Foraging on Federal Lands

It took me two months to work my way up the forest service bureaucracy, and figure out how to get a free-use permit for collecting edible plants on federal lands. Turns out, I don't need one. As long as I am only collecting small incidental amounts for personal use, no permit is needed.

Note that this flatly contradicts what every other (Wasatch) forest service employee has ever told me, so if you are planning to do much foraging, you may want to be equipped with information about what you are really allowed to do. On the other hand, if your personal sustainability rules are anything like mine, you will never encounter anyone while foraging, so the point is mute anyway.

If you want information on what you are allowed to do, or a permit to do it, the person to contact is the regional botanist for your national forest. (The botanist I spoke with said the position was changing soon, so I won't give his name here.) Whoever has that position should be well informed about regulations and how to issue permits. I started at the nearest forest service office, and they had me talk to the local botanist, because I was interested in plants, and they took a while to figure out how or who would issue a permit. The picture for this post is my Forest Products Free Use Permit, so you can see what one looks like.

(more after the break...)

Vaccinium species

I don't have anywhere nearby where I can pick the real Huckleberry (Vaccinium membranaceum), but we do have several closely related species in and around the high mountain meadows. The three species I describe in this post, which can be found in the same area, often growing intertwined, which is why they all described together here. All of these berries resemble the huckleberry in shape, that is, round with the characteristic blueberry-like belly-button on the end.

Vaccinium uliginosum var. occidentale

Vaccinium uliginosum var. occidentale has the closest resemblance to huckleberries, and is known by a variety of common names, including "western blueberry", "western huckleberry", "bog bilberry", or even "bog whortleberry". Personally, I am currently preferring the "bilberry" name, even though that name is more commonly used for Vaccinium myrtillus. The "bilberry" name is used for any blue Vaccinium berry which is smaller than the common huckleberry, and this is the most common one which fits that description in my area. This is a low shrub which is commonly found at the edge of wet meadows, with marsh plants growing on one side of the shrub patch and dry plants growing on the other. Some meadows will have a border of these shrubs growing nearly all the way around them. 

The branches are round and brown; the leaves are entire (i.e. not toothed) which distinguishes it from most other species in the genus; and the berries are blue and small (4-7 mm in diameter). The berries grow from the leaf axils, often singular, but are also found in clusters of 2-4. The flavor is not as good as real huckleberries, but still very good, both juicy and sweet. Collecting them can be rather hit-and-miss, because many bushes will have few or no fruit (perhaps having already been picked clean by wildlife), while occasionally a bush will be found with a lot of berries. 

Vaccinium scoparium

Vaccinium scoparium is a very small (3-5 mm), red berry, found growing as a green ground-cover under high mountain coniferous forests. The stems are green and angled, and much less shrub-like than most other species, and are described as "broom-like" because they grow a lot of branches close together and upright, so that you could pull up a plant and imagine using it as a broom. The most usual common name for these is "grouseberry", but it is also known as "whortleberry", "littleleaf huckleberry", and even "grouse whortleberry" (for those who prefer some sort of indecisive compromise in their names).

They are very wide-spread and common, but the berries are very small, with just a few per plant, so that picking any good quantity would like quite a while. They are so small that it's hard to get the taste from a single berry; it is much better to pick several and eat them all at once, so you can fully taste them. Nevertheless, despite the tiny size and need to search over a large area of plants, I personally like the flavor of these the best, out of the three berries described here, especially if I can find them in the very ripe stage where they start to turn purpleish. 

Gaultheria humifusa

Gaultheria humifusa is another similar berry, which I still feel comfortable including here, because of its close resemblance to berries in the Vaccinium genus. So close, in fact, that some botanists have included it in that genus, and Vaccinium humifusa is a recognized synonym for it. It has a relatively uncontroversial common name of either "Alpine Wintergreen" or "Alpine Spicywintergreen". 

