Asclepias: Some like it hot, some like it cold

The question is to boil or not to boil.

Milkweed in blossom

Actually that’s not quite accurate. There is general agreement that young milkweed shoots, leaves and pods are edible after boiling. The two questions are how many times should you change the water and should the water always be boiling or can you put them in cold water to start?  Worse, at least two authoritative sources disagree on those exact things, and exactly the opposite. A third authority considers them famine food only. It is best to say you will have to experiment. We want to get rid of the bitterness because it is toxic. Said another way, don’t eat any milkweed that is bitter after cooking. Taste it and wait 30 seconds or so.  Regardless of how cooked, they give me a significant stomach ache. Others folks they don’t bother.

If you read only medical references they will frighten you with talk of cardiac glycosides and one gets the impression that if you as much as look at a milkweed you will drop dead. The state of North Carolina says milkweed is toxic but only in high amounts. That’s good news. The University of Texas says North Carolina also says all milkweeds (Asclepias) shoots, leaves and pods are edible cooked. To quote them:

“Although milkweeds are poisonous raw, the young shoots, leaves and seed pods are all edible cooked. When placed in cold water, brought to a boil and simmered till tender, milkweeds are said to be delicately flavored and harmless. (Poisonous Plants of N.C. State) The flower buds, nectar-sweet flowers and seeds are also edible.”

That may be so but personally, I doubt it. I would not try any milkweeds with skinny leaves. They tend to have more of the bad stuff and I have not as of yet met an edible skinny-leaf milkweed. Again, do not eat any bitter parts of the milkweed.

When most books talk about edible milkweed they are referring to Asclepias syriaca. (ass-KLEE-pee-us  sihr-rye-AK-ah.) It’s the most common particularly up north and was all over the place where I grew up, its rough pods unmistakable. Here in central Florida they are no where to be seen. The one I notice the most often here in the wild is Asclepias humistrata. Actually five were in medicinal use in Florida with no mention of them as food.The pods are small and they taste awful.

Milkweed pods

As for the A. syriaca the young sprouts, buds and immature pods were eaten by the Iroquois and prairie tribes. The Chippewas stewed the flowers. The cooked buds taste like okra. Flowers were also dried for winter use. It was also used as a fiber and medicinally as an urinary aid, a contraceptive and the sap as a wart remover.

Asclepias was the name of a legendary Greek physician and god. That is the name the Greeks used for the plant. Syriaca means of Syria, which it is not. In fact, A. syriaca is a native of eastern North America but Linnaeus thought it was from the Middle East. Curiously the rules that govern the naming of plants do not allow a name to be changed because a geographical mistake was made. There has to be a botanical reasons to change a name. The name Pinus palustris means swamp pine yet the tree (the Long Leaf Pine) grows only in high dry areas. It has been denied a name change. Remember that the next time you think botany is a rational science.

And while I had hoped to avoid a particular controversy I get emails on the topic of whether the common milkweed is bitter or not and comments that if my milkweed is bitter I must have made a mistake and picked dogbane. I know two things: 1) The milkweed that grew in our pasture in Pownal, Maine, from the 1950s through the 1970’s was Asclepias syriaca and 2) it was bitter, not horribly so, but bitter.  Other areas of the nation Asclepias syriaca is not bitter and people write to me telling me milkweed is not bitter. How can we reconcile this? Sam Thayer, author of Forager’s Harvest and Nature’s Garden, has a possible answer: Introgression. Specifically that is the incorporation of genes from one species or subspecies into another related species or subspecies. We would commonly call it cross pollination.

Said another way where the common milkweed is not bitter it tends to be the only species of milkweed around. Where it is bitter it tends to be one of many species around, the others of which are bitter and not eaten. Plants can’t be choosy. If the pollen fits fertilization takes place even if it the suitor is a bitter relative. This also happens locally among certain palms such as the Pindo Palm and Queen Palm sharing traits. So yes there is non-bitter common milkweed, and there is bitter common milkweed, and there is poisonous bitter dogbane. Ya have to be careful.

To help you tell Milkweed and Dogbane apart, the underside of the milkweed leaf and stem are slightly hairy. Dogbane is not. Veins on the top of milkweed leaf are light green and prominent, on dogbane they are not as prominent and are cream-colored. Milkeweed leaves do not squeak when rubbed, dogbane leaves do. Milkweed leaves grow smaller as you go up the stalk, dogbane leaves grow slightly larger. The milkweed stalk is hollow, the dogbane is solid.

Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant Profile

IDENTIFICATION: A. syriaca, the most common northern milkweed,  is an erect perennial.  Three to six feet tall, milky juice, mostly single, stout, hairy stems. Flowers are pink to pink, 5 parted, densely-flowered drooping umbrels. A. syriaca has rough fat pods and leaves with short stalks. Make sure you have the right species. It can mean the difference between a pleasant meal or a bitter  pile on  your plate.

TIME OF YEAR: Early to mid-summer

ENVIRONMENT: Upland prairies, fields, meadows, waste places, prefers full sun

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Young shoots, leaves and pods boiled in several changes of water. That can vary greatly, some are not bitter some are. Bitter ones should be boiled in copious amounts of water at least once. Whether cold water to start or boiling water to start will have to be learned by experimenting. If the cooked vegetable is bitter, try a different method. Gather leaves in early spring when they first open. Gather seed pods in summer. Parboil for three minutes, then discard bitter water and replace with clean boiling water. (Cold water tends to fix bitterness, other times hot water does.) Repeat this process three times, then cook the leaves for 15 minutes before seasoning them. A pinch of soda can be added during cooking to break down the fiber and improve flavor. The young shoots under six inches long, found during the spring are used as a vegetable. Remove the fuzz on the shoot by rubbing it off. Preparation is the same as for the leaves. Collect flower buds and flowers during the summer. Dip buds in boiling water for one minute, batter and deep fry. When cooked like broccoli, buds are similar to okra. The flower clusters may also be battered and fried. After cooking, buds, flowers and leaves can be frozen. Use like okra in soups. A bit of baking soda in the water will help break down the tough fibers in the seed pod. Parboiled for several minutes, the young pods may be slit, rolled in a cornmeal/flour mixture and fried or frozen for future use.

 Thespesia populnea: Coastal Cuisine

One of my uncles had the type of personality that where ever he hung his hat, that was home. The Milo is much the same way.

A probable native of India, one would think the Milo has spent all of creation in Florida and the Caribbean, it’s so at home in the environment. In truth, it is an escaped ornamental plant and in that regard rare. Ornamentals naturalize all the time but here in Florida they are usually toxic. The Milo is not. It is also cultivated in Central and South America and no doubt will soon be “at home” there as well. In fact, in the U.S. Virgin Islands it has taken over some beaches used by nesting sea turtles. In Florida it is found from about the space center and Tampa southward.

Thespesia populnea

The Milo doesn’t like to be cold but can take mild frosts once established. It resists salt, spray, wind  and grows happily on the shores of bays and inlets. It can live on silty land, coral, sand dunes and soil of high rock content. Like the mangroves, it provides shelter and food to many denizens of the coastal swamps. We can eat it, too. Young leaves, buds, and flowers are edible raw or cooked.

The Milo makes excellent wood for carving, the bark can be used for cordage, and for caulking. In West Africa the leaves are used to wrap food. Medicinally, the Milo has been used throughout Polynesia. A decoction of the leaves has been used to treat coughs and headaches, an infusion of the bark to treat intestinal diseases, and a drink from the leaves and bark to treat fevers in teething babies. Plant extracts have anti-viral and anti-bacterial activity.

The botanical name, Thespesia populnea, means “divine” and “like the poplar.”  Said thess-PEEZ-ee-uh  pop-ULL-nee-uh, the divine part refers to the flower and the leaves do resemble the leaves of the popular, a cold climate tree. Also don’t confuse the Milo with a close cousin, the Mahoe, (Hibiscus tiliaceus) see separate entry. The Milo has seven prominent veins in the leaf. The Mahoe has nine or eleven. The Mahoe also has dense star-shaped hairs on lower leaf surfaces, the Milo does not. Don’t confuse either with another close cousin, the Hibiscus pernambucensis which has solid-yellow flowers, without the dark center. See a separate entry for H. pernambucensis.

Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant Profile

IDENTIFICATION: Shrub or tree to 50 feet, leaves heart-shaped, two to five inches long, flowers hibiscus-like but cupped to three inches long, crinkled, pale yellow when first opened with purple-red throat, dark red by end of day, can stay on tree for several days, seeds brown, 3/8 inch by 1/4 inch long.

