Asclepias speciosa

Asclepias speciosa

Showy Milkweed (Asclepias speciosa) is fairly common along roadsides and in fields. It is easily recognized by the large leaves with milky juice, and the balls of alien-looking flowers. Most people appreciate it for the butterflies it attracts. But it is also a good edible plant, but different parts are edible at different times of the year, so it may take some time and experience to learn to use it effectively. My experiences below were collected over several years.

I had a milkweed plant volunteer to grow in my yard a couple years ago. Each year I have a few more. As a result, I have had the opportunity to try out the various parts as the plants mature.

They seem to propagate by rhizomes better than they do by seeds. They produce a lot of flowers, but few seed pods.

Sam Thayer gives an excellent and detailed description of Milkweed in his book, The Forager's Harvest. Technically, he is working with Asclepias syriaca, a different species, but it is very similar. A. syriaca is considered the eastern variety, and A. speciosa is the western variety. A. speciosa has larger, showier flowers, but they both have the large, wide leaves which are not found in other milkweeds. My experiences agree with Sam Thayer's report in all other respects.

Shoots, ready for cooking

Shoots

In the spring, the shoots are the first vegetable this plant gives us. As with all immature plants, accurate identification at this stage can be difficult. If you know where the plants were growing the previous year, they will also be growing there the next year, so that will reduce a lot of the guesswork. I found the shoots fairly disappointing. They were rather mushy and bland after boiling and peeling, as Sam Thayer recommended, and there was not much left after peeling. It is quite likely that the shoots I picked were already a bit too old for best eating, so I will be experimenting more with it in the future.

One problem turns out to be overcooking. Most sources recommend 20 minutes, but in my experience that is much too long. Even 10 minutes left them on the mushy side. In my tests, about 7 minutes was about right to make it tender, but still leave enough texture to enhance the experience. At that point, I would call it merely mild-flavored, rather than bland. I cannot detect any bitterness at all. These are still not as good asparagus, but few things are.

The bottom of the shoot is tougher than the top. When young enough for good picking, shoots will typically have several pairs of leaves at the top, and then a space of several inches before the next pair of leaves, which are often smaller. The shoot seems to start toughening up right around that set of leaves, so that would be a good point to break off the stem in order to get the tenderest parts. There will always be a copious amount of milky sap leaking from the broken stem. You can shake some of this off, but it dries to near-invisibility after a few minutes.

immature flower buds

Buds

I gathered some of the unopened flower buds when they were still quite small (1/4" or less). A quick wash in cold water removed any of the milky sap from where they broke from the stem. I tried them boiled or steamed for 5 minutes. I thought the boiled ones were better. They were mild with a hint of sweetness, cooked enough but not yet mushy from overcooking. The taste is similar to the shoots, but with more texture instead of being mushy. I enjoyed the flavor and texture a lot, and would definitely recommend trying it. The steamed ones were similar but were a bit firmer, probably because they had not gotten cooked as much. They also had a slightly bitter taste along with the sweetness, which the water must have helped remove from the boiled ones.

Since they are buds, it is tempting to compare them to broccoli. Broccoli is a much tougher vegetable with even smaller buds. It stands up to a lot more cooking, while still retaining much firmness. Milkweeds buds are tender, so one should be careful not to over cook them. Boiling helps remove any bitterness. And the result is not much like broccoli; it is a milder and more tender flavor.

You have to find these at the right stage of growth. One might feel a twinge of guilt by prevented the plant from producing its flowers, but the plants are perennial and regrow from the same roots each year. Also, considering how many flowers are produced compared to how few actually mature into pods, this might be the most abundant part available for eating.

Flowers

I tried a few of the flowers raw. The milkweed flower is an alien-looking thing, with an extra structure between the petals and stamens, referred to as the corona. It is an appropriate name, since it is crown-like in this species, with little spikes bending over into the center of the flower. It is the most prominent part of the flower, and it is fleshy and not bad tasting raw. Several authors have mentioned the possibility of boiling the flowers down to make a syrup, but I have not found a first person account of this yet.

Pods

The pods were the part I was most interested in trying this year. They are tenderest when about an inch to an inch-and-a-half long, but are still good to three inches. If the outside has started to get a more spiky appearance and the seeds on the inside have started to spread out, then it is going to be tough. But if the outside is merely bumpy and the seeds inside are packed tightly together, it is probably still tender enough to eat.

I boiled the pods for five to ten minutes, and found that they were mild tasting and had a good texture. There are hollow spaces inside the pod next to the seeds and between the inner and outer layers of the rind, so the texture is more like eating a pepper than a more solid fruit. The green outer part of the pod is mild tasting (not bitter at all), and the white insides are slightly sweet.