Unlike the shrubby plants of Vaccinium, this plant hugs the ground, forming a sparse mat of leaves and red berries. It seems to prefer spots where the soil is too thin for other most other plants, but can also be found growing under the other species described here. It still has woody stems, but they are mostly under the surface, with just few leaves and a berry or two where the stem emerges. The berries are red, fading to white on the underside when less ripe. They are wider around than they are long, and about 5-7 mm in diameter.

The taste is similar to the other berries described here, sweet with a bit of tartness, but these are firmer and less juicy than the others. Even though they are a wintergreen, they do not seem to me to have a strong wintergreen flavor, although there may be a slight suggestion of that in the tartness side of the flavor. Some sources suggest eating the leaves, but when I tried them they were very tough, and did not have a very good flavor. 

Ribes montigenum

Ribes montigenum

Ribes montigenum has several common names associated with it. The name I prefer is Mountain Gooseberry, because it actually is a gooseberry and it grows in the mountains. And also because it is a good translation of the Latin name, which is often because it was known by a similar common name at the time the Latin name was assigned by modern botanists. It is also known as Alpine Prickly Current, but since gooseberries and currents are distinguished by gooseberries having prickles and currents being smooth, a prickly current is just a gooseberry. Another common name is Gooseberry Current, which is for indecisive people, and another is Prickly Gooseberry, which is redundant.

It is a fairly common shrub in the mountains, usually quite low growing, with 5-lobed leaves and branches densely covered in prickles. Even the fruit has prickles, but these are soft and do not interfere with eating at all. Current flowers have an unusual pattern: the sepals are large and showy (not green), while the petals are smaller, often only looking like fringes at the throat where the sepals spread out. The five sepals in this species are white or yellowish, and the small petals are red and kind of crescent-shaped. But the flowers only appear in the spring; most of the year you will just see the fruit. All currents and gooseberries have the dried, persistent sepals on the end opposite the stem, which may be long and beak-like if the flowers were tubular-shaped, but in this species is sometimes spreading and tuft-like, because the flowers are saucer-shaped.

The taste of these gooseberries is quite good. They are a rather tart when they first ripen to a red color. When they become fully ripe, they turn a slightly darker shade of red, and become much sweeter, often losing all the sourness they had when younger. I think these are one of the better wild currents. When I find a bush with plump and juicy, fully ripe and sweet berries, they are as good as Golden Currents (Ribes aureum), and one of the better berries in the mountains.

With their tartness, these berries make an excellent Mountain Gooseberry Pie. I combined 3 cups gooseberries, 2 grated apples, ⅔ cup sugar, and a bit of lemon juice and vanilla, then baked it in my wife's pie crust. I made a couple of pies, to compare different ways of making it. One pie just had the ingredients mixed cold, and for another, I boiled the filling for about 15 minutes first, in ¼ cup water, then added some flour to thicken. The berries are fairly sturdy, so they keep their shape well, rather than turning to mush when cooked. Both methods were yummy. And, they store well in the refrigerator, for at least a couple weeks. 

Pseudostellaria jamesiana

Pseudostellaria jamesiana

Although this is commonly known as Chickweed, this is not the Chickweed of herbal medicine fame. That chickweed is Stellaria media, while this chickweed is Pseudostellaria Jamesiana or formerly Stellaria Jamesiana. It is also known as James's Chickweed, or more appropriately for foraging purposes, tuber starwort, because it is the tubers we want.

The flowers are easily recognized by their two-cleft petals, over which the little black anthers are set off distinctly. The two-cleft petal are one of the reasons they resemble Stellaria media, but that chickweed's petals are much more deeply cleft, nearly to their base.  This species also has long, tapering opposite leaves.

The roots of this plant form little enlarged tubers at intervals, up to an inch long, but sometimes smaller and closer together. When raw these tubers are pretty tough, almost woody. But after cooking for 15 minutes (at 10,000 feet elevation, so your cooking time may vary), they became tender, and very potato-like in flavor. I would consider these one of the better roots if they were easier to dig up. On the upside, these flowers are blooming for quite a long time during the summer, so you can find them for a longer season than Hydrophyllum capitatum, which has a similar taste, but is easier to dig and collect in a significant quantity.