TIME OF YEAR: Flowers spring and summer, young leaves year round.

ENVIRONMENT: Coastal hammocks, shoes, bays, inlets, keys, mainland, landscaping.

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Young leaves, buds, and flowers raw or cooked. Flowers can be boiled or batter dipped and fried.

Hibiscus tiliaceus: Edible Chameleon

It’s difficult to find a hibiscus you don’t like, including the Mahoe.

In fact, to this writer’s knowledge all hibiscus are edible in some way. They are not all edible in the same way though and the palatability varies greatly. With some it is the flower, others the leaves, sometimes the seed oil only. But, if you have a hibiscus, you have some kind of edible some way.

Maheo blossoms change color from morning to night

Like most hibiscus the Mahoe’s blossom lasts only a day. The blossoms stars out yellow but by the end of the day is turning maroon red…. a dynamic flower, and edible, cooked or raw. So are the young leaves, cooked. The roots are edible cooked and the inner bark, the cambium, can be suckled of its moisture and nutrients. The bark can be peeled off in strips and used as is for fishing line. It was also used to make cloth in the Pacific Islands before cotton was made available. And if you use a bow and spindle and spin a hardwood spindle on a baseboard of dry Mahoe, it makes a burning ember for a fire very easily.  Actually, the flowers can be boiled like a green or dipped in batter and fried. The leaves can also be fermented into a sauce to make a tempeh starter or boiled in salted water to make a beverage called Onge Tea.

The next reasonable question is why do the blossoms turn color? There are two possible answers that can coexist. One is that the plant is making antioxidants to protect it from the sunlight. The other is the change in color allows the shrub to attract different pollinators who are attracted to different colors.  That leads one to infer that flowers collected later in the day may be more beneficial that those collected in the morning.

The botanical name for the Mahoe, Hibiscus tiliaceus (Hye-BISK-us til-ee-AH-see-us) is quite straight forward and not some naughty word play by Carl Linneaus, who started naming plants.  Hibiscus is from the Greek word iviscos (ee-VIS-kos) where we get the word viscus and viscosity in English. It means “sticky” because most Hibiscus are mucilaginous. And the species name itself is very sensible. Tiliaceus means like the Tilia, or the Basswood tree (aka Linden tree and Lime tree.) The Mahoe leaves do resemble the Tilia leaves… roughly heart shaped and a very long, pointed tip. Linnaeus got it all right for a change. Mahoe is from the Taino language of the Caribbean and refers to two trees, the Mahoe, and the Blue Mahoe ( Talipariti elatum) the latter a much larger tree.

Don’t confuse the Mahoe with the Milo, or Thespesia populnea, see separate entry. The Mahoe has 9 to 11 prominent veins in the leaf. The Milo has seven. The  Mahoe also has dense star-shaped hairs on lower surfaces, the Milo does not. Don’t confuse either with  the H. pernambucensis which has solid-yellow flowers, without the dark center.

Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant Profile

IDENTIFICATION: Shrub to a large tree, tangled growth, in wet areas low branches root in the water, leaves nearly round, Basswood like, short tip, four to eight inches wide, shiny green above, soft, fuzzy gray-green below, flowers cupped 5-petaled, five petals, dark center, yellow turning maroon falling at night or the next morning. Ten-pointed calyx, five seams, seeds hard, brown, 1/8 inch

TIME OF YEAR: Year round in warmer claims, nearly year round in subtropical/temperate areas.

ENVIRONMENT: Coastal hammocks, dunes, damp mainland, landscaping

METHOD OF PREPARATION: The flowers can be boiled like a green or dipped in batter and fried. The leaves boiled like a green or  fermented into a sauce to make a tempeh starter. They can be boiled in salted water to make a beverage called Onge Tea. The inner bark is edible as well, though usually suckled. Roast the roots.

Anredera cordifolia: Pest or Food Crop?

The Madeira Vine is a love/hate relationship. You will either hate it — as many land owners and governments do — or you will love it for it is a prolific source of food.

