AY Honors/Edible Wild Plants/Answer Key

Introduction

There are at least two approaches to finding edible wild plants in your area. The first is to look through a list of edible wild plants that should be available in your area, and then go out and try to find some of them. The second approach is to go out and identify what plants are around you, determine their identifty, and then find out if they are edible by looking them up in a good field guide (not by tasting them!)

Because a surprising number of plants are edible, the second approach is far more likely to yield successful results. I cannot tell you how long I struggled with the first approach, searching for the likes of Jerusalem Artichokes or Groundnuts without success, all the while overlooking Hazels, Sarsaparilla, and Bunchberry. All my field guides indicated that Jerusalem Artichokes and Groundnuts should both grow in my area, but I still have never seen either. I did manage to find more than 15 edible plants using the first technique, but it was indeed a struggle. Sometime later I began trying to identify every plant I saw - only a few at a time of course. I found myself entering information into this online key - and when I got a hit, I would recognize that plant as one that I had seen in an edible wild plant field guide, but had not been looking for. I soon learned that many - perhaps half - of the plants in my yard are edible. Of course I also found many that are not edible, and several that are poisonous (just so you don't go around thinking that since many plants are edible, it's harmless to eat something you have not identified - it is not.)

By attempting to identify the plants I had found rather than trying to find the plants I had identified, I found many, many more edible plants in a much shorter time (and several inedible and poisonous plants as well). It has made me a more rounded Pathfinder.

If you opt to use the second approach, I urge you to review the requirements for the Flowers, Flowers - Advanced, Seeds, and Seeds - Advanced honors as well. You can meet many requirements of all these honors at the same time.

1. Photograph, collect pictures of or sketch fifteen edible wild plants. Identify each plant in the wild.

Several wild edible plants are presented here. I have included the plants with which I am most familiar, meaning that most of them are available in the Eastern United States, though we are in the process of adding more plants from the Western U.S. To make this section more universal, please add plants from your own area. This should be done by creating a separate page for the plant and including it thusly:

{{:Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/New Plant}}

Save the page, and then click on the red link you just made to create the new page (or let someone else do that - just knowing which plant to include is a great help). If you choose to add content to the new page, please use the EWP template to maintain uniformity. See the discussion page of the EWP template for its usage, or look at an existing page that uses it (which would be all of the ones below).

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Lepidium virginicum

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Bladder Campion

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Cattail

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Chicory

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Clover

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Dandelion

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Day Lily

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Goldenrod

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Greenbriar

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Milkweed

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Pickerelweed

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Plantain

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Sheep Sorrel

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Strawberry

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Wild Carrot

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Wild Garlic

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Wild Onion

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Wintergreen

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Wood Sorrel

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Cereus repandus

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Berberis

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Ferocactus cylindraceus

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Prunus virginiana

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Cylindropuntia

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Malus coronaria

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Vaccinium macrocarpon

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Vitis vinifera

2. Identify in the wild five trees and five shrubs which are edible.

Trees

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Acorn

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Beech Nuts

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Cherry

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Hickory Nuts

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Maple Syrup

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Persimmon

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Pine Nuts

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Pine Needles

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Sassafras

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Sumac

Shrubs

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Autumn Olive

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Blackberry

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Blueberry

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Cranberry

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Gooseberry

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Rose

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Serviceberry

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Spicebush

3. Identify, prepare, and eat three kinds of wild berries or fruits, three kinds of beverages, three salad plants, three potherbs (greens), and two tubers or roots.

Fruits and Berries

See above on Apple cactus, Barberry, Barrel cactus, Blackberry, Blackberry, Blueberry, Blueberry, Bunch berry, Cascara, Cherry, Chokecherry, Cholla, Coffeeberry, Crab apple, Cranberry, Currant, Date palm, Desert apricot, Elderberry, Fan palm, Fire thorn, Gooseberry, Grape, Ground cherry, Hackberry, Hawthorne, Holly leaf Cherry, Indian plum, Lemonade berry, Manzanita, Mulberry, Oregon Grape, Organ pipe, Partridgeberry, Passion fruit, Pawpaw, Persimmon, Pin Cherry, Prickly pear, Raspberry, Rose hips, Saguaro cactus, Salal, Serviceberry, Sour Cherry, Squawbush, Strawberry, Sugarbush, Thimbleberry, Toyon, and Wintergreen.