The digging of these roots presents a bit of an ethical conundrum, especially if you are ethical, and trying to minimize your impact on the wilderness. Because these roots travel horizontally, they are seldom directly underneath the flower, and often many inches away. So finding them requires digging up an area, rather than a small hole directly underneath the plant. I suggest finding a clump in an area with relatively few competitors. Grassy areas are hard to dig and separate useful roots from. I much prefer the soft ground under coniferous forests. Remember to only harvest where they are abundant, not where there are no other of the same plants around. Once you find a good clump in good ground for digging, you will need to dig up a small area under them to find the tubers, which are usually on horizontal roots about 1 to 4 inches deep. You should throw back some of them to allow the plants to regrow, especially if they have the tiny little growth buds attached to them. Always be sure to replace the dirt afterward, smooth it out, replace the ground litter, and make it look natural again, rather than leaving a disturbed area of ground.

Portulaca oleracea

Portulaca oleracea

OK, Purslane is not all that common a sight when wandering through the mountains, but it is a very common sight in the garden, where it seldom grows in anything but a wild state. Which is a bit unfortunate, since this is such a great tasting edible plant. It is also high in anti-oxidants and omega-3 fatty acids. Most gardeners will agree that it can be harvested in abundance without endangering the next year's growth.

When eaten raw, the fleshy leaves and stems are crunchy and pleasant tasting, with a slight lemony taste, which is a sign of oxalic acid. I discuss oxalic acid in the post on Rumex crispus, which has a lot more, but if you are nervous about that boogie man, cook your purslane in a change of water to get the soluble oxalic acid out, and avoid eating rubarb.

Our preferred recipe for purslane is to saute onion, garlic, and bacon in oil. Add zucchini, mushrooms, and the purslane, with a little water and let it steam for five minutes. Then add some pre-cooked and diced potatoes, salt, pepper, marjoram.

Rubus idaeus

Rubus idaeus

Wild Raspberries are not especially common in my mountains, but when they are found, they are one of the best and tastiest treats the mountains have to offer. How can you not enjoy a search though clump of prickly bushes when the reward is as sweet as this?

These are the same species as cultivated raspberries. Some of the cultivated varieties are bigger, but the taste is the same. The plant is somewhat similar to wild rose in appearance, but it has lots of smaller prickles, instead of scattered thorns, and of course, the berries should be familiar to everyone.

Raspberries seem to like a lot of water, but not a lot of competition. Since wet areas tend to have a lot of competition, this may explain why they are hard to find. I have found them, for example, on steep stream banks, and at the edges of rock slides down moist slopes.

The Latin name Rubus is similar to another group of berries named Ribes. So if you learn the Latin names, just try to remember that Rubus is the genus of raspberries, blackberries, and thimbleberries; while Ribes is the genus of gooseberries and currents.

Ribes hudsonianum

Ribes hudsonianum

Western Black Current is a common species of current bush in this area, with clusters of smooth black berries. There can be a large quantity of ripe berries, but unfortunately, the berries are quite bitter, have a bad taste, and are even slightly astringent. Also the leaves have a bad smell, which is not very strong, but quite noticeable when you are in a large patch of them.

Note that although this has a similar name, this is not the Black Current (Ribes nigrum) which is popular in Europe. There does not seem to be much published information on this species, so it would be hard to say if it is similar nutritionally to Ribes nigrum. Some sources note that it is edible, but few warn about the bitter taste. The taste of some species of currents is improved by cooking, but these are so bad tasting, that I doubt it will help.

Identification: The flowers of currents and gooseberries have a distinctive feature, which is hard to notice unless you look closely: the sepals are large and showy, but the petals are very small and easy to overlook. You can know that the show petal-like things are actually sepals because there are no greenish sepals under them. The true petals are very small and look more like a small fringe at the opening of the tube, or small moon-shaped appendages where the bell flares out; look closely and you will notice them. The flowers and leaves are very similar to Wolf Current (Ribes wolfii), but the fruit is quite different. The leaves are five-lobed, and the flowers are white, bell-shaped (many currents have tubular flowers), and grow in racemes. The fruit of Western Black Current is black and smooth, while the fruit of Wolf Current is blue and prickly.

