About an hour into my walk in the woods today, I passed one of my favorite wild fruit trees of this season.  Standing there enjoying a couple of luscious persimmons, I reflected on the number of wild edibles in my area and the seasons in which they could be harvested.  Wild onions, mulberries, black berries, dew berries, pecans, walnuts, hickory nuts, plums, persimmons and others are ready for the picking at various times from spring through fall.

That got me wondering about the range of wild edibles that are available in the north woods.  Yes, I'm aware of the seasonal glory of blue berries and raspberries.  I know of wild rice, but based on other posts related to hiding/hanging food packs I was wondering if I might be able to "get by" for a few days based on what I could glean from the woods.  One should be able to still fish, but after a few days of a steady fish diet, I think I'd be looking for a bit more variety.  

Anyone tried cat tails?  Arrow plant? Seems like I've seen a little plantain.  What other choices could you add to your meal?  I've intentionally left mushrooms off the list ... selecting a non-poisonous variety is only part of the reason ... while they add flavor, there apparently isn't a lot of "food value" in mushrooms.

dd

Rhus juice, acorn flour creations, hazelnuts.....heard about typhae but have not gone there...Yule's, Wild Asparagus  and the links below might be another good source for you DD

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And couple others

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I see persimmons in the grocery store and wonder what to do with them.  I love food and will try anything twice, even scrapple.  How does one eat a persimmon?

Wild foods I've had include, blueberries, strawberries, rasperries, saskatoons/serviceberries, chokecherries, pincherries, wintergreen leaves & berries & some leaf that tastes like cucumber.  Also mushrooms!  Morels, chanterelles, honey & bunches I just trusted mom to know what's not going to kill me.  Oh, and sumach too.

Last spring I had an amazing speckled trout stuffed with wintergreen berries.

I'd love to learn to identify more.  Haven't felt compelled to try bullrushes yet.

Preacher wrote on Nov 5^th, 2010 at 5:56pm:

I see persimmons in the grocery store and wonder what to do with them.  I love food and will try anything twice, even scrapple.  How does one eat a persimmon?

Since wild persimmons are about the size of a medium sized plum, they are mostly seeds.  Each persimmon has maybe 6 seeds about half the size of a penny.  So, the wild versions don't produce a lot of edible per unit ... but the tree ripened ones are oh-so-sweet and refreshing.  

I know when they are beginning to ripen when I start to see the seeds in coyote scat ... they populate the ground under the trees.  As for eating an unripened persimmon, expect to pucker-up because of the astringent they contain (esp. tannic acid).

dd

I have tried cattails, they're good but very bland.  They are best in the spring and early summer but edible all year long.  You pull or dig out the base of the cattail which you will find is like the inner part of a stalk of celery.  Peel off the outer parts and cut off most of the top, leaving a white pithy portion which you can eat raw.  I have heard you can also eat the new seed heads/tops of cattail but haven't tried that.  
Wild rice is ready to harvest in late August, early and mid-September.  You would have to stir it in a dry fry pan over the fire to dry it and then rub off the seed husks and winnow it or rub it over a piece of toweling to clean it and get all the husks out.  You do not want to eat any husks or get them in your eyes.  They are like velcro and will stick in your throat or your eyes and drive you crazy.  You will end up with about a half to two thirds product from what you started with raw.  Then cook it like regular rice.
Other things to eat: Fiddleheads of fern in early spring, before they unfold.  Don't eat too often, you can get chlorophyl poisoning.  Thimble berries in late August.  
NEVER eat Blue Flag or anything you might confuse it with, it is deadly poisonous.
IC

Fiddle head are good, I didn't know about poisoining. Thimbleberries are delishous. When I was in college at Mich Tech. my roomate came home one day and found me making Thimbleberry jam. He said I'd make some one a good wife one day! Dandelions are good to eat also, boiled like spinach, but they will stain your cookwear. Anyone tried to beat the sqirrels and eat pine cone seeds? I heard Burrdock is also edible. True?

Burdock is an asian delicacy, the root I believe.

jimmar wrote on Nov 7^th, 2010 at 9:49am:

Fiddle head are good, I didn't know about poisoining. Thimbleberries are delishous. When I was in college at Mich Tech. my roomate came home one day and found me making Thimbleberry jam. He said I'd make some one a good wife one day! Dandelions are good to eat also, boiled like spinach, but they will stain your cookwear. Anyone tried to beat the sqirrels and eat pine cone seeds? I heard Burrdock is also edible. True?

