Osmorhiza occidentalis

Osmorhiza occidentalis

close-up of the seeds

The botanical name for Western Sweetroot is Osmorhiza occidentalis, which is almost a direct translation. "Occidentalis" is Latin for western, "rhiza" is Greek for root, and "osmo-" is Greek for smelly but in a good way. So the botanical name translates to "western sweet-smelling root", which is a very good description for this plant, which is the most fragrant member of its genus. The seeds have a strong sweet anise smell. The leaves smell like candy to me. And the root has such a strong and pleasing scent that it is begging to be used in a potpourri.

But this blog is about eating things, so how does it taste? I think "mountain candy" is how I would describe it. I enjoy the seeds or flower clusters as a trail nibble. They are sweet and have a very powerful flavor (the seeds of most members of the carrot family have a lot of volatile oils in them), so they are best eaten sparingly, like candy. The leaves can develop some bitterness when older, but the young ones have a similar pleasant flavor, but not as strong without all the seed oils. I boiled the leaves for 5 minutes, and they had a milder flavor. 

The tea from cooking the leaves had both a pleasant refreshing flavor, and a certain brothiness when hot, and when chilled, it made a wonderfully refreshing drink, without needing any sweetening. The dried leaves can be used to make that same refreshing drink, and adds a great flavor to soups and sauces. I have been adding some of the crushed leaves to flavor my stir-fry sauces, soups, and gravies with delicious results.

The dried root makes an earthy tea with medicinal properties which are useful for respiration and digestion. The flavor reminds me of Osha (Ligusticum porteri), but is not quite the same.

Identifying this plant can be a little tricky, like most members of the carrot family. First, it has the typical compound umbels of the carrot family, with yellow flowers. The leaves are compound, with definite leaflets (not finely dissected into small indefinite segments). Of particular importance are the seeds, which are a little over 1 cm long, thin with shallow lobes running the length of them, smooth (other members of the genus have hairy seeds), and they usually stick straight up from the stem. If all of that matches, break open a seed and smell it. The very strong and pleasant anise scent is like nothing else in my area. Scent seems to be a very good way of identifying members of the carrot family, but you have to learn the scents yourself, because the scientific floras do not try to describe scents.

Finally, a few notes about other species of Osmorhiza. Osmorhiza depauperata, commonly known as Sweet Cicely, is much more common than O. occidentalis in my region. It is easily distinguished by the few rays in its umbels. It only has 3-6 rays in both the umbels and umbellets, which is very unusual in this family, but not in this genus. The seeds are darker, have little hairs, and tend to split in half and hang from their tips when mature. It has very little scent to it, and the leaves can be eaten. Sam Thayer lists several other species which are common in the eastern United States, which are more similar to O. depauperata than to O. occidentalis. 

Campanula rotundifolia

Campanula rotundifolia

There are many species of the Campanula genus around the world, and they are all considered edible, although some have better reports of edibility and some are not so great. My local species is Campanula rotundifolia, and it is one of the not-so-great ones. 

Most Campanula species have a common name which is a variant of either Harebell or Bellflower, and this species also known by both of those names. It is also called Bluebells, especially in Scotland, but here in the Mountain West, Bluebells refers to flowers in the Mertensia genus. Bellflower is a good description, because they are largish bell-shaped flowers, which hang down like a bell would.

The flowers themselves are the best edible part of this species. They are tender, and have a good taste, which seems both mildly sweet and mildly savory to me. They would make an attractive addition to a salad.

The leaves are rather tough, and develop a bit of bitter taste by the time I finish chewing them. The latin species name, rotundifolia, translates to "round leaves", but these plants have long thin leaves (lanceolate). 

Some Campanula species have roots which are good to eat, but this species has long, thin, creeping roots. They are fairly small and difficult to follow in order to dig them up. Even after boiling for ten minutes, they are too bland, tough, and small to be worth the effort of digging for.

Agoseris aurantiaca

Orange Agoseris

Agoseris aurantiaca is not common enough to have a real common name, so its name in English is "Orange Agoseris". Unsurprisingly, aurantiaca is a latin word for "orange". It is a cousin of dandelion, and is sometimes called "Mountain Dandelion". By cousin, I mean that it is in the same tribe (or sub-family) of composite flowers with milky juice and ray-flowers only (no disk flowers like you see in the middle of a daisy). It superficially resembles a dandelion, with the most obvious difference being the bright orange color of the flower. The leaves are not toothed on the edges like dandelion leaves, and the green phyllaries under the flower (a primary character used by botanists to distinguish different genera) are quite different.

