Loose Ends

Two geese and their seven goslings entertained us during a recent picnic.

This is what happens when I don't post for a couple of weeks: I look through my pictures and have no idea what I'm looking at. Even though I feel like I've been finding and eating lots of interesting plants since my last post, apparently what I took pictures of were the plants I couldn't identify. I started this post with a picture of two geese and their seven goslings because at least I can definitely tell you what's in that picture and where I was when I took it!

This past weekend we took a family bike ride along a nearby rail trail. The trail goes through some marshland before cutting through a pond in a wildlife-protection area. The waterfoul there are pretty civilized; they know that if they swim over to the picnic spots along the bike trail, people will toss bread into the water. When we first arrived a mother and daughter were feeding a goose with a split web on one of its feet; the bird was holding its hurt foot in the air and hopping about on the other to get the bread crumbs. After a while the family of nine pictured above came swimming over to get in on the action, and the loner flew off with a big splash. My boys had a great time feeding the geese a bit of bread from their salami sandwiches. The little goslings weren't one bit shy; they came right up to my two-year-old if he wasn't quick enough about getting his bread out. We were careful not to approach the babies unless they approached us, though -- and a sharp hissing from the mom or dad kept us in line if we weren't on good behavior.

A mother duck and her four ducklings swam alongside
our trail.

Because my 2-year-old was riding his own glide bike (which lacks peddles and so teaches balance more quickly than training wheels), he and my husband were quite a bit behind the rest of us. While we were waiting for them to catch up, we had the good fortune to have a mother duck and her four ducklings entertain us as they swam about the algae-infested marsh waters along the trail. They, too, were obviously quite used to people, and they often swam close enough that we could have touched them with a stick.

A field of milkweed. This was not alongside our trail
but at the edge of a local farm (see below).

I hadn't brought any foraging tools along on the bike ride, but after we finished our picnic and so made more room in our bike bags, I cut off a few milkweed shoots to add to my slowly growing freezer collection. I'm not sure whether the milkweed will send up a new stalk once I snap off the existing one, so I'm careful not to take all the milkweed I find. In this case, that was definitely a good thing because, unfortunately, these particular stalks were still a bit tough after cooking, so I think they were too tall and beyond the "shoot" stage. I thought they'd be fine because they were still pretty flexible, but apparently one needs to be able to snap the stalk, whereas I had to use my fingernail to sever it. Because I only collected a few stalks, there should be plenty of plants to make seedpods later this summer; the young, firm pods are supposed to make excellent stir-fry fare.

Not jewelweed.

I also saw some dazzling flowers hanging delicately from their stems alongside the trail. I took a picture because I thought they might be jewelweed, which I remembered having read about but the specific details of which I could not recall. Now that I've looked up jewelweed, I've determined that the flowers I found are not it. They probably aren't even edible -- but they are definitely beautiful, so I'm including their picture anyway. If you know what flower this is, send me a note!

Notice the unusual bark of this tree. I've no
idea what kind of tree it is, but I'd like to find out.

Other plants I've failed to identify recently include bushes and trees. On a hike with my two youngest boys, several trees with distinctively grooved bark also caught my attention. Before I became seriously interested in foraging, trees fit into two categories for me: pine trees and not pine trees. OK, so maybe if pressed I could identify a maple or oak tree by the leaf, but I definitely never paid attention to things like bark patterns, tree size, or the shape of the crown (whether the tree looks narrower at the top than at the bottom and so forms a dome shape, for example). I never paid attention to whether leaf margins were smooth or notched, whether stems were alternate or opposite one another, or whether leaves grew singly or in groups (if several leaves grow together on the same stem, the leaf is said to be compound). Now I am paying attention to all of these things, and I'm kind of excited to think that I could theoretically identify a tree other than a birch tree by its bark alone. The bark of these trees was so distinctive that I'm sure I could do just that. Although I can certainly continue to identify them as "those trees with the really deep grooves" (or maybe "groovy trees"), it would be nice to put a more commonly used name to them.