Beverages

See above on Chicory, Dandelion, Goldenrod, Sassafras, Sheep Sorrel, Sumac, Wintergreen, and Wood Sorrel

Salad Plants

See above on Chickweed, Dandelion, Greenbriar, Lambs' quarters, Miner's lettuce, Plantain, Purslane, Sheep Sorrel, Violet, Wood Sorrel

Greens

See above on Amaranth, Dandelion, Dock, Filaree, Fireweed, Lambsquarters, Mallow, Milkweed, Plantain, Russian thistle, Stinging Nettle, Wood Nettle,

Tubers or Roots

See above on Brodiaea, Burdock, Camas, Carrot, Cattail, Dandelion, Garlic, Lomatium, Onion, Sassafras, Salsify, and Yampah

4. Demonstrate the preparation of wild foods in each of the following ways:

a. Boiling

Any of the greens are prepared by boiling.

b. Frying

Cattail Pollen Pancakes

Collect cattail pollen and mix with flour for pancakes. The best results are with replacing 1/4 and 1/2 of the flour with cattail pollen. This will add nutrition and a bright yellow color to your pancakes.

Cattails are in the pollen stage for about 2 weeks to a month. The season starts the end of April in the southern areas of the USA and ends in July in Canada or in high elevations.

A good cattail pollen harvester can be made with an empty 3 liter pop bottle by making a 1.5 - 2 inch hole just below the curved part of the bottle on the cap end of the bottle. Put the cap on and insert the pollen laden cattail flower head through the hole you made. Tap the cattail stem to release the pollen into the pop bottle. More pollen will be ready to harvest in a day or two. 2 liter pop bottles work too, but the pollen tends to get stuck in the neck of the bottle when emptying it.

Clover Pancakes

Collect about one gallon of clover flowers and let them dry for two weeks (or dry them in the oven at 250°F for 30 minutes and then let them sit overnight). Once they are dry, grind them to powder using a mortar and pestle to make a fine flour. This will produce about a cup of flour. Mix this half-and-half with wheat flour and make pancakes.

Fritters

• Dandelion flower heads can be dipped in batter and fried to make fritters.
• Elderberry flower heads can be dipped in batter and fried to make fritters. Caution: Plant stems and leaves contain cyanide.
• Milkweed flowers can also be battered and fried, but they must be dipped in boiling water for one minute first.
• Black Locust flowers also make excellent fritters.

c. Roasting

See above for acorns, chicory, pickerel weed, and pine nuts.

d. Baking

Pie

Delicious pies can be made from blackberries or blueberries. Wild cherries are not really large enough for this, but if you find them in quantity, you might make a go of it.

Bread

Try baking bread by mixing wheat flour with any of the various "wild" flours made from clover, acorn, cattail pollen, or cattail roots.

5. Demonstrate how to prepare four parts of the common milkweed or day lily for food.

This is a highly regional requirement valid only where common milkweed or day lily grow wild abundantly. Rather than outright waiving the requirement if you live in a region where these plants do not grow, consider replacing the requirement with something roughly equivalent (i.e., do you know of a plant that grows in your area having four edible parts? Cattail?)

Milkweed

Common Milkweed in flower

Milkweed pods

The parts of a milkweed plant that are edible are the leaves, stems, shoots, flowers, and pods. The pods must be collected while they are young, and the flowers are not in season for very long. All are prepared essentially the same way, which is by boiling them in several changes of water. Boiling eliminates the bitter, milky sap from which the milkweed derives its name.

Prepare the milkweed by filling a large pot with water and bringing it to a boil. When the water is close to boiling, fill a small pot with water and bring it to a boil as well. When both pots are boiling, place the milkweed in the smaller of the two and let it boil for about a minute. Pour the water off and then refill the small pot from the large pot. You may wish to use a ladle to dip the boiling water from the large pot into the smaller one. You do not want to cover the milkweed with cold water as this will set the bitterness. Boil the second batch of water for a minute also, drain it off, and refill. Subsequent changes of water should remain in the pot for a few minutes. After no fewer than six changes of water, the milkweed should be ready to eat. Add a little butter if desired and prepare to treat your taste buds.

Day Lily

See requirement #1 for information on preparing the shoots, buds, flowers, and tubers.

