The Wild World of Edible Plants
I'm going on a lark here, and I've decided to share a report I wrote in the sixth grade. "What the heck could be so special about a sixth grade report," you ask? This particular report recently surfaced in my life, and I was surprised and proud to re-read it.
As you may know, I offer the ebook Sad For No Reason: How to Use the Mood-Food Connection to Banish Depression Naturally. I came to write this book because I love the subject of natural health care, and I believe deeply that everyone needs to be educated about the types of foods that will help or hinder their health.
I found the following report in a box of old school papers. It confirms that I have been interested in this subject nearly my whole life. The teacher, Mrs. Mills, let us pick any subject we wanted to research, and she probably gave us a month to complete the work. I would have been eleven or twelve years old when I researched and wrote it. I've typed it exactly as I wrote it, and I included (sic) after my original errors. I could have stopped after chapter one. I have no idea what drove me to add chapter two about deadly mushrooms. I suppose I wanted to give a well-rounded view of wild plants; some are edible and some are poisonous.
The Wild World of Edible Plants
by Jessica
Flower Press, Inc.
Silver Spring, MD
@1982
Table of Contents
Chapter 1-Edible Plants
Chapter 2-Cautions: Identifying Poisonous Mushrooms
Illustrations:
Dandelion
Violets can be...
Glossary
Epilogue
Bibliography
Teacher's Comments
Many people don't know of the wide variety of foods they can get from the wild. There are cattails, dandelions, violets, and clover. Of course there are more, but these are the plants that we will be discussing in this chapter. Before you go out and pick any plants, be sure you read over the do's and don'ts about gathering food located in the end of chapter two.
One of the most versatile plants is the cattail. It has tall leaves that may resemble swords. The stems are stiff and bare, and have brown flowerheads that resemble sausage. Cattails may live and grow in the marshes where they sometimes form large clones covering several acres. They are located throughout the U.S.A., in towns and cities, and in the wild. Cattails yield food year-round, and that is probably why the Indians thought it a great delicacy. The Nevada Indian children would take the sap and roll it into balls, and eat it including any insects that got tangled up into it. Other Indian tribes would dig up the rootstock and eat it raw or roasted, or they would eat the ends of the new stems in the spring, then later on, eat the flower buds. The Indians found more uses for the cattail other than food. For instance, they would weave the leaves into mats, use the female flowers as tinder for fire, and use the down to stuff into their boots; it made good insulation from frostbite. Or for medicine, they would eat the flowering heads to stop diarrhea. Today we still use many of the things the Indians did, and we have found still more uses for the cattail. You can make flour from both the yellow pollen and the starch-covered fibers on the rhizome - but the process is totally different between the two. Another use is to peel the young shoots until you get to a tender white core. You can eat the core raw or roasted.
Many people think of a dandelion as a pesky weed, but, in fact, it is a very useful plant. It has a rosette with leaves that resemble lion's teeth. It's (sic) bright yellow flowers (which bloom from March to September) turn into downy-soft puff-ball seeds when they die. The tall stalk arises from a large taproot and oozes a milky substance when cut. The dandelion will grow anywhere in the world, and especially in disturbed soil. It belongs to, in fact, a category of plants called the cosmopolitan weeds- meaning a species that thrives in disturbed soil. Some of the many uses of the dandelion are just in the leaves. For instance, you can use the young leaves in salad, or you can boil them for fifteen minutes. If you have a bad bruise, you can put some ground-up leaves with dough on it. If you have a fractured bone, then a paste of ground dandelion leaves spread over the fracture, and bound with fresh leaves and rags will do. If you prefer the flowers, then another list is here. The buds can be boiled for several minutes and served with butter. The flowers can be made into wine, or can be dipped into batter and fried. The Indians would take a handful of flowers and boil them until the water turned yellow, and cool them overnight. This was a before breakfast dosage for heart trouble, and if taken for a month was said to be effective. The root was used as a tonic and a blood purifier by the American Indians. The roots can also be made into a coffee-like beverage. The stem was chewed as gum by the Indians. The history of the dandelion is quite interesting. Not one dandelion had bloomed in North America until the settlers brought them over from England for food and medicine in the New World. Dandelions were the official remedy for winter illnesses. In fact, the settlers needed them for vitamin A.
Violets - those pretty flowers which inhabit your garden, can be used as food, just about as well as a dandelion. The five petaled flower has either blue-violet, yellow or white color. The lowest petal is heavily veined, and extends back into a spur. The Common and the Marsh Blue Violets have upside down heart shaped leaves. Violets grow through Europe and North America, in mountains and canyons and moist, boggy places. You can use the leaves in salads, or you can boil them from ten to fifteen minutes to make a cooked green. The leaves can also be added to soups as an okralike thickener. Another use for the leaves is to dry them and make a tea which was once used for headaches by the Indians. The flowers can be made into a nice candy by dipping the petals in water, drying them, then brushing with a slightly beaten egg white, covering them with sugar, and letting them dry again. Violet flowers and seeds in a syrup were given to children as a laxative in the Indian days, but now violet syrup may spice up your pancakes one morning in spring. So, as pretty as they may be, violets enter the world of edible plants.