This bush was making many little green flower buds
in the center of the leaf clusters.

On the same hike I came across a bush with some interesting flower-bud clusters. The bush had many thin trunks emanating from a central location. I'll have to go back in a week or two to catch the flowers in bloom and see whether that offers me the necessary clues I need to determine whether the bush is in any of my books.

I did find some plants I could identify, though. The trail has only a small parking area off the side of the road, and it can uncomfortably fit two vehicles. When we arrived, there was a truck and trailer taking up the entire space, so we had to park at a nearby school and walk down the road to the trailhead. This turned out

Grape vines climbing over a guard rail.

to be fortunate for several reasons. First of all, we passed a small farm on the way, and at the edge of the farm next to the road we found wild grapes trailing over the guard rail. In the background was a field of milkweed, and we even saw our first wild asparagus! The lonesome stalk stood several feet high but otherwise looked exactly like what one might buy at the supermarket. The second piece of good fortune was that, as we approached the trailhead, the owner of the truck and trailer was loading up his tractor mower. He'd just finished mowing the trail for us!

Stinging nettle.

Once on the trail, which crosses some open field before entering the woods and traversing a stream, we found lots of stinging nettles, which apparently make a great cooked vegetable (I have a recipe for cream of stinging nettle soup). They lose their sting when subjected to heat, so there's no need to worry about all the stingers. The plants we found were too big to harvest this year, but I've got my collecting grounds lined up for 2013.

Evening primrose flower stalk.

In a previous post I mentioned trying and not particularly enjoying the spicy roots of evening primrose. I recently came across some primrose flower stalks, which are supposed to be milder, and so I gave these a try in a stir fry. I liked them better than the roots, but I would have preferred the dish without the primrose. I'm now thinking of mincing the stalks and using them like grated ginger in a stir fry. After all, I wouldn't like eating big chunks of ginger, either, but I appreciate it in small, minced quantities. I had collected a bunch of primrose stalks, so I blanched some and put them in the freezer for future experimentation.

Milkweed shoot.

Over the past couple of weeks I've also been gathering, blanching, and freezing milkweed, pokeweed, and wild spinach as new "crops" become available or as I find new supplies. Even though I can't collect enough to make a sizable meal all at once (well, with the exception of pokeweed), I can slowly accumulate enough for later. Pokeweed roots can sustain repeated harvesting, and wild spinach will grow more leaves after one snaps off the top portion, so I've been back to my collecting grounds several times already. I've been harvesting wild spinach from two locations: a friend's yard and the end of my street, where it grows both along the edge of the road and at the edge of a parking lot undergoing construction (wild spinach loves disturbed sites, which is also probably why it grows abundantly where my friends burn brush every year).

Finally, I'll leave you with an update of my most successful recent experiments with wild plants in the kitchen. In my last post I mentioned that I'd made violet syrup by pouring boiling water over some violet leaves, letting the flavors infuse for 24 hr, then boiling the water and flowers for 15 minutes with some sugar and straining the syrup. The result smelled and tasted wonderful, but my few attempts to bake with it had been disappointing; the syrup had no significant effect on either biscuits or cookies, at least in the recipes I tried. This week I tried replacing the vanilla in a white-cake recipe with the violet syrup (but I used more syrup than the amount of vanilla called for). I then made a violet buttercream by replacing the corn starch with violet syrup. The result was a batch of light, slightly floral cupcakes that the whole family enjoyed.

Tortellini salad with basil pesto, wild spinach,
slivered almonds, tomatoes, and pokeweed.

I also tried a favorite tortellini salad with wild spinach in place of the baby spinach in the recipe. I also added some boiled pokeweed shoots. I planned to try substituting garlic-mustard pesto for the basil pesto, but unfortunately the garlic mustard has all gone to seed, and the leaves are much too bitter for consumption. That's even more unfortunate given that my order of the garlic-mustard cookbook From Pest to Pesto should be arriving soon!