Quercus gambelii

Quecus Gambelii

There are many species of Oak, but in my area there is only one common species in the wild, Quercus gambelii, or Gambel Oak. This is a fairly adaptable species, and can grow into a tall tree in the right conditions, but mainly it adapts to the desert by becoming what it is more commonly known as: scrub oak. It is usually found on dry mountain slopes, where it forms dense thickets of scrub. There are no thorns on oak, but the tough wood and tortuous shaped branches make these thickets some of the worst terrain for off-trail bushwhacking.

The one advantage to getting your acorns from low growing scrub oak is that you don't have to wait for the acorns to fall to the ground on their own. You can pick them directly from the branches. Of course you should wait until they are ripe enough that some have begun to fall. I picked some off the ground, and some from the tree. Then I left them outside for a few weeks, so the green ones from the tree had time to fully ripen. They completed turning brown, and were the same inside as the ones from the ground. I think there were fewer bug-eaten acorns in the ones I picked directly from the tree, but that could also have been due to picking from a different location.

acorns before shelling,
acorns after shelling,
wet acorn meal after leaching.

Acorns are a labor-intensive food, and there are many guides on various ways to crack, shell, leach, and grind them to get acorn flour. Some people report cracking to be difficult, because the shells are tough, but because mine had set outside for a while, my shells were dry and brittle and cracked easily. I used a rock to crack them, either on a concrete surface or on a flat but slightly concave rock I found near a stream. The shelling was the most fiddly and time consuming part. Acorns came out in one of three ways. Most were white or pinkish because they were fresh. Some were dark brown and shrunken because they had had time to dry out while they were in the outside air. They dry ones fall out of the shell easily, and some people deliberately dry their acorns to make shelling easier. (I kept my dried acorns separate during the processing, and I did not notice any difference in taste in the end product.) The third category is a brown powder, which is what is left after the dreaded oak weevil grub has finished eating the acorn. Throw these ones away. There are always some of these, but if you see a small hole in the acorn, that is were the grub escaped from, and you can toss the acorn without bothering to crack it.

Next comes the leaching step. All acorns have tannins, and in fact every part of the oak tree is high in tannins. While small amounts are not harmful, they taste quite bitter, and large amounts are used for tanning leather, which you probably do not want to happen to your stomach. The traditional way to leach out the tannins is to hang them in a bag in a stream for a day or so, but by the time I got to this step, my streams were about half iced over. There are many other ways: hot and cold, slow and fast. I chose a cold, fast method. This requires the acorns to be ground up first. I used a blender and blended them about 2 cups at a time with some water to make an acorn slurry. This is placed in a filter bag and fresh water is run through it for 10-15 minutes. The acorns are the most bitter after grinding, and you should sample them after leaching to be sure all the bitterness is gone. My last batch needed extra time, probably because the bottom of the bowl had more of the nut skins, which are reported to be extra bitter. (If this seems like a wasteful use of water, try not to think about how much water we use to irrigate our lawns here.)

Acorn Bread!

My product after grinding and leaching was a wet ball of acorn flour, with about the same consistency as corn meal. So it seemed obvious to use a cornbread recipe to make acorn bread, but substituting acorn meal for corn meal. This turned out very good, and everyone liked it, especially with butter or honey or better yet, honey-butter. It was nutty and sweetish, and somewhat comparable to bran muffins in flavor.

Acorn pancakes
with elderberry-hawthorn syrup

To completely finish the process, the acorn meal which I did not use right away was dried and ground again into a finer flour. Because acorns are high in fat content, this is best stored in a freezer. Then I used this fine acorn flour to make acorn pancakes (using acorn flour, eggs, water, and baking soda). Since the acorn flour has less binding starches than wheat flour, the pancake can be a bit fragile, so it helps to wait a little longer before flipping. It seems best to wait until the uncooked side has set up a bit and lost the appearance of batter. But it still splats nicely on the flip and gets a good second surface, which wheat pancakes often do not do if you wait that long. My acorn pancakes had a pleasant nutty flavor, and tasted especially good with the elderberry-hawthorn syrup I made this year. This is a rare gourmet experience.