Vaccinium membranaceum

Vaccinium membranaceum

The Huckleberry is one of the best and easiest to gather berries in the mountains. At least if it grows in your area. It doesn't generally grow in my area, but on a recent trip to Montana, I was able to find and enjoy handfuls of huckleberries for lunch on one of my hikes.

Lolo National Forest has a good foraging policy, for example, "a permit is not required for recreational huckleberry picking up to 10 gallons per season."

The taste of huckleberries does not need much explanation. They are much like blueberries, but somewhat tarter. The great thing is that they grow in large quantities in fields of bushes, so one can easily pick a lot without much effort. Some people use a berry rake to make it even faster, but compared to searching for strawberries, even hand-picking huckleberries seems effortless. You can easily pick a handful in a minute, and a pie-full in a short time.

Fragaria virginiana

Fragaria virginiana

Finding wild strawberries has always been a frustrating experience for me. The plants are common enough, but to find ripe berries requires being at the right place and time (or elevation and season combination) and getting to them before the critters get them. Only rarely does it all come together for me. And even when they do, the berries are very small and difficult to find, hanging under the green sepals, which are under the leaves.

For identification, if you think you have something which looks like a strawberry plant (with leaves in threes, and 5-petaled white flowers with many stamens) the clincher to confirm it is a strawberry is to look for the red runners underneath. The ripe berries are also unmistakable.

The taste needs no description, of course. They melt in your mouth and are even more flavorful than commercial strawberries. But then, they are so small, they need to the extra flavor to be able to taste them.

Rumex obtusifolius

Rumex obtusifolius

Since I had success with other docks, I also sampled this dock to see if it lived up to its common name, Bitter Dock. It does, but the name does not adequately describe why you should not eat this plant. Yes, even the young leaves and shoots are somewhat bitter, but even worse than the bitterness is the taste. Instead of the fresh lemony taste of curly dock, this dock tastes more like rotten lemons!

In my area I usually find this plant by small mountain streams. It can be recognized as a dock by the way the leaves develop, but this dock has oblong leaves, and dark red veins in the leaves, a sign of bitterness in docks.

Rumex crispus

Rumex crispus

The most common type of dock, Rumex crispus is commonly known as Curly Dock if you look at the leaves with their wavy or "crisped" edges, or Yellow Dock if you look at the root.

There are many ways to enjoy this plant, and most of them depend on finding the plants when they are young and tender.

When dock first starts to grow, it can be recognized by the large leaves, and the way each side of the leaf starts out curled to the back or underside of the leaf, and uncurls after it has grown out far enough. The base of the young leaf will be surrounded by a dry sheath at the base of the previous leaf, with a slimy substance down in there as well. The sliminess washes or wipes of easily enough, and the inner stem and base of these immature leaves can be eaten raw, tasting like lemony celery.

The lemony flavor is from oxalic acid, which people who only eat modern highly processed food will caution you against. But it is present in varying amounts in many vegetables. It is safe to eat in reasonable amounts, and toxicity is "wildly unlikely", but it has been linked with kidney stones, so it is prudent to avoid it if you have problems with those.

The young leaves themselves can be eaten raw, and also have that lemony flavor. But the best way to eat the leaves is to boil them for about five minutes. The cooked leaves lose a lot of the lemoniness, because a lot of the soluble oxalic acid stays in the cooking water. But they still have a fresh, enjoyable flavor, and just the right amount of texture to make chewing them enjoyable as well. Cooked dock leaves have a big reputation as one of the most enjoyable greens around and they certainly live up to it.

