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 is 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! 

Miner's Lettuce is fresh flavored and crisp, and makes an excellent base leaf for a spring salad. Each plant has many leaves, so it is easy to collect enough for a large salad. the stems also taste good, so there is no need to try to discard them. Then you can add whatever other greens are around to give some additional flavor and variety. Onion flowers are one of my favorite additions, but you can also add violet leaves and flowers, spring beauty, glacier lily leaves, young false solomons seal leaves and flower buds, sweet cicely, etc, etc, etc.