Sources say that the leaves of agoseris have been eaten when cooked like spinach. However, when I tried them, I found them to be even more bitter than dandelion leaves, either raw or after being boiled for 5 minutes. Perhaps one could consider this survival food, but when real dandelions are much, much more common, and taste better, why would you bother? Not recommended.

Tragopogon porrifolius

Tragopogon porrifolius

This is an unusual plant in my region, but on a recent hike I found a stand of Tragopogon porrifolius, commonly known as Oyster Root or Salsify. I prefer to call it Purple Salsify to distinguish it from the Yellow Salsify, Tragopogon dubium, which is more common in this area.

All parts of the plant are more-or-less edible. The best parts are the flower and the root. The flowers taste the same as Tragopogon dubium (Yellow Salsify), and I have written about them in my article on that plant. I'm not going to repeat that here, so go there to read more about eating the flowers.

The root is what most people are interested in when they talk about Tragopogon porrifolius. It has even been cultivated for for the root, famously by Thomas Jefferson after Lewis and Clark brought samples back from their explorations. And it deserves the recognition it gets. 

One thing I noticed about the Purple Salsify plants I found is that even thought the flowers are the same size, they grow about twice as tall as Yellow Salsify. The first-year plants were also about twice as tall, stouter, and with many more leaves than Yellow Salsify. This size difference applies to the root as well, so, geometrically speaking, the roots should be eight times the volume. The roots I found were harvested in July (mid-summer) instead of in the fall when they would be the largest, but they were already much larger and plumper than the scrawny, woody roots of T. dubium. In a well-cared-for garden, they can get much larger still.

When harvesting the roots, remember that this is a biennial, so if the plant has flowers, the roots will have gone woody, and will not be good to eat. In the wild, the flowers are much more noticeable, but you can look around and spot the first-year plants. They grow from a dense cluster of grass-like leaves, but unlike grass, when broken they have milky sap. It is fortunate that they are much larger than Yellow Salsify, because that makes it easier to distinguish the first-year plant from the actual grasses growing around them.

I boiled my roots for 10 minutes. I did not try to peal them first, but the outer skin rubs off fairly easily after cooking. I tried with and without the skin and didn't notice much difference in taste. It has a good flavor. I don't think it tastes much like oysters, but I'm not a big fan of oysters, so my opinion probably doesn't count. The best description we could come up with is somewhere between a potato and a carrot. After cooking, is it fairly soft, but it seems to have some fibers too, so slicing it before serving will cut those fibers so only the soft texture is evident. Overall, these root are a very good meal, with a size and flavor which makes it well worth seeking them out.

Since the leaves of the first-year plants are abundant, I tried cooking them, by boiling or frying. While the taste is fine, they are rather tough and fibrous, so it is much like eating grass. Some sources have suggested using them in a salad, but I don't enjoy trying to chew them up raw, and cooking them did not help either.

Tragopogon dubium

Tragopogon dubium

Tragopogon dubium is commonly known as Western Salsify, and occasionally as Oyster Root, although that may better be used for the eastern, purple-flowered species, Tragopogon porrifolius. 

the most recognizable
but least edible stage

The salsify flower is easy to recognize. It is yellow and fairly large, with narrow green sepals which are even longer than the petals. But the seeds are even more distinctive. If you have ever seen something which looks like a giant dandelion, that is salsify which has gone to seed. Tragopogon is in the dandelion tribe (tribe is a botanical category placed between family and genus), so it shares certain characteristics: the composite flowers are formed from all ray flowers (the strap-shaped petals) with no disk flowers (which you seed in the center of a sunflower, for example), and it has milky sap which is evident when you break a leaf or stem. Some people will say to avoid plants with milky sap, because they might be poisonous, but none of the dandelion tribe is poisonous, and most are good to eat.

The whole plant is more-or-less edible, but the best and easiest part to eat, in my experience, is the flower and the stalk immediately below the flower. But you have to pick the flower at the right time, before it goes to seed when it is still tender. The flower has an interesting life cycle where it forms a bud, then opens, usually in the morning for a day or so. It then closes again, and opens again when the seeds are ready into the distinctive "giant dandelion" form. The flowers are easiest to find in the morning, when they will be first opening in sunny grassy fields. I have walked through a field in the morning and seen many open flowers, then walked through the same field in the afternoon and seen none. They are good tasting and tender when the flowers are fresh. When they close up again to form seeds they become rather too tough to eat. The flower buds before flowering are also excellent to eat, but you need to distinguish them from the closed flowers which are forming seeds. If you pull the bud open and see bright yellow petals, it is good to eat. If you just see some faded yellow petals near the tip of the bud, then it is older and forming seeds. Whether you eat the flower or bud, be sure to include the stem below the flower, which is especially sweet, and is one of my favorite trail-side snacks. 