Anredera cordifolia's edible leaves, cooked

Apparently far more valued in the past than the present, the plant has quite a history. Anredera cordifolia is native to the dryer areas of South America such as Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, southern Brazil and southern Argentina. It got to the United States soon after the country was founded, or the early 1800s. It was in England by 1835 and was introduced into southern Europe where it is naturalized from Portugal to Serbia. In the United States is naturalized from Florida to Texas. It’s also found in the southern half of California and in Hawaii. In South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii it is a serious “invasive weed.” Australia (New South Wales) spends hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to fight it.  (Historical note: It was often planted outside of latrines in Australia because it was thought the leaves had a laxative effect.)

Record of intentional cultivation might go back to 1821 in Florida but we aren’t sure because two plants were called the same thing. The Rev. Jedidiah Morse of Charleston Ma. then New Haven Cn., set out in 1820 to survey Indian tribes in the United States. Writing about the St. John’s River in Florida and its border lands on 15 July of that year he said:

Air bubils are not edible, but roots are, cooked

“These light lands are not suitable for Indian corn. The best produces scarcely twenty bushels per acre. Indigo, cotton, madder, sugar cane, the mulberry tree, the date, the olive, the pomegranate, the almond, the Madeira vine, the coffee tree, beyond the twenty seventh degree, the lemon, and above all, the orange trees, thrive well, on choosing suitable soil and exposure.” (page 148, report to the Secretary of War of the United States on Indian Affairs.)

The problem is we really don’t know what Morse was referring to. In his day the common grape vine was also called the Madeira Vine, so was it an Anredera he saw or a Vitis (grape?) Natives in Florida did grow grapes, especially some escaped cultivars left over from much earlier Spanish inhabitations.  However, grape production from escaped or wild grapes in Florida is iffy. Their fruiting is sporadic, often skipping many years, plus there were wild grapes growing without any tending. Cultivating a fast growing starchy root crop like the Madeira Vine, however, makes sense.

Anredera cordifolia in blossom, note flowers droop

As the plant is subtropical it will survive only a light frost. From its roots it will grow some 130 feet a year, with an occasional growth spurt of three feet a week.  It can have lateral stems up to 65 feet long.  The vine does not have tendrils but it climbs by twisting (at eye level) lower left to upper right, the so-called Z-twist. It is interesting that most edibles climb that way whereas most toxics climb lower right to upper left, the S- twist. The Madeira Vine has long drooping flower spikes covered with tiny white blossoms (looks like their common name of Lamb’s Tails.) Their aroma ranges from apple-ish to almond-ish. One of the main identifying characteristics is large prolific clusters of tiny bulbils (sometimes called “tubers) in the air. Plant them and the new crop takes off, or spreads wildly, depending upon your view.

Not only are the underground roots (actually rhizomes) edible but the evergreen leaves as well. They are bright, shiny green on top, lighter green underneath, no hair, short petioles, about five inches long, waxy, roughly heart-shaped. The small bulbils are not edible but have been used medicinally to reduce inflammation, improve ulcers and protect the liver. They might also increase nitric oxide to the brain (see herb blurb below.)

Anredera leptostachys' blossoms point up

Anredera (ah-REE-der-uh or an-RED-er-uh) is thought to come from the Spanish word Enredadra, which refers to any twining or climbing weed. Cordifolia (chord-dee-FOAL-lia) means heart-shaped leaves) As to why it is called the Madeira Vine is also unknown. One author, Edwin Menninger in his 1970 publication Flowering Vines of The World, suggest the plant first went to the island of Madeira and then back to the northern New World.  There are about 12 different species of Anredera, many of them edible, and is related to Malabar Spinach, a garden vegetables in warmer climates. Incidentally the Island of Madeira is called said because in Portuguese it means “wood” from the Latin “materia.”  This is because the island was once heavily wooded. That;s also where we get the word “material.”

Lastly, if you’re in southern Florida or Texas and come across a Madeira Vine with up-turned flower spikes and no ariel tubers you have A. leptostachys (syn A. vesicaria) aka Cuban Ivy. It’s edibility is similar to the Madeira Vine as is the A. baselloides. In fact, the Madeira vine is sometime mistakenly called

[stextbox id=”custom” caption=”Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant Profile”]

IDENTIFICATION: Hairless perennial creeper, fleshy rhizome, bright green, alternate, fleshy/waxy heart-shaped leaves with reddish-brown stems. Small fragrant, cream flowers in slender drooping spikes. Tubers produced underground, bulbils on stems.

