How to Find Wild Edible Plants

Thứ bảy - 27/04/2024 01:14
Please double check all of these plants using other websites before consumption. Wild edible plants are everywhere you turn. Not only it is free food, but eating wild plants is a huge stride toward wilderness self-sufficiency. Once you...
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Please double check all of these plants using other websites before consumption. Wild edible plants are everywhere you turn. Not only it is free food, but eating wild plants is a huge stride toward wilderness self-sufficiency. Once you know where to look and how to prepare plants you find in the wild, you'll be well prepared whether you're planning on surviving on free greens or you just want to try some new flavors next time you go camping. Be careful, though: eating the wrong plant could be fatal.

Steps

  1. Step 1 Know where the best food is, depending on where you live.
    Keep in mind that if you live in a humid region, the majority of wild food will be in the sun - whether clearing or 'edge'. In a dry region, such as the Southwest of the USA, most of the wild food will be near water.
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    Pick up a local plant guidebook. Get guides to the most common edible plants in your area, typically referred to as "weeds." Learn the top 20 or 25 and try to memorize them — they might come in handy later.
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    Visit other areas that are regularly cleared. Try roadsides (note warning below), fields, parks, and so on. They will also have tons of edible plants. Chickweed can be picked by the bucketful. Here's what to look for:

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    Look for nuts beneath trees. Walnuts and hickory nuts can be smashed open with a rock and the edible flesh picked out. Fresh nuts are wet and filling and easy to digest, with a lot of flavor. Acorns are abundant beneath oaks — if the oak has round-lobed leaves, the acorns will need minimal to no processing. Some white oak acorns will have no tannin at all. And keep in mind you get used to it and stop noticing it after the first few — it's how pigeons eat so many acorns.[12]
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    Nibble on safe flowers. Sample the flower petals of plants you know to be nonpoisonous. Flowers are often very mild to sweet and full of antioxidants. Some excellent blooms are daylilies, violets and honeysuckle. DO NOT EAT AZALEAS! Azaleas are deathly poisonous.[14]
    • The base of flowers can be strong to bitter (and in the case of some, such as Wisteria, toxic) — it's better to break off petals and not eat the green material.
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    Learn your vines so that you can distinguish grape. Wild grapes are found throughout the U.S. and are one of the best wild foods. There's a variety which you will see everywhere throughout the South of the US called "muscadine" — the grapes are thick-skinned and very large, with a flavor like bubble gum.[16] Wild grapes have both edible leaves and tendrils as well as fruit — the leaves can be steeped in apple cider vinegar and used to make dolmas.[17] Muscadine leaves are tougher and benefit from a week-long glass jar ferment. Grape vines also make very sturdy baskets.
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    Find deciduous leaves. Try the deciduous leaves of trees like linden, sassafras, Boxelder, sourwood - all are excellent raw. Beech leaves are also highly edible when young, for the first 2 to 4 weeks. You can pull whole salads off the trees. Linden leaves are so large they can be used as tortillas.
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Warnings

  • Avoid plants growing in areas that may have potentially been subjected to the dumping of toxic wastes.
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  • Especially if you live in an urban or high-traffic area, avoid plants growing immediately next to roadsides, or anything with a sticky blackish residue. This could be solidified air pollution!
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  • Almost the same is not the same. A plant with maple-like leaves is not a maple. A plant with a yellow bud is not always a primrose. It must be exactly the same to be safe.
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  • Avoid the carrot family if you're a novice, and you won't have any worries about being seriously poisoned by wild edible plants. Species like water hemlock and poison-hemlock can kill you. Harvesting plants like wild carrot are not worth the risk of confusing it with a deadly relative, unless you really know what you're doing.
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  • Don't try eating wild peas. Even though some can look very much like garden peas - most are poisonous. However, more advanced foragers can have lots of success with edible peas such as Pisum and Lathyrus.
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