Secale cereale

Secale cereale
(seeds visible and ready to fall out)

Secale cereale is domestic rye, a grain grown commercially especially in northern lands, but it easily escapes cultivation, and grows wild in many places in my area. Common places to find it are in the lower foothills, along paths, and in fallow fields. Most of these places are not fully wilderness, and not fully domesticated either. 

unripe rye /
closeup of spikelet pair

Wheat and barley can look very similar to rye. Grasses are a botanical specialty of their own, and have a specialized language to describe all the parts, but I will try not use more commonly understandable descriptions here. They all have groups of seed-carrying structures (called spikelets), which are arranged in a fairly dense pattern at the top of the stem, attached directly to the stem (sessile), and alternating sides along the stem. They usually have long hairs (or awns) coming from each spikelet. Rye always has two seed-carrying spikelets side by side at each node along the stem, with two long awns. Barley has three spikelets at each node along the stem, although typically only one produces a large seed; but they have three awns each (nine awns per node) so barley has the most bearded appearance. Wheat has one spikelet per node, with several seeds packed in a dense cluster; typically three or so develop large seeds; and wheat may or may not have awns depending on the variety. One rule of thumb is that barley has one seed, rye has two, and wheat has three seeds. This is reliable for rye, but some varieties of barley have been bred which get all three spikelets to grow a large seed, and the number of seeds in a wheat spikelet is somewhat variable.

I picked my rye when they already looked fully ripe, as in they were turning yellow or straw colored, and some the spikelets were already falling off the tops. I tried to pull just the seed off the top, without the long stem below. Doing this one by one is a bit slow, but I enjoy wandering around the wilds, so I enjoy doing it. I collected from three different places, spending about an hour each day, and my three hours yielded a four gallon bucket nearly full of fluffy heads of rye.

Separating out the seeds turned out to be easier than I expected. The traditional ways turn out to be fairly efficient. There are two steps: threshing and winnowing. To thresh the grain, I put my rye into a cloth bag and beat it with a heavy stick for 10 or 15 minutes. Winnowing is done by pouring the grains between two buckets and letting the wind blow the chaff away, while the grains fall into the bucket. Ideally, you should use a fan to get a stiff, steady wind. But I don't currently own one, so I just used the natural breezes. Even a light breeze blows away the smaller bits of chaff, but I was having trouble separating the larger bits, so I did it again the next day when there was a little more wind. Personally, the dust from this process (mostly small bits of chaff) can be extremely irritating to my sinuses, so I definitely recommend doing all this outdoors where the dust will be blown away as soon as possible. After threshing and winnowing, my yield was about 4½ cups of grain. I have a nice hand grinder, and I've used it a lot in the past for wheat. Instead, I used the electric grinder to speed things up. After grinding I measured 7½ cups of flour, so grinding nearly doubled the volume.

100% Rye Rolls

After looking up a few 100% rye bread recipes, I chose a fairly simple yeast bread recipe, because the sourdough recipes took a lot longer. It was 4 cups rye flour, 1.75 cups water, yeast, 4 tbsp honey, and salt. I also added 1 tsp apple cider vinegar as a substitute for cream of tartar, because it said the acidity was helpful. Since rye has much less gluten than wheat, one can expect a denser bread. So I decided to make rolls instead of a single loaf. These spread outward more than upward during the rising process, so the rolls were rather flat. But everyone agreed they were very good tasting. Many people warn that rye bread can have a bit of a bitter flavor, but there was none of that here. The taste is similar to whole wheat sourdough rolls, without much sourdough flavor, but with the denser texture one gets from some sourdough rolls.

Wheat/Rye Bread

I also made a couple loaves of bread with half rye and half wheat, because I have always like the flavor of that type of bread, and I was not disappointed. The flavor of this bread is very good. I simply used a whole wheat bread recipe and substituted half of the wheat flour with rye flour. 

Crataegus rivularis

Crataegus rivularis
fruits and thorns

There are between 200 and 1000 species of Hawthorns in the Crataegus genus, but the most common local variety is Crataegus rivularis, the river hawthorn, also known as Crataegus douglasii var. rivularis and probably many other names as well. Botanical micro-management aside, most hawthorns have similar fruits and are used the same way.