One wonders why   (You need to Login or Register are not a commercial crop based on all of the positive benefits ... and ALL parts of the plant are edible.  And like burdock, its root can be roasted and used as a coffee substitute.

Since the Chinkapin Oak grows in your part of the world (but unfortunately not in the boreal forest), have you ever had any of the acorns (about pea size) roasted ... very much like a roasted peanut.

And I've often run into fiddle heads in the woods ... not especially in my area, but in the rockies.

dd

I have had dandelion tea and it is wonderful. There is also an oak grove, burr oak (Quercus macrocarpa) or swamp white oak (Quercus bicolor) I dont recall now, adjacent (north side) to the portage between Saganaga and Swamp. Native or not native that is the question... The same types of plantings exist in the WCPP also and include even an American Elm on telescope lake, I recall the oaks in that neck of the woods being further north though...agriculture!

Fiddleheads too!  I forgot about them.

Dandelion is a commercial crop.  You'll certainly see them in a mesclun mix at the grocery store.

Thistle too.  The leaves, root & pith.

Rose Hips - I've seen lots of wild roses in Quetico and elsewhere - I'll eat a few while archery hunting in the fall, along with all the rasberries I can find.  The red bud tastes sorta tomatoey; I've eaten the whole bud, but its best to not eat the seeds, as they are another item with the "velcro" hooks and best ignored.  They seem to ripen in late Aug to Sep, and will dry on the bush, staying there all winter.  Anyone can identify a rose bush and rose hips.

It aint dandelion dude, its arugula. ;)

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Anyone run into wild cucumber?

  (You need to Login or Register YouTube video is pretty good at helping you identify the plant.  

BTW:  There are a couple of interesting videos by the same person that demonstrates starting a fire with fire-steel with wet tender.  One starts with a wet cotton ball; another starts with wet birch bark.  Looks like a technique that might require a bit of practice.

dd

[quote author=marlin55388 link=1288916788/10#12 date=1289865447]It aint dandelion dude, its arugula. ;)

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While there's no enforced recipe, I am ever the pedant.
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Mesclun (French pronunciation: [mɛsˈklɛ̃) is a salad mix of assorted small, young salad leaves which originated in Provence, France. The traditional mix includes chervil, arugula, leafy lettuces and endive in equal proportions, but in modern iterations may include an undetermined mix of fresh and available lettuces, spinach, arugula (rocket), Swiss chard (God's Breath), mustard greens (Dijon's Child), endive, dandelion, frisée, mizuna, mâche, radicchio (Italian Spinach), sorrel, and/or other leafy vegetables. Mesclun is good up to 5 days in a plastic bag. It should be washed and blotted dry just before using. The name comes from Provençal (Southern France)—mescla, "to mix"—and literally means "mixture".

;) I will check it out when I make to the EU...

whatever floats you boat, in regard to ever.

marlin55388 wrote on Nov 25^th, 2010 at 4:25am:

;) I will check it out when I make to the EU...

I'd venture to guess that when you make it to Provence, you're not likely to be eating a lot of salad.

Whether its bouillabaisse in Marseilles, the fine wines of Chateauneuf de Pape, fresh food markets in (say) Aix (easily the best apricots on the planet), the area is a gastronomical delight!

And the scenery isn't bad either ... fine examples of Roman aqueducts, a small scale version of the Roman Colosseum in Arles ... and it doesn't take long to understand why master artists (e.g., Van Gogh) stayed in the area ... he really didn't use all that much imagination on the color pallet.

All in all, not a bad place to visit.

dd

DentonDoc wrote on Nov 5^th, 2010 at 12:26am:

About an hour into my walk in the woods today, I passed one of my favorite wild fruit trees of this season.  Standing there enjoying a couple of luscious persimmons, dd

I had persimmons growing along my back fence in the Shenandoah Valley in VA.  I love them and agree that they have a lot of pucker power.  My neighbor says that his horses like them so much they practically climb the tree to get them.  The Greek word for the fruit is "Diospyros" which means "the fruit of the gods"

The pucker power taste reminds me of the chokecherries we used to eat when we were kids growing up in the north woods.  In addition they will coat your teeth.  They also made great ammo for pea shooter fights.  We used to cut some hollow stocks of some big leaf plant for the shooter part.  You have to be a meat eater to survive in the north woods and I understand that the natives used to make pemmican by pounding meat with berries; including chokecherries, which included the (poisonous) seeds and all. It's called "Chokecherry because if you eat the leaves or seeds you will be poisoned by hydrocyanic acid, also known as cyanide. Cyanide poisoning causes convulsions and choking."