I have not found roots of Tragopogon dubium which are good to eat. Mainly this is because the plant is a biennial, and it is difficult to identify in the first year when the root is storing up energy. The leaves are long and narrow and grass-like, making them difficult to see in grassy fields where it is likely to grow. In the second year of growth it sends up a flower stalk, and the flowers and seeds are very easy to identify, but by then the root energy has been expended in growing the flower stalk and has become tough and woody. If you have ever let a garden carrot stay in the ground all winter until the next year when it sends up a large flower stalk, you have witnessed a similar biennial growth pattern. The carrot root becomes woody and no longer tastes good after it uses the stored energy to send up the flower stalk. The roots of Tragopogon porrifolius are much larger and more tender, so eat those if you can find them. Unfortunately, that species is rare in my area.

Caltha leptosepala

Caltha leptosepala is the white Marsh Marigold which I find in the high altitude marshes of the Uinta Mountains. You may find it elsewhere, but it is different from the yellow Marsh Marigold (Caltha palustris) commonly found in the eastern United States. 

Harrison (in Edible Native Plants of the Rocky Mountains) and Euell Gibbons (in Stalking the Faraway Places) report eating Caltha leptosepala both raw and cooked, and give favorable reports of it. Sam Thayer reports on Caltha palustris in the Forager's Harvest. The consensus is that the white western species is much better tasting than the yellow eastern species. 

The sources recommend picking the young leaves in the early spring before it flowers. I collected mine at the beginning of June, between 9000 and 10000 feet elevation, next to melting snowbanks. Spring comes late in the high mountains. The first flowers were already blooming, and comparing different plants, it seems to me that the flowers appear as soon as they can, with little time between sprouting and flowering. Some sources mention using roots, but the roots of these are small and stringy, so not worth even trying anything with them.

Marsh Marigolds have a toxin or two (with various names; look it up and pick one) which is destroyed by heat, so most sources recommend cooking it. Most scientific papers are specifically about Caltha palustris. I don't find good sources for the constituents of Caltha leptosepala specifically. Since it is closely related to C. palustris, we would expect to have similar constituents, but from the reports of less bitterness, it might have less of them. 

I tasted it raw, and found the young leaves to be slightly bitter, and the older leaves to be definitely bitter. I'm not sure how early in the spring one would have to find them to get non-bitter raw leaves, but I would not choose to eat them raw. The texture was a bit tough, but very acceptable for a leaf. (Sam Thayer describes the flavor of Caltha palustris as "acrid" but I would not use that word for this plant.) After cooking for five minutes, they were tender but still bitter. At ten minutes they were mushy but becoming less bitter. After a change of water and a total of 15 minutes, most of the bitterness was gone. And after twenty minutes they were about the same mushiness but with still a hint of bitterness. 

After the full cook time, the flavor was acceptable. Bland, mushy, and only a hint of bitterness. But so bland that the bitter hint is the most noticeable flavor. The bitter aftertaste seem to stay in the mouth for quite a while after eating them.

Sources recommend eating them in a cream sauce. That would probably help mask the bitterness. For that I will refer you to Wild Food Girl, who makes "creamed elkslip" out of Caltha leptosepala. Elkslip is another common name for Caltha species.

As for myself, I did not find the flavor to be compelling enough for me to want to eat more of it. There was Spring Beauty (Claytonia lanceolata) and Glacier Lilies (Erythronium grandiflorum) growing in abundance at the same place and time, and both of these are much better greens, and both have very tasty roots as well.

Capsella bursa-pastoris

Capsella bursa-pastoris

basal leaves

This post is for busting a myth.

Capsella bursa-pastoris, commonly known as Shepherd's Purse, is a common weedy plant found in both the country and in cities, where it seems especially well adapted to growing in sidewalk cracks. It is a member of the mustard family, and like most of these, it has small, four-petaled flowers (white in this case), and the seed capsules grow on short stalks which branch off from the main stem one at a time in all directions. The way to identify this particular species is from the the triangular-shaped seed pods. Zoom in on the picture to see them better.

I like eating the tender flower clusters at the top of the stalk, and also the green seed capsules which grow along the stalk. They have a nice mild flavor. Unlike many types of mustard, this plant is very mild, without the pungency or spicy-hot flavor common in a lot of mustards. I can keep eating these flowers and seed capsules all day, even raw, without getting a hot or burny sensation in my mouth. One definitely cannot do that with mustards such as watercress, whitetop, or tumble-mustard.

