bkmk
We may need to know this someday.
The NYPD arrested someone for picking weeds in Central Park? OMG that is so insane!
Arrested and handcuffed for eating a dandelion? Is it illegal to cut foliage in Central Park?
I guess that makes sense. But I wouldn’t eat one from Central Park; I would imagine there are pesticides and who knows what on the foliage. I eat mine, occasionally; we have a rural property and don’t use chemicals.
Dandelions are good for your liver, though.
I took a tracking/survival class from Tom Brown Jr.’s wilderness survival school a few years ago. One time we had to forage for edible weeds to make a salad.
.Dandelions and beaver tail cactus leaves are edible. I recommend that you remove the thorns from the cactus first.
I agree.
Anyone trying to feed me weeds needs to be locked up.
Ever eat a Pine tree?
What are plants that are not weeds called?
Encyclopedia of medicinal. plants by Andrew Chevalier
coconut
Ask the average North Korean.
Nettles make a good healing soup
Kudzu makes good salad
And I forgot to mention ramps
Ramps are good if you can find them!
In two days I think a lot of people are not going to prefer to do other things with them
Both my parents were born early in the Depression years and grew up eating some wild greens, developed an affection for them and continued cooking and eating them, so I’ve had them myself.
Dandelion greens are very nice in a mixed salad, sort of peppery, adds a little kick. Dandelion makes a decent wine and I’ve heard jelly although I’ve never had the jelly.
The young green shoots of Poke Weed are edible and pretty good, as salad or cooked, just leave the grown leaves that have started getting a little purple and veiny alone, they become toxic at that point so just the young, purely green shoots and leaves.
Kudzu leaves, blooms and root tubers are edible. The younger leaves are decent batter dipped and fried up crispy. The blooms make a great jelly, vibrant purple, the blooms give it that color. The root tubers are sort of like a potato and prepared similarly. They’re also reputed to be something of a hangover cure, with I believe some scientific study to back that up.
Wild mustard is a nice, pungent green. So are “creasy greens” which are actually wild fieldcress, quite a kick to those cooked but they’re good. The name is a corruption of “cress,” they’ve been eaten in the south since colonial times.
Ramps are very strong, like a cross between an onion and garlic. Eating them raw is quite an experience, more of a novelty at ramp festivals in the Blue Ridge, I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re a thrill seeker. They’re much milder sautéed or fried, and many look forward to ramp season since they’re the first edible greens of the season.
There are a variety of others that are edible but the above are the ones commonly known to the old country folk in the south, with several of them achieving a level approaching that of cuisine at the hands of accomplished restaurant chefs looking for local and wildcrafted foods for their restaurants.
The common Violets (eastern U.S.?) with the purple flowers are edible. Both the young leaves and the flowers are edible. My wife likes the flower buds from Black Locust trees. She just barely boils them. They are sweet.
This reminds me that I have to go check on a couple stands of bamboo to see if the shoots are coming up. We used to get a few hundred pounds a year.
I read that Purselane was edible and gave it a try, since I had a patch of it growing in my garden. Thoroughly delightful! Mild flavor with a consistency like spinach.
And yeah, it might become VERY important to know this stuff. You can never be sure of your food supply during an emergency, so having a Plan B, a Plan C and a Plan D is always wise. Remember Ukraine.
I had cooked milk weed once. It was edible.