The dock plant will soon send up a tall stalk with flowers and eventually the 3-winged seeds which are the easiest way to identify the plant when it is mature. But if you catch the stalk when it is still growing, before the flowers open, there will be a part with is still flexible and tender. This can be peeled and eaten raw. The outer surface will still have some fibers after peeling, but still tender enough to bite and chew up if you got the flexible part of the stalk. It is crunchy and the lemony flavor is subdued to a tanginess. Samuel Thayer (in Nature's Garden) says these are his favorites parts of the plant, either raw or cooked. But when I cooked them, the inner stalk quickly turned to mush, which squishes out of the fibrous part instead of supporting it so you can bite through it. This is bad news for cooking the stalks, but good news for cooking the leaves, since the central leaf vein softens very quickly.

I've noticed that after the seed stalk has grown up, there are often some smaller, more rounded leaves growing at the base of the plant which are still tender and a bit thickish. Look for these leaves after the other leaves and stem have become mature and tough. (update:) It's now half way through September, and the stalks and seed have dried to a rusty red, but there are still leaves growing from the bases of the dry stalks. They are only slightly bitter and tender enough to eat raw, although washing off the dust helps greatly, and cooking them is even better.

Urtica dioica

Urtica Dioica

Perhaps the most infamous wild edible is stinging nettle, at least to those who have not tried it. Yes, you should use proper care when harvesting nettle: gloves, long pants, and stay aware of where the plants are around you. The mature stems are an excellent source of tough fibers for rope and blankets, so when picking for food, you just want to pick off the top 2 or 3 sets of leaves, preferably from younger plants. Stinging nettle tends to grow in large colonies when it is found, so even just a few leaves from each plant quickly adds up to a large amount.

When identifying stinging nettle, remember that it looks a lot like mint, with the square stem and opposite leaves. When it is mature it can easily be distinguished from mints by the flowers. Mint flowers are showy and grow in dense clusters at the top of the stem or in the axils of the leaves. Nettle flowers are inconspicuous but you will see the long drooping seed stalks which grow from the upper leaf axils and hang down. When young, look for the stinging hairs, which are especially prominent on the stem, and also noticeable on the leaves if you look closely. Actually stinging yourself is also a sure-fire method of identification, and isn't too bad when you can choose the location and amount of sting.

I washed my nettle, turning the bunch with a large grilling fork, and then boiled it for 10 minutes, saving the water, since nettle tea is renowned for its healthy effects. The drained and cooled nettle leaves were very soft and rather slimy. The flavor is decent, and grows on you after a few bites, but the sliminess gets in the way of enjoying the flavor. The nettle tea is a bit thickened and has a hearty flavor. My wife suggested that it would make an really good soup broth. And so it turns out that nettle's true culinary calling is to be soup. I cooked potatoes, carrots, onion, salt, pepper, and parsley and chives from my yard, along with the nettle tea and nettle leaves, and had a very good nettle/vegetable soup. The nettle flavor takes a few bites to get used to, but the more you eat it, the more you like it.

Hot & Sour Nettle Soup

The taste of the nettle soup reminded me a bit of chinese hot and sour soup, so the next time I picked stinging nettle, I made hot & sour nettle soup. The nettles are not slimy if they are only cooked 1-3 minutes, so I cooked them about 2 minutes, and then after they were safe to handle, I separated the larger stems and leaves and cooked them another 10 minutes to make the nettle broth. Then I discarded those nettles and added back in the nettles which had been cooked less. Besides the nettle leaves, I added some foraged vegetables: cooked dock leaves, wild onions, water leaf root (cooked) and stem. (Day lilies do not grow wild here, but they are a traditional ingredient as well.) From my garden came scallions, daikon, and egg drop. From the store I added mushrooms, black fungus, and carrots. The broth was enhanced to get the hot & sour flavor with soy sauce, pepper, and rice vinegar (never use white vinegar; it's more of a cleaning chemical and is not fit for human consumption).

Claytonia perfoliata

Claytonia perfoliata

One of the most widely known edible greens in Miner's Lettuce. Famous for being used by California Gold Rush miner's to keep from getting scurvy, it is high in vitamin C and also protein. The latin name is either Claytonia perfoliata or Montia perfoliata, depending on the botanist and whether they care that this plant has fibrous roots, which along with the leaf shape distinguishes this plant from its cousin, Claytonia lanceolata, which has an edible tuberous root.