Of course you knew that clovers were in your own backyard, but did you know that you could eat them? Clovers have compact heads of tiny pea-like flowers that are either white, pink, red, or yellow in color. Most have three leaflets, but four or five leaflets may occur often. There are numerous species, but two are going to be described here. One is the White Clover which has white or tinged with pink flowers. The leaves and the flowerheads are on separate stalks from a creeping runner. The leaflets have pale triangular markings. Another species is the Alsike Clover. It's (sic) flowers are pale pink or whiteish. Contrasting from the White Clover, the leaflets and flowers branch from a stem. The leaves are unmarked. The two mentioned types grow in the fields, roadsides, and lawns. The dried flowerheads can be made into a healthful tea when mixed with other teas, The flowers may also be used with seeds to make a nutritious flour. You can turn clover into a cooked green by boiling them ten to fifteen minutes, or you can eat them raw. NOTE: The leaflets and the flowers are hard to digest when eaten alone, so boil them for several hours in salty water, and you can eat them in great quanties (sic).
In conclusion, the world of edible plants is open to everyone, so long as we don't misuse it. For example, if you were planning on salad tonight, why not spice it up with some dandelion or violet leaves, and if you were going camping anytime soon, be sure to have some cattail nearby, so you don't get cold. The uses of plants are so large and plentiful that I couldn't cover every single plant and it's (sic) use, so don't think you know everything there is to know about plants after reading this report.
Chapter 2 Cautions: Identifying Poisonous Mushrooms
For most of their lives, the plants that we call mushrooms look nothing at all like mushrooms. Most of the time, they look like a mass of tiny white threads called a mycelium. The mycelium may extend for a hundred feet or more, and grow in soil or rotting wood. They appear as mushrooms a few days out of the year. To become mushrooms the air must be warm, and the ground must be damp. Then the mycelium grows very rapidly, and it actually weaves itself into mushrooms. Its purpose is to reproduce the "threads" or hyphae (hy-fee). The reproduction takes pace on the gills (the thin sheets of tissue on the lower surface of the mushroom's cap.) Each cell in the mycelium contains two nuclei that come together in the gills to form a zygote which then divides to produce two or four spores. The spores drop to the ground to form new mycelia. One mushroom produces several billion spores.
The Deadly Amanita Mushroom is the most poisonous mushroom of all. It has white spores, the cap is several inches across, and the mushroom itself is eight inches high. There is a thin strip of tissue hanging from the stalk and surrounding it. The bulbous base on the stalk often seperates (sic) to form a "cup." (For a clearer idea, refer to the introduction to this chapter.) The amanita is located in almost every state, all Canadian provinces, and throughout Europe. Its usual habitat is the woodlands, but it is very occasionally found in pastures and grasslands. The first symptoms come eight to twenty-four hours after eating the mushroom. First the victim will suffer from horrible stomach pains, vomiting, and diarrhea. Later the pain may stop, and victim will begin to feel better. The ceasing pain is followed by a rapid failure of the liver and kidneys, then the victim slips into a deep coma and dies.
Although the Fly Mushroom is closely related to the deadly amanita, it is not nearly as poisonous, for death is rare when it is eaten. The fly mushroom has a yellow or orange-red cap that is three to eight inches across. It has white spores, a ring around the top of the stalk, and a bulbous base. (But unlike the aminata (sic), it has no "cup".) It grows throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, in the woods. The fly mushroom gets its name from the fact that it is usually surrounded by dead flies. Apparently it is attractive to flies, who munch on the cap and die of poisoning. The first symptoms come three hours after eating the mushroom. They include blurred vision, sweating, lowered blood pressure, an abnormally slow heartbeat, stomach pains, and difficulty in breathing. Death occurs very rarely, but if it does happen, the cause is failure to breathe. So, the best way to keep from dyieng (sic) is to never pick mushrooms.
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Wash all foods before eating them Eat small amounts of plants at first - your body may not like that plant Pick only a few plants from each spot. Pick only the plants that aren't listed as endangered or rare
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Don't eat plants that grow beside a roadway Don't pick plants that might have been sprayed with insecticides or other chemicals Don't eat any part of a plant that has white or red fruits, an unpleasant smell, or milky substance - unless an expert says that it is safe Don't pick mushrooms |
Habitat - The kind of place where a plant is found
Pollen - The dust-like male reproductive portion of the plant which is carried by wind, insects, or other pollinators
Rhizome - a stem which lies horizontally at or just below the ground's surface
Rootstock - see rhizome
Rosette - a cluster of leaves arising from one point at ground level
Runner - a slender trailing shoot that roots at the nodes
Spur - a saclike or tubular extention (sic) on a flower
Tap Root - The main principal root
I spent many long hours laboring over this paper, and I thought I would never get done before the deadline. But I finally got done in the nick of time, thanks to the efforts of my Mom, Mrs. Mills, and a woman named Martha. They all helped me realize that I couldn't dawdle over this project, so in the last week, I went full steam ahead. Since I know that I'll have more reports like this one in the future, I'm trying to learn how to use my time wisely. And I think I'm learning very well. So again, I give my thanks to Mom, Mrs. Mills, and Martha.
Bibliography (condensed from original version)
E. Shaeffer Dandelion, Pokeweed and Goosefoot. 1974
Virginia Scully A Treasury of American Indian Herbs 1970
Lee Paterson A field Guide to Edible Wild Plants 1977
A. Eshleman Poison Plants 1977
Gilbert Grosvenor "Wild Treats are Good to Eat" World Magazine April 1982
E.E. Weatherbee and J. Bruce Edible Wild Plants of the Great Lakes Region 1979
Teacher's Comments (Mrs. Mills)
Careful, concise, packed with information report. Your proofreading skills are very well developed. Your writing skills have continued to mature beyond that which is average for a 6th grader. I enjoyed and learned from this report.
Spelling=A
Neatness=A
Your drawings add much interest to your topic as well as help explain it.