We use to eat whatever berry that was in season; thimbleberry, goose, blue, rasp, straw, bunch, june, pin cherry; etc.  Have even made sumac lemonaide.  Hazel nuts have a very protected prickley cover, and also have an asstringent taste when raw,  but as soon as they are ripe they disappear very fast in the wild and you have to fight the squirrels for them.  In regards to salad, I've eaten clintonia, or blue bead lilly; they taste like cucumbers; but don't eat the berries which are mildly poisonous.

Another thing I've noticed on books I've read about wild food from the north woods is that it seems like a lot of wild plants require you to boil them two to three times to remove have astringents before you can eat them. For example, marsh marigolds "which contain an acrid poison when eaten raw."

In regards to cattails being edible, I'll quote Patrick MacManus: "being edible does not mean "good to eat" Edible means only that you won't flop over with your face in your plate when you take a bite of the stuff."  "If cattails were actual good to eat they'd sell they'd sell it in supermarkets for three dollars a pound."

One note about fiddleheads is that they are carcinogenic.  Also; make sure you don't confuse them with bracken fern.  I don't know anything about chorophyll poisoning, but I do know that bracken fern will kill cattle that eat it by robbing the them of Vitamin B and cause them to bleed to death.  Sorry for being Debby Downer, I enjoy all kinds of fruits and berries on our canoe trips; Also wintergreen berries and tea, and rose hip tea on our October trips.  You just either need to be well educated; or like me as a child growing up in the north woods to learn by experience; the ones who survived to adulthood and that did not get a Darwin Award.   (You need to Login or Register


starwatcher

[smiley=dankk2.gif] [smiley=thumbup.gif]

There a persimmon on my counter right now.

Anyone try rock tripe?  Caribou moss?  

Not like they have a lot of calories, but then you'd typically not have to spend many calories finding/harvesting.

dd

AH no.....I do use litmus though when I want to know the pH of dirt. ;)  

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High in fiber though; but you know what they say about transport time!...Thank goodness for big leaf aster ;)

DentonDoc wrote on Nov 26^th, 2010 at 11:29pm:

Anyone try rock tripe?  Caribou moss?   Not like they have a lot of calories, but then you'd typically not have to spend many calories finding/harvesting. dd

Sparky says (Mark Stensaas) in Canoe Country Flora; "Rock tripe has a completely undeserved reputation as an edible lichen." Franklin Arctic expedition ate it but they suffered from bowel complaints and nausea.

He also says that reindeer lichen, as human food, "may be more palatable after partial digestion in the grazing ungulates gut."  Arctic inhabitants mix partial digested lichens with the animals blood.

Of course if we were eating a caribou, moose or deer; we probably wouldn't need to eat the lichen, except for a salad entree  ;)

starwatcher

MMMMMMMM salad w/ blood dressing...not lichen :P

:)

starwatcher wrote on Nov 28^th, 2010 at 9:31pm:

Sparky says (Mark Stensaas) in Canoe Country Flora; "Rock tripe has a completely undeserved reputation as an edible lichen." Franklin Arctic expedition ate it but they suffered from bowel complaints and nausea.

Yes, I'd also seen at least one refernce to rock tripe being used as a purge.  (Not exactly what I'm looking for to help sustain me in an emergency situation.)  Still, I've seen both rock tripe and reindeer moss being used as a survival food ... after 4 or 5 days, you might be hungry enough to give it a try.

But one wonders where Franklin found rock tripe on an ARTIC expedition?  :)

dd

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Mice to men draw your own conclusions ;)

marlin55388 wrote on Nov 30^th, 2010 at 11:42pm:

(You need to Login or Register Mice to men draw your own conclusions ;)

Heh, not a high priority to try.  I do see it everywhere.

DentonDoc wrote on Nov 7^th, 2010 at 7:43pm:

One wonders why   (You need to Login or Register are not a commercial crop based on all of the positive benefits ... dd

Young dandelion leaves make excellent salad. And they seem to grow wild everywhere !! You want to be sure they haven't been sprayed with pesticide/herbicides before picking though.

GOLF