It is easy to recognize from the nearly round leaf with the stem going through the center and displaying small white flowers above or cradled in the leaf. Botanists actually consider this a pair of opposite leaves which have joined on both sides to completely wrap around the stem. There are also basal leaves without flowering stems, which are half-circle shaped with any corners rounded off.

Except for the small, fibrous roots, the entire plant is edible. The leaves, flowers and stems all taste mild and tender, although some of the older plants may have a tinge of bitterness. A good plant may have ten to twenty stems and leaves. It pulls away from the ground easily, and after discarding the root and any of the lowest leaves that are shriveled or dirty, the entire plant can be eaten. Instant salad!

Cardamine cordifolia

Cardamine cordifolia

This is known by the common name of Heartleaf Bittercress, which is a bit of a misnomer, since the flavor of the leaves is more hot than bitter. In fact they taste just like horseradish! I happen to like horseradish a lot, so I really enjoyed finding these leaves.

I have always found this plant in or beside shallow mountain streams. The leaf shape is vaguely heart-shaped, but with several lobes breaking up the heart's outline. One distinctive feature of this plant is that the main veins of the leaf go all the way to the tips of the lobes, where (looking in a microscope) they project slightly as enlarged glands. These glands appear to the unaided eye as white dots at the tips of the lobes.

Viola species

Viola nuttallii

Violets are a common flower in the spring. In our mountains there are several species which are very common including Viola purpurea (yellow), Viola nuttallii (yellow with oval leaves), Viola adunca (blue), Viola canadensis (white), and Viola papilionacea (purple). It's not very important which species you find. The constant need for new botanical publications from academia has made this one of the genuses which has been nit-picked beyond any useful purpose.

The leaves and flowers are usually eaten raw in salads. The flowers taste good, and the spur on the back of the flower is a container for nectar, which gives the flowers their sweetness. The leaves are not quite a good as the flowers; they taste good, but are a little tough. 

The leaves are said to thicken soups "like okra". If you are not a gumbo veteran, that means they thicken the soup by giving it a mucilaginous (slimy) quality. The leaves themselves become quite mucilaginous when cooked. When raw, the mucilaginous quality is somewhat noticeable as you chew them up, especially if you are looking for it. This can be helpful for soothing your throat, and I have chewed violet leaves to remove the burny sensation after eating many glacier lilies or evening primroses.

Erythronium grandiflorum

Erythronium grandiflorum

Erythronium grandiflorum, often called Glacier Lily, is a beautiful yellow drooping lily which blooms early in the spring for a short time, and soon dies down to spend the rest of the year waiting for the next snowmelt. If you find it at the right time and place it will be growing so abundantly and thickly that one cannot walk through them without stepping on some. Fortunately for us, the correct time moves slowly up the mountains, so in the spring it is more a matter of finding the right elevation than the right time.

Samuel Thayer, in his book, Forager's Harvest, speaks very highly of the eastern species, Erythronium americanum or Trout Lily, and mentions that our western Glacier Lily is also good and has a larger bulb. I thought the bulbs were still quite small, and they are several inches deep and rather difficult to dig up. After digging up several specimens, both before and during flowering, I found that the bulbs were sweetest while the flower was in bloom, which is good news for finding them at the right stage at least. They are crisp and quite sweet in bloom, but the difficulty of digging them up discourages me from wanting to seek them out.

The leaves, however, are quite easy to pick and are a very good raw salad leaf. They have a succulent flavor, and are certainly worth the effort of picking. Because these lilies only grow two leaves, picking them is going to be almost as traumatic to the plant as digging it up entirely, so be sure to harvest from an area where they grow so abundantly that your guilt is not tripped.

Below is a picture of several roots I dug up. The outer brown coating is easy to rub off, leaving the edible white root fairly clean. The white part of the stem gives an indication of how deep each one was. The stem, like the leaves and root, is edible, and gets sweeter the closer you get to the root.

