[BerryDingle]

Sweet Fern (Comptonia peregrina)

Edible Sweet Fern is most widely used to neutralize poison Ivy effects. Just boil up some green leaves in a sauce pan of water for a few minutes to release it's natural juices, let cool, remove the leaves with plenty of the water and rub it over the affected area. This is also a palatable tea which can also be made from dry leaves or flower tops used as a seasoning. Sweet Fern grows a small edible fruit.

Sweet Fern is used for several medicinal purposes besides treatment for Poison Ivy, Poison Oak, it relieves bee stings, nettle stings and draws out infections. Leaves can be configured into a poultice for toothaches and sprains and as a Parasiticide against ringworm.

Sweet Fern dried leaves are also used to line fruit baskets to preserve fruit longer. Crushed dried leaves repel insects, thrown on a campfire, it will drive mosquitoes away, or it can double as a repellent/incense.

Sweet Fern grows from Georgia to North Eastern Canada.

[MHGinTN]

Our kind of thread, m’Lady!

[thecodont]

Hollyleaf cherry (Prunus ilicifolia)

California native. Evergreen. Big cherries (sweet, but with tough skin) and very large seeds. The seeds are also edible (and high in protein) but first must be ground and leached with hot water several times to rid them of hydrocyanic acid.

http://plants.usda.gov/plantguide/pdf/cs_pril.pdf

The pits were then rubbed to remove any remaining pulp and skin before being spread out in the sun to dry. When dry, the pits were cracked with a stone and the kernels removed. The kernels contain hydrocyanic acid, a bitter tasting poisonous compound, which was removed by a leaching process prior to cooking. The kernels, either left whole or pounded into a meal, were then leached in several changes of cold or warm water. The ground meal was used as a base for soup and made into tortilla or tamale-like foods.

[canaan]

This has been moved to the eligibility thread for some reason...?

[piasa]

The redbud tree produces edible pink flowers and pea-like pods. You have to get the pods young if you want them tender. They are quite tasty in a salad along with young sassafreass leaves and wood violet flowers which are to be found around the same tame of year and in the same locales.

Arrowroot- duck potatoes- are also common in most swamplands.

In the woods there is a pretty flower called spring beauties- they rise from a small tuber and grow in thick colonies. They are a bit dry but pretty good roasted and mashed.

The apple of a mayapple plant is edible when ripe, but don't eat the rest of the plant as it is poisonous. The roots are medicinal when prepared the right way but the plant was formerly used for abortion.

Down here in Florida there's wild taro; it's fairly common in the cypress swamps. You can bake the roots.

Another common weed is Spanish Needle- or Beggar-ticks. It has a white flower with a gold center and the flower looks a bit like a single zinnia. The wild turkeys love them so I use them to feed my exotics birds but the greens and flowers are good for people, too, fresh or wilted.

[Sawdring]

The US isn’t North Korea yet.

[OB1kNOb]

Poke salad should be up in another few weeks around here. Can't wait. It's not springtime without a big fresh mess of boiled/fried poke salad. Better than fresh spinach.

On our 100 acre homestead which is mostly forested I've found a few large black walnut, wild persimmon, sassefras, and hickory nut trees by the hundreds. Although not edible, we also have a number of "toothache trees" (prickly ash), used for medicinal purposes by old-timers. Cut a small piece of slick bark off the trunk, chew it a little to release the juice and then stick it on your gums next to the bad tooth, and in just a minute or two that area becomes numb temporarily reducing the toothache. I always love to watch folks reaction when I get them to try a piece for the first time. LOL!

[Joya]

Thanks. Marking.

[Joya]

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