TIME OF YEAR: Depends upon location, mid-spring in Florida, summer to fall in some areas, January to May in others.

ENVIRONMENT: Edges of forest, rocky places, coastal areas, hammocks, prefers warm, moist fertile soils.

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Leaves cooked and used like spinach. Underground roots cooked, baked preferable. Can be eaten raw but the texture is gooey. Above ground bulbils (tubers) are medicinal.[/stextbox]

HERB BLURB

APeptides. 2007 Jun;28(6):1311-6. Epub 2007 Apr 27.

Ancordin, the major rhizome protein of madeira-vine, with trypsin inhibitory and stimulatory activities in nitric oxide productions. Chuang MT, Lin YS, Hou WC. St. Martin De Porres Hospital, Chiayi 600, Taiwan.

Anredera cordifolia (Ten.) Steenis, or the synonymous name of Boussingaultia baselloides or Boussingaultia gracilis var. pseudobaselloides, is a South American species of ornamental succulent vine, commonly known as the madeira-vine. The fresh leaves of madeira-vine are frequently used as vegetables. A. cordifolia is an evergreen climber that grows from fleshy rhizomes. The rhizome contained one major (23kDa) protein band under non-reducing condition in the SDS-PAGE. The first 15 amino acids in the N-terminal region of the major protein band (23kDa), named tentatively ancordin, were KDDLLVLDIGGNPVV which were highly homologous to sequences of winged bean seed protein ws-1, Medicago truncatula proteinase inhibitor, soybean trypsin inhibitor, and sporamin. By using activity stains, the ancordin showed trypsin inhibitory activity in the SDS-PAGE gel which was found not only in rhizomes but also in aerial tubers, but few in fresh leaves. The crude extracts from rhizomes of madeira-vine were directly loaded onto trypsin-Sepharose 4B affinity column. After washing with 100mM Tris-HCl buffer (pH 7.9) containing 100mM NaCl, the ancordin was eluted directly by 0.2M KC1-HC1 buffer (pH 2.0). In calculation, the purified protein exhibited 0.0428mug trypsin inhibition/mug ancordin (corresponding to 0.53 unit of TPCK-treated trypsin inhibited/mug ancordin). The purified ancordin was used to evaluate the nitric oxide productions in RAW264.7 cells in the presence of polymyxin B (poly B, 50microg/ml) to eliminate the lipopolysaccharide (LPS) contaminations. It was found that ancordin (1.25-5microg/ml) could dose-dependently (R=0.954) stimulate the nitric oxide (NO) productions (expressed as nitrite concentrations) in RAW264.7 cells without significant cytotoxicity, and kept the similar effects in NO production in 6.25microg/ml ancordin.

AnAntinociceptive effects of the tubercles of Anredera leptostachys

M. P. Tornos, M. T. Sáenzhttp, M. D. García and M. A. Fernández

Departamento de Farmacología, Facultad de Farmacia, Universidad de Sevilla, C/ Profesor García Gonzalez s/n, 41012- Seville, Spain

The tubercles of Anredera leptostachys are used as an antinociceptive and anti-inflammatory in the popular medicine of the Caribbean basin. In the present work, the anti-nociceptive and central nervous system depressant (CNS) effects of the methanolic extract from the tubercles of A. leptostachys have been evaluated. The antinociceptive activity was assayed in several experimental models in mice: acetic acid, formalin and hot plate tests. The methanolic extract (250 and 500 mg/kg) significantly and in a dose-dependent manner reduced the nociception induced by the acetic acid (P<0.001). In the hot plate test, the extract significantly increased the latency time of jump although it slightly increased the licking time. The naloxone partially reversed the antinociception of the extract in the hot plate test. In the formalin test, the methanolic extract also significantly reduced the painful stimulus but the effect was not dose-dependent. In the study of the CNS-depressant effects, the extract was found to produce a significant reduction of the exploratory capacity with both doses assayed (P<0.001). The muscular relaxation only decreased with the higher doses assayed (P<0.001). The escape instinct was also significantly reduced (P<0.001) by the two doses of the extract and both were more effective than standard drugs morphine and diazepam.