After the flower fades, it produces a seed pod, which you can learn to recognize after some experience with the plant. This is also edible. It is fairly crunchy and good tasting, comparible with garden peas.

Eating several of the whole plants or seed pods will eventually produce a slight burny sensation is the back of the throat. Some people can detect it sooner but it takes more than three for me. I have not yet tried cooking them to see if that reduces it, but the demulcence of a violet leaf helps to remove that feeling.

Claytonia lanceolata

Claytonia lanceolata

I came across the first few blooms of Spring Beauty (Claytonia lanceolata) while foraging for Indian Potato, which starts blooming even earlier in the spring. They are a close relative of Miner's Lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata), so I dug a few up to try out. Later I stumbled on a few additional bulbs while digging Indian Potato. The Spring Beauty bulbs were easily recognized, even though they had not produced flowers yet, by the smooth surface and the way the stem starts very thin and white at the root, widening slightly and becoming red before turning green toward the leaf.

The flowers of Spring Beauty deserve the name, bright white or sometimes pinkish with yellow spots at the base of the petals and pink anthers at the ends of the stamens. If you look closely, you can notice a relatively unusual feature of only a few families of flowers; the stamens grow opposite the petals instead of alternate with them. That means the stamens grow from the center point of the petals, instead from the center of the spaces between the petals, as in most flowers. There are usually a few nodding buds waiting their turn to open. It is a small plant, usually only 2-3 inches tall, and the few leaves (usually just one pair) are opposite. I observed a wide range of leaf shapes, with lanceolate (long and tapering at both ends) being most common, but some plants had nearly round leaves. Most roots are quite small, about pea-sized, and have a smooth coating. There are often two or more stems growing from a single root. If you find a good area with lots of Spring Beauties, look for clusters of plants. The larger roots will put up numerous stems, which will emerge from the ground within a few inches of each other at the surface. A large root with 10 or more stems may be an inch across. A good practice would be to look for these larger plants, and put back any pea-sized roots you dig up.

The leaves are very good raw, and in my opinion taste even better than Miner's Lettuce. The leaves are pleasant and slightly thicker and juicier than store-style lettuce, while the stem and flowers have a stronger flavor, with a little kick of spiciness. You will have plenty of these if you have found some larger roots, so an easy way to enjoy the leaves alone is to pinch off the flower cluster, and then bite the pair of leaves off the stem. Or eat it with the flowers and stem to enjoy their spicy kick. Just like Miner's Lettuce, these leaves are high in vitamins C and A.

The roots are best boiled about 5 minutes. After 10 minutes they seemed rather mushy. They have a definite flavor of their own, reminiscent of cooked cauliflower, but stronger, and they sometimes have a curiously pungent after-aroma. But with some salt, pepper, and your favorite variety of grease, they are quite yummy.

(2015 update)
I'm getting better at finding the larger roots this year. The root will send up multiple stems, which spread out and emerge from the soil separately, looking like individual plants. Small roots will only send up one or two stems, so if you see a single spring beauty, you can expect a small root to be under it. The trick is to look for clusters of spring beauties, or better yet, a circle of them. Dig under those, and you can expect to find a nice sized root, about an inch or so across. The picture below is a good example of a large root, with a whole salad growing up out of it.

Hydrophyllum capitatum

Hydrophyllum capitatum

I saw a lot of one particularly interesting distinctive leaf growing on my early spring outings. Lower down the mountain, I was able to find them again in a more developed state: Hydrophyllum capitatum or ballhead waterleaf. The excellent Wild Harvests blog reported some success with this and a related pacific waterleaf (H.tenuipes), so this plant became a goal for the following hikes.