6. Explain how to identify three "odd-shaped" edible fungi and how to identify the deadly mushroom amanitas.

I as a teacher about wild edible plants strongly object to this requirement!

Is it ethical to teach Pathfinders to eat wild mushrooms being that even experts in mycology have died from eating mushrooms they collected? Where ever I go teaching about wild edible plants I hear heart wrenching stories of whole families that have been wiped out by eating wild mushrooms. Do you want to lead your Pathfinders to be part of one of these stories?

Following is a quote from Dr. Peter Gail Ph.D. one of Euell Gibbons literary assistants.

"I have spent 55 years as a forager and at least 43 of them teaching others to forage, and I don't do mushrooms other than puffballs. Reason? When I was a wet behind the ears Masters degree student in Plant Systematics at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont California, my mycology professor, the very prominent Dr. Richard Benjamin, went out one weekend on a mushroom hunting expedition with one of his buddies, an equally prominent mycologist who was a specialist in mushrooms. On Monday, he was badly shaken, and reported to us at morning coffee break that there had been a mishap--his buddy had eaten a poisonous mushroom and had died from it.

"You can imagine the impact THAT had on me. Even the best, most knowledgeable botanists make mistakes. So, with mushrooms, it evidently doesn't matter how much you know. I don't use anything but the Agarics I get at the store and puffballs. There are others which are not mistakable for anything poisonous. Morels vs. false morels are a good example of the problem you can have. I leave mushrooms to other, more adventurous types than myself.

"Peter A. Gail, Ph.D.
Director
Goosefoot Acres Center for Resourceful Living
Cleveland OH
www.edibleweeds.com"

There are highly poisonous mushrooms outside of the Amanitas contrary to what this requirement suggests.

Further, mushrooms are no longer classified as plants.

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Sulphur shelf

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Morel mushrooms

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Edible Wild Plants/Puffball Mushrooms

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Nature/Poisonous plants/Amanitas

7. What root plant can be dried and ground into meal?

• Cattail
• Greenbriars
• Kudzu

8. Know at least 8 families embracing the poisonous or doubtful plants.

• Buckthorn family (Rhamnaceae) - buckthorns
• Buttercup family (Ranunculaceae) - buttercups, larkspur, baneberry
• Carrot/parsley family (Apiaceae) - Water hemlock, Poison hemlock or fool's parsley
• Daisy family (Asteraceae/Compositae) (other than: Asters, Balsam root, Burdock, Chamomile, Chicory, Dandelion, Golden rod, Jerusalem artichoke, Oxeye daisy, Pineappleweed, Prickly lettuce, Salsify, Sow thistle, Thistle, Wild lettuce, Wild sun flower, etc.) - white snake root
• Dogbane/milkweed family (Apocynaceae) - dogbane, butterfly weed
• Legume family (Fabaceae) - Goat's rue, indigo, locust (seed pods), Lupine, Rattlebox
• Horsechestnut family (Hippocastanaceae) - horse chestnut
• Iris family (Iridaceae) - all are poisonous
• Lily family (Liliaceae)(other than: Avalanche lily, Camas, Day lily, Desert lily, Dogtooth violet, Indian cucumber, Leek, Tiger lily, Wild garlic, Wild onion, Yellow bells, etc.) - False Hellebore, Fly Poison, Star of Bethlehem, Deathcamas
• Crowfoot family (Ranunculaceae) - monkshood
• Mushrooms - many (not in the plant kingdom)
• Nightshade family (Solanaceae) - nightshade, tomato (leaves), potato (leaves)
• Poison Sumac/Oak/Ivy family (Rhus/Toxicodendron/Anacardiaceae) - poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac
• Rose family (Rosaceae) (other than: Apples, Blackberry, Choke cherries, Hawthorn, Pears, Raspberry, Rose hips, etc. fruits) - cherry (leaves, seeds, bark)
• Soapwort family (Caryophyllaceae) - soapwort
• Grape family (Vitaceae) - Virginia creeper
• Yew family (Taxaceae) - yew

9. What is the cardinal edibility rule?

Never eat any wild plant unless you have positively identified it and know that it is edible.

References

• A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants, A Peterson Field Guide by Lee Allen Peterson
• Dining on the Wilds, by Miriam Darnall-Kramer, and John Goude