Welcome to Mountain Edibles

I have been wandering the mountains of Utah as an amateur botanist for many years, and I am now trying to share some of what I have learned with those around me. I am a user of many edible and medicinal plants, and I believe the edible plants are the least known area of my expertise. This blog is a way to increase the popular knowledge of edible plants.

I also do plant walks to teach about edible and medicinal plants in person. If you are in the Northern Utah area, and are interested in arranging such a presentation, you can contact me using the contact form at the bottom of the page.

Thank you for coming.

Friday, June 23, 2017

Rudbeckia occidentalis

Rudbeckia occidentalis
Rudbeckia occidentalis
(with pollinator)
Western coneflower is the most common coneflower in the mountains where I live. Unlike most other coneflowers, it lacks the showy ray-flowers that other species have at the base of the cone, such as black-eyed susans or cut-leaf coneflower. This can make it hard to identify using a botanical key, because they don't put the Rudbeckia genus in the division of Compositae which has disk flowers only. On the other hand, once you recognize it as a coneflower, there isn't any other species it could be.

I enjoy eating these young coneflowers occasionally. One should eat the very young cones, about and inch or less tall. The larger flowers become pithy and tough inside. The young flowers are tender enough to eat, and have a vaguely minty flavor.

The leaves are very bitter; not recommended. They might be better in the spring, if one can learn to identify them when they are young.

A related species (Rudbeckia laciniata) is known as "Sochan" to the Cherokee Indians. They used the early spring leaves and shoots. There are reports of them being good tasting but they do not grow this far west.

Michael Moore [Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West, p. 93] describes good results with using Rudbeckia laciniata similar to how one uses Echinacea for colds and flus. His comments are intriguing. "Unlike Echinacea, lance-leafed Coneflower stimulates secretions, respiration, and the skin and kidneys, thereby helping to excrete the very waste products its immunostimulus help create." A closely related species like Rudbeckia occidentalis is likely to have similar effects. Moore uses the roots and sometimes the leaves for medicinal purposes.