The deeply pinnately lobed leaves have a very distinctive shape and are slightly soft-furry, just enough to be annoying to the tongue when raw. Delphinium leaves are also deeply lobed, and emerging at the same time in my area, but all the lobes are radiating from one point (palmately lobed) instead of coming from both sides of a central vein (pinnately lobed). To be sure about the identification, wait until the "ballhead" round clusters of flower buds appear. In H. capitatum they stay below the leaves, while in H. occidentale they rise above the leaves. These will eventually turn into a cluster of purplish-white flowers with protruding stamens giving it a frilly appearance. Below ground is a cluster of brownish roots, each about the size of a bean sprout.

After boiling for 5 minutes, as suggested by the above blog, the leaves where soft and spinachy, and the stem, which the wild harvests blog spoke highly of, were tasty and still slightly crisp. (They leaves seem best after about 3 minutes of boiling.) The immature flower clusters can be eaten along with the leaves.

The root was still rather tough after boiling 5 minutes, so I put the roots back in the boiling water for another 15 minutes. (15 minutes boiling is enough, even at my altitude.) After that time the roots had become much more tender, and tasted quite good, either plain, or with some oil and salt to enhance the flavor. The flavor is very much like potatoes, although the shape is very different.

The best part for eating raw is the lowest portion of the stem, between the root and the flower-head. This part is white and often underground. It is juicy and crunchy, but becomes bitter higher up where the stem takes on more color.

You can make a hearty 3-course meal from waterleaf alone. First, separate the roots, and break each root from the others to make cleaning easier. Clean and boil for 15 minutes, then serve with butter, salt, and pepper to enhance their potato-like flavor. Second, separate and wash the leaves, then boil for 3 minutes. They will wilt and lose much of the space they occupied while raw. Serve like cooked spinach. The younger unopened flower clusters can also be boiled with the leaves, and taste similar. Third, take the lower, lighter colored portion of the stem, and serve either raw or boiled for 3 minutes. It still retains some of its crispness after the brief boiling. I usually discard the upper stems and opened flower clusters, but you can experiment with them for yourself if you want.

Below is a picture of the roots. Notice the new white root is directly under the plant, and the large mature roots are off to the side. This makes me suspect it forms a new root each year.

Orogenia linearifolia

Orogenia linearifolia

We don't usually think of the earliest days of spring, when the snow has hardly melted, as a good time to look for edibles in the wild. But I noticed two small umbelliferae already blooming in spite of the occasional snowfalls in March.

One of them is Orogenia linearifolia, commonly known as Indian potato. Plants for a Future gives this little spring bloomer 4 out of 5 stars for edibility, so this should be worth trying. The flowers are a small cluster of tiny white flowers, in a compound umbel (if you look at the bottom of the cluster). The flower cluster is lopsided, with the rays on one side longer than the other side. The leaves are once to thrice ternate, with the segments long and narrow; they would look very grass-like if they weren't divided into threes lower down. There is also a scarious sheath around the base of the plant. On one of my trips, snow had fallen the day before, and there was still a thin layer left over a grassy area where I was looking for them. Finding small white flowers with grassy leaves among grass and snow was a challenge to one's observational skills.

The root, which is the part we are interested in eating, is a round corm, a little bumpy, and usually only about a half inch in diameter. This is pretty small if you are looking for a meal, but the good news is that they are close to the surface, and very easy to dig up. I could not pull it up without a little digging, but loosening the dirt next to it with any old stick and pushing up from below a bit is enough to bring it to the surface.

The roots were easy to clean up at home in the sink. The sink sprayer washed the dirt off easily, even though the light brown skins may look a little like dirt still. Raw, they were rather bland, but not bitter at all. But after boiling in water for ten minutes (no changes), they became starchy and very tasty. Add a little butter and salt to go along with it, especially if you cut open the little balls to let the butter get inside, and you understand why these would be compared with potatoes. It is possible to peel the skin off and just eat the white inside, but they are so small, I didn't think it was worth the effort or changed the taste enough to matter.

Below is a picture of a largish root. Most are about half this size.

These are among the first plants to emerge in the spring. They are small plants, so they need to finish their life cycle before the larger plants overshadow them. The melting snow was a few yards behind me when I took the picture below. All the white spots in the field are orogenia linearifolia flowers, and nothing else has starting growing yet.