It has very few leaves on the stem and these are small. The basal leaves are a little larger, but I find them to be a bit tough for eating. And I did eat quite a few of them while testing them for spiciness. Even the small basal leaves before the seed stalk forms are tough. On the other hand, Sam Thayer reports in his book "Incredible Wild Edibles" that Shepherd's Purse growing "in moist soil laden with organic matter" can be large and lush, but that is not the kind of soil we have in the Rocky Mountains or under sidewalk cracks.

Many edible plant references state that "the seedpods can be used as a peppery seasoning for soups and stews." This is absolutely not true, and anyone who states this reveals that they have no personal experience with the plant, and are simply repeating myths that they have read elsewhere. The whole point of pepper is to add a spicy-hot flavor to your food. But Shepherd's Purse is actually one of the mildest mustards I have eaten. As a second witness to this, I will quote Sam Thayer again: "shepherd's purse is mild enough to form the base of a salad". He says nothing about peppery seeds, but he busts another myth about the roots being similar to ginger. 

So, I highly recommend eating the flowering tops, and the seed pods. You can even add them to your stew; just don't expect them to add any appreciable flavor.

Erodium cicutarium

Erodium cicutarium

I have heard and read from many people that Erodium cicutarium is edible, but it has been a tough sell for me because I have never liked it when I have tried a leaf or two raw. Recently, I had a couple other people taste test it with me, and they liked it a lot more than I did, so I thought I should give it a more serious trial.

The common name for Erodium cicutarium is Stork's Bill or Redstem Filaree. Personally, I don't think the stems are very red, so just calling it Filaree is settling best in my mind. It might also be called Crane's Bill, but that usually refers to certain Geraniums, which have similar looking seeds. Same family; different genus. A more appropriate name might be Heron's Bill, since Erodium is greek for Heron. It sprouts and blooms extremely early in the spring, and I often notice the little rosettes of feathery leaves already with its purple flowers long before anything else has started to grow. Some accounts say that the leaves taste better before it flowers, but you would need to be looking for it in February to find it that way. Later, as it is now, it grows into some dense mats of foliage with both flowers and seeds, which is how it appears in the photo. 

The seed pods are distinctive, and have the crane's bill or stork's bill shape which is a feature found in many plants in the Geranium family, In addition, the pods grow in groups of 3-6 on little reflexed stems which all meet together at one point. Those long extensions on the seeds turn into long awns which twist and untwist when they get wet or dry. My local university has a video of how this helps the seed drill its way into the soil. They also have a video on identifying this plant, so I'll link to that too.

Harvesting is mainly a matter of finding a good amount of growth which doesn't have other plants mixed in and sort of mowing it off with a knife. I am able to easily get a fairly large amount without much effort, as long as I find a place where a lot of it is growing. Remember to wash them thoroughly because they like to grow in sandy places and the hairs on the leaves and stems can hold onto some grit.

The raw taste makes me think of mild but bitter parsley. It's bitter enough that I have not often been tempted to experiment more with it. But it turns out that cooking improves the flavor quite a bit. After boiling for 10 minutes it has lost the bitterness, and has a hearty flavor which could be compared to stinging nettle. The tea made from the plant was especially good and hearty-flavored, and reminded me of stinging nettle broth, so I decided to try making soup with it, and a lot of the other wild things which are available at this time of year.

Filaree soup ingredients

Filaree Soup Recipe

• Filaree leaves (I separated the leaves from the seeds and stems, which can still be used for teas.) top middle
• Stinging Nettle leaves (I used dried leaves; they reconstitute well in the soup.) bottom middle
• Wild Onions (Peel and cut the little bulbs in half; chop the greens. I saved half of the greens to put on the soup as it was served.) left side
• Violet leaves. (Just a few as bit of thickener.) bottom right
• Waterleaf root. (Pre-cooked; this takes a lot longer than the other ingredients to cook. See that article for instructions.) top right
• Elm samaras. (I like these still crisp, so I just put the on top of the soup before serving.)

Put everything except the elm and some of the onion greens into a pot of water and boil for 10 minutes. Provide salt and pepper at the table. 

Everyone was impressed with the flavor. The combination of filaree and stinging nettle makes a very good broth flavor, and the onions also help a lot. The greens are not tough and not mushy after this amount of cook time, so I think it is about the right amount. 

I was trying to use exclusively foraged ingredients in this soup, but you could enhance it more with domesticated things, such as mushrooms, potatoes, a bit of meat, or some miso. 

After all this, I am convinced that this little plant deserves more respect than I have been giving it.