True to its name, river hawthorn grows next to rivers, and can grow quite abundantly in some locations. The fruit, when properly ripe, is very dark red to black, and filled with a soft flesh. Later the fruit dries and hardens and is no good for eating. Leaf shape can vary dramatically in this genus, but the leaves of this species are about twice as long as wide, taper on both ends, and toothed on the margin, especially at the apex of the leaf. But probably the most distinctive feature of the Crataegus genus is the thorns, which grow at irregular intervals along the branches. Details vary among the different species, but in river hawthorn, they are about an inch long, and are often sparse enough that you need to do some searching to find them. Some other species have many more and longer thorns and occasionally have been used as border hedges. Find the thorns to be sure you have the Crataegus genus. Find a botanist if you want to be sure about the species.

The fruits are commonly called "haws". Botanically, they are a pome, like apples. But because of their size, "hawthorn berries" is perhaps a more understandable description. The consistency of the flesh in the fruits has been described, by my taste-testers, as "thick apple sauce", "goop", and "paste". Unfortunately, the experience of eating the fruit is also marred by the presence of 5 hard seeds, which are spit out afterwards. The good news is that the actual taste of the flesh, once you get used to the texture, is actually quite good. Is it mildly and pleasantly sweet, slightly tart, and not entirely unlike apple sauce. It has its own distinctive flavor, which is somewhat cranberry-ish. The taste is stronger than apples but weaker than cranberries. 

Most sources warn about toxic cyanide-containing compounds in the seeds, and do not recommend eating them. Specifics are hard to find, but this is common in the rose family, so one should expect them to be similar to apple seeds in this respect. It would probably take a similarly ridiculous amount of seeds to reach a toxic level, but because hawthorn fruit have much less flesh compared to seed than apples do, it is probably easier to reach that toxic level if you were to eat them whole. It is best to spit or filter out the seeds, but because of the pasty consistency of the flesh, this can be a challenge.

I ran my haws through a manual juicer (auger-type) with the end ring removed so that the seeds could go through without being crushed or breaking the juicer. This resulted in some high-quality paste though the juicing screen, which soon turned fairly firm because of all the pectin in it. But most of the fruit and flesh went out the end of the juicer. With this I tried a method recommended by Thomas Elpel, mixing it with some water and squeezing through a cloth. My cloth only let the liquids through, but these were high in pectin, and soon turned jelly-like. And second mixing and squeezing produced a liquid with less pectin, but still a lot of flavor. I tried a third mix and squeeze, but the flavor from that was much less.

More recently I have constructed a screen which I can manually press the fruit through. This is labor intense, requiring me to rub the berries on the screen until everything but the seeds are pressed though, but it allows me to use as much of the fruit as possible. Since we really like the flavor of Elderberry-Hawthorn syrup, the effort is worth it.

Although hawthorn berries have a good flavor, the trouble of processing them might not be worth the effort, if they did not contain high amounts of pectin. The pectin makes hawthorn a valuable addition when making jellies and jams from other kinds of berries and fruits. Commercial pectin is currently in short supply, because of the government lockdowns in 2020, so it's nice to have a wildcrafted source for it, and the flavor of hawthorn is also a good addition to most recipes. I especially like to combine it with elderberries, to make an elderberry-hawthorn syrup, out of 4 part elderberries to 1 part hawthorn paste, sweetened with about 4 parts sugar or honey.

Prunus virginiana

Prunus virginiana
spring flowers

Prunus virginiana
fall berries

Fall is the time for berries and one of the less sought after berries is Prunus virginiana, or Chokecherry. Chokecherries are very astringent, and most of the time I try them, a single cherry will dry my entire mouth out, which makes me not want to eat any more.

However, if you wait until the cherries are very, very ripe, such as in September or later, when they are very dark red or black, and most have either fallen off, been eaten by birds, or dried up, at that time they can be fairly good. They are still a little astringent, so it takes ten or more to get the full effect, but they are also pretty good tasting, enough that I want to eat more of them. They are mildly sweet, with a good flavor, and more juicy than fleshy.

