AY Honors/Edible Wild Plants/Answer Key

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 in with 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.
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.

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.

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

Cattail
Greenbriers
Kudzu

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

Baneberry
Buckthorn
Buttercup
Butterfly weed
Carrot family - hemlock, fool's parsley
Cherry (leaves)
Dogbane
False Hellbore
Fly poison
Goat's rue
Horsechestnut
Indigo
Iris (all are poisonous)
Larkspur
Lily (other than Day lily)
Locust (seed pods)
Lupine
Monkshood
Mushrooms - many
Nightshade - nightshade, tomato (leaves), potato (leaves)
Rattlebox
Rhus - poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac
Soapwort
Star of Bethlehem
Virginia creeper
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