern maples like damp, moist soil, river banks. I know several that grow in the Wekiva River swamp. In northern climes, on forested hill and mountain sides.

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Sap has to be boiled to reduce it 30 to 50 times, seeds raw, parched, roasted or boiled without wings. Taste first for bitterness. Inner bark dried, pounded, then cooked. You can eat the wings if you don’t want to remove them but they cam be bitter and hard to digest.

HERB BLURB

Native American Indians used an infusion of maple bark to wash wounds, treat back or limb pains, hemorrhoids, postmenopausal ailments and as a vaginal wash.