Most of the trees have only a few berries on them, but you can find some with quite a few on them, though there are usually just a few on each branch. Maybe we don't have enough bees in the desert to pollinate them all. Chokecherry trees are not very tall, and sometimes only bush-sized, so it is possible to bend down the branches to reach the higher ones, especially if you have a nice hooked stick for that purpose. When you find a tree with a good amount of fruit, they are easy to pick quickly because they grow in bunches (racemes) which allow you to strip many fruit off together.

Chokecherries can be made into a good tasting jam or jelly, if you add enough sugar, and some lemon or lime juice. The pits are not very hard and break up in an auger juice press, but I didn't want to risk abusing my juicer with a lot of hard pit fragments, so I separated the pits manually after boiling the fruit to soften them (one could also press them through a screen), and then ran the fruit through the juicer to separate most of the solids. I started with one part sugar and two parts cherry juice, and 1 tablespoon each of lemon a lime juice. After tasting, I added a little more sugar, because it seemed to need it. Sugar-only jelly recipes recommended boiling until it reached 210°F (based on my altitude), but it turned out too thick (it was like honey). Those recipes are mostly based on extracting the juice with a steamer instead of a juice press, so they get less of the fruit's natural pectin that way. It would have been better to test the thickness of the mixture occasionally until it was right, instead of trusting the temperature alone.

The always entertaining Sam Thayer talks about them in "The Forager's Harvest", where he says his favorite way to eat them is dried into fruit leather. He also tells an interesting story about how the Indians would crush the pits up with the fruit before drying. The pits contains some cyanide compounds, but these break down in the drying and/or fermenting process. 

Identifying chokecherry bushes in the spring is easy, because of the long racemes full of white flowers. The berries also grow in racemes (a single central stem with flowers or berries branching off one at a time) and this is one way to distinguish chokecherries from other kinds of cherries. Once the flowers are gone, look for racemes of ripening berries. You can also look at the base of the leaf for two small dots or glands. These glands are common in cherries, and not so much in other Prunus species, such as plums, almonds, apricots and peaches. I have seen them on hawthorn leaves, though.

Ribes aureum

Ribes aureum - spring flowers

Ribes aureum - fall berries

The best tasting native current in this area is definitely Ribes aureum, or Golden Current. They are juicy and full of sweetness, with a little tartness, and a current flavor of their own.

The bushes are most easily recognizable in the spring, when they grow lots of bright yellow flowers. The flowers are the most "golden" part of this plant. These flowers have a long tube before they open out, and the structure is slightly different botanically from most other flowers. The large spreading yellow "petals" are actually the sepals, while the real petals are small and form a small crown in the center of the flower. The flowers dry out, but remain attached to the end of the berry when it is ripe.

The berries in the fall can be either orange or black when ripe. I have found both types. As stated, the dried sepals and pistil from the flower remain attached to the end of the berry. I usually break these off, but they are not very distracting if you don't.

The leaves resemble maple leaves, and like maples, they turn a pretty shade of red in the fall. But they are smaller, and are more 3-lobed, where maples are more 5-lobed. They are also attached to a bush instead of a tree.

The berries are great raw. If you find enough they can be made into jams or dried like raisins. I am particularly fond of putting dried currents in my granola. They give it a good fruity flavor, without clashing with the texture of the rest of the granola. (Raisins are so large that you have to stop to chew each one, but dried currents are small, so you taste them without noticing when you are chewing one.)

Rhus aromatica

Rhus aromatica or Rhus trilobata

The Sumac bush is known in latin, depending on which botanist you ask, as Rhus aromatica (for its fragrant leaves) or Rhus trilobata (for the three-lobed leaves). It is quite fragrant, although the smell seems to be a bit controversial, because it has many common names, including fragrant sumac, skunkbush, and lemonade bush. I just call it sumac, because it is by far the most common member of the genus in this region. It is a common desert plant, and also is found in the mountains, although it prefers to be near streams in either setting.