Silk

The pod has an indented seam along one side, which can easily be pulled apart to get at the insides, the seeds and silk and central supporting structure. Sam Thayer recommends using the insides from larger but still immature pods (up to three inches) to boil and mix into a mild cheesy product. At this stage, the silk should be soft and easily pulled apart, not silky or fibrous at all. I did not have enough this year to get a large amount, but the insides from a couple pods produced a pleasantly sweet mix of mushy silk and tender seeds. (Mature silk also works great as a flash tinder: it catches fire very easily but does not burn for long.)

The pods from which the silk and seeds have been removed can also be eaten, but they should not be broken before cooking. The tender ones will become mushy and the less tender ones will not get any more tender.

Chorispora tenella

Chorispora tenella -- flowers

Purple mustard is a favorite edible of another local forager. He spends more time in desert terrain, where this is more common, so he finds it a lot more than I do, but I do admit that this is well worth seeking out. You can check out his website at wildutahedibles.com.

This is a rather weedy species, and grows well in disturbed soils. So one of the best places to find it is in on dirt piles near construction sites. Any place which has been disturbed, but not landscaped yet it prime terrain for this plant. It is best to pick it in the spring, when the leaves are younger and tender, and the flowers still blooming. It can get tough later in the summer.

The leaves and seed pods have a very good mustard flavor. They are kind of spicy, so I would not eat a lot of it plain, but as a way to add mustard flavor to a sandwich or other dish, this does the flavor with excellence.

entire plant

It is best when young enough that the flowers are still blooming, so they are a good way to identify the plant. Look for four purple petals in a cross shape. The petals are also a bit wavy, with darker purple near the center. Purple flowers are uncommon in the mustard family. The long seed pods also confirm it as a member of the mustard family.

The only species in the area which looks similar is African mustard. That plant also has four-petaled purple flowers, but they are much smaller, with shorter petals which do not form an obvious cross shape. The leaves are also covered with spiny hairs which make it unpleasant to try to eat.

Alliaria petiolata

Alliaria petiolata

Garlic mustard is a very invasive plant, and a large problem in many areas of the country. It is not a very common plant in my mountains, except for a few very tourist-laden towns and scout camps, where visitors come from far away places, and accidentally track in seeds in the mud on their shoes. I found in locally in a couple of those places. In the scout camp, is it becoming a serious problem, and taking up a large area there.

The leaves, flowers, and seed pods are edible, and taste a lot like garlic, the seeds more so than the leaves. They both have a strong flavor, so I would not want to eat large quantities alone, but it makes a good spice to flavor other food.

It can be identified by flowers, leaves and seed pods. The flowers are white and four-petaled. They develop into long seed pods, which are thin and four-angled. The leaves somewhat triangular or heart-shaped, with large teeth on the edges. The basal leaves which are lowest on the stem and the first to emerge from the ground are more rounded.

The plant resembles Cardamine cordifolia. The main difference is that the leaves of this plant are more toothed on the edges. Alliaria petiolata will grow everywhere, while Cardmine cordifolia grows in streams. And the taste is completely different.

Ulmus pumila

Ulmus pumila

Elm Samaras are a tasty spring salad. They are very easy to collect in large amounts, which is unusual for a wild edible. But on the other hand, the collection season is very short.

A "samara" is a winged seed. Elms, maples, and ash trees have samaras of difference shapes. The wing is a thin membrane extending out from the edge of the seed, to help it catch the wind and be able to fall farther from the parent tree. Elm samaras are round, and often have a notch at the end. Elm trees can be recognized by their serrated (toothed) leaves, but often the easiest way to recognize an elm tree is by noticing the thousands of round seeds on ground underneath it.

Most elms bear their fruit in the early spring before their leaves grow. This means the seeds are only available for a short time in the spring. But this is good for collecting the seeds, because they can be stripped easily from any branch low enough to reach, without worrying about collecting a lot of leaves with them. I was able to collect enough for a salad in five minutes.

The saramas grow in bunches connected by short stalks. I suppose one could pull the bunches of saramas off the little stalks, but I found that the stalks were not tough at all, so I didn't notice them as I ate them with the samaras. It was a lot less work just to leave them on after washing, plus they helped keep the samaras in the bunches separated, instead of lying flat against each other, which improves their presentation in a salad.

After washing, I spread them on a towel to dry a bit, and inspected them for foreign matter. I found a few small leaf buds and twigs. Don't be surprised if you get a few bugs as well. We got a couple ladybugs and some smaller things on one collection trip. For my salad, I chopped some tomato and cucumber into