The main use for sumac, as the common name "lemonade bush" implies, is for making a refreshing drink. The ripe, bright red berries have a sour-tasting coating which dissolves in water to make a drinks flavored similar to lemonade. The berries can be used when they are fresh or when they are older and dry, since the important part is on the surface. One should taste a berry before picking a lot from a bush, because the flavor might have already been washed away by rain.

The drink is made by soaking the berries in cold water for a hour or so. Boiling or hot water should not be used, because it could leach out bitter tannins, which would not taste as good. I enjoy the flavor both straight or with a little sweetening. It is tart and refreshing, and my kids love it, especially the girls.

The dry fruits can also be ground up into a lemony-tasting spice, which is especially popular in middle east cooking. It is the main ingredient in the spice mix called za'atar. The species Rhus coriaria is more common in that part of the world, but the spice can be made with any of the common sumac species. It western culture it could be used whenever you might want a lemon-pepper seasoning.

Rhus glabra

Rhus glabra

Smooth sumac (Rhus glabra) is similar to Staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) and can be used in the same ways. Rhus glabra has smooth stems and is common in the western United States, while Rhus typhina has hairy stems and is more common in the eastern United States, and is even considered invasive in some areas.

The main use of sumac is in making the refreshing, tart drink called sumac-ade. It is similar in taste to lemonade and I enjoy it both straight or with a little sweetening added. The ripe red berries are simply soaked in cold water for an hour or so. The tart flavoring is on the outside of the berries, so they can be used when the berries are older and dry, as long as the rain has not washed the flavor away. It is good to taste a berry before picking to be sure it is still tasty. The smooth sumac has the advantage over the more locally common sumac bush (Rhus aromatica) because the berries grow in large clusters at the top of the branches, which makes collection mush easier. Note that the water should not be boiling or hot, because that might leach out bitter tannins which would not taste as good.

Smooth sumac has another edible part which the more common sumac bush lacks. Sumac bush is a dense woody shrub which is fairly slow growing. But smooth sumac puts out significant new branches of growth each year. When these new shoots are young (not yet producing berries at the end) they can be peeled and eaten raw. They are mild tasting and slightly crunchy, from the tip down until the point where pith starts to form in the middle of the stem. In the ones I have found, the shoots which are new branches from main bush are about the same size and flavor as new shoots coming out of the ground from the roots. Sam Thayer has a story (in The Forager's Harvest) about staghorn sumac next to railroad tracks which was mowed down every year, and would grow much larger shoots.

There is a poison sumac plant, which used to be included in the Rhus genus (Rhus vernix). This has been renamed into the Toxicodendron (poison ivy) genus, along with all the other related poisonous, rash-producing species. So it is now called Toxicodendron vernix. Poison sumac has a leaf structure (pinnately compound) resembling Rhus glabra, whereas poison ivy (our local species is Toxicodendron rydbergii) leaves come in threes, and can resemble Rhus aromatica although they are larger. The berries of the poisonous species are greenish or whitish, not red, so that is an easy way distinguish them.

Cardaria draba

Cardaria draba

Cardaria draba is a great wild substitute for broccoli. Just be sure you cook it first.

It's so good, I had to put the conclusion at the beginning, where I usually explain that Cardaria draba is commonly known as Whitetop or Hoary Cress, and less commonly but more recently known as Lepidium draba. Like broccoli, it is a cruciferous vegetable, which means it is a member of the mustard family, formerly (and more correctly) called the Cruciferae family in Latin. "Draba" comes from a Greek word meaning sharp, acrid or burning, which is an appropriate description of this plant.

Whitetop is a very common and invasive weed. If you don't already have it in your garden, one of your neighbors does, and it is easily found in practically every suburban setting. You probably see a lot of it next to your jogging path, for example.

I have heard from many people that whitetop is edible, and have eaten it myself, and told others about it. The trouble with it is, it is extremely spicy when eaten raw, so I have not eaten very much of it at a time. But it looks like it would make a good broccoli substitute, if cooking could tame the spiciness. So on a trip to the mountains, I found a lot of it in prime condition, with the tops still in clusters of buds before the flowers open, and it was time to finally do the cooking experiments with it. I just pick the top bud clusters, along with any small leaves which came with it. Lower leaves seem a lot tougher. One can squat down in a patch and pick a lot before needing to get up to go to the next section of the patch. Squatting is better for your back than bending over.

Whitetop Stir-Fry
with false solomon's seal, watercress,
mushrooms and onions,
in a stinging nettle and soy sauce

And the cooking was a complete success. After 5 minutes of boiling, the flavor was fresh and mild, with practically all of the spiciness gone. Some people can still detect a little when they eat a lot of it. After 10 minutes, the flavor was about the same, but it had a mushier texture, so it doesn't need to be cooked that long. Next I steamed it for 5 minutes. This also removed that spiciness and resulted in the most similar taste to broccoli, both in flavor and texture. Finally, because I like broccoli in my stir-fry recipes (the buds hold on to the sauce very well--yummy), I made a stir-fry out of it, along with some Smilacina racemosa (false solomon's seal) and Nasturtium officinale (watercress) which I found on the same outing. I also added some mushrooms and onion, and made the sauce out of stinging nettle and soy sauce. Very very good!

Note that some sources say there is hydrogen cyanide in the young leaves, but this is an over-simplification. The cyanide in Cardaria draba (and other mustards) is in the form of isothiocyanates, glucosinolates, and in less chemical terms, erucic acid. These compounds are known to have a very spicy and/or bitter flavor. One study (Nutrient composition of whitetop) says "Total glucosinolate content of whole whitetop plants during the rosette and early bloom stages of development approximated that of low-glucosinolate cultivars of rape." In other words, whitetop is no more dangerous than canola oil.

Older sources and those interesting grazing animals emphasize the negative effects of these compounds, which include anti-thyroid effects (therefore pro-goiter effects) and cardiotoxic effects in rats (not verified in humans). It is also said to taint milk and meat for about a week after ingestion. Newer studies prefer to emphasize the health benefits of isothiocyanates, which include antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, and multi-faceted anticancer activity. (Here is a fairly readable article.)  There are various studies on the effects of cooking cruciferous vegetables, which confirm that boiling reduces these chemicals the most. Actually, most of those articles are concerned with finding the cooking methods which preserve isothiocyanates and glucosinolates because of their reputed healthy effects, but since whitetop is fairly high in these compounds, it is probably better to try to reduce them in cooking.

A couple of us did notice some mild stomach upset a few hours after eating our whitetop stir-fry. So remember the usual cautions to try new foods in small amounts to see how you react to them, and that boiling is probably the best way cook these if you are being cautious. 

One reason why Cardaria draba is so invasive is that it releases allelopathic chemicals which reduce the growth of other plants. Cardaria draba is especially detrimental to grasses, including commercial cereal crops. So it may be a good idea to get it out of your garden.

Asparagus officinalis

Asparagus officinalis

smaller plant, beginning to leaf out

Asparagus officinalis does not grow in the mountains very often. It is not a native species, but an escapee from cultivation, so it most commonly grows along irrigation ditches, where it has plenty of water and full sun.

Asparagus is one of the best-known and most sought out wild edibles, not to mention one of the best tasting. Since I had not personally identified and harvested this plant, I decided to take trip out the the flat-lands specifically to find this. It isn't very hard to find. Just look for its favorite habitat, along irrigation ditches, and walk until you find some. It grows low to the ground, so it works best to watch for last year's dried plants. These have thin lacy leaves, and dry to a yellowish color. Although they can get quite large, the dry asparagus plants along my ditch were only about two feet high, and straw-colored. Nevertheless, they were a good signal to slow down and look closer. Whereas, if I just saw grasses or horsetails, I could walk a little faster. Unfortunately, although not surprisingly, I was not the first person to walk this stretch, so many of the stalks had already been picked. I grows pretty swiftly, though, so I was able to harvest enough for my family and I to get a good taste.

The taste is excellent, of course: sweet and fresh and makes you wish for more. One person said it tastes like peas. That's a pretty common comparison around here actually, and while I don't think it tastes quite like fresh garden peas, the sweetness and freshness are similar at least.

As much as I love the mountains, this is one plant which could draw me down to explore the farmland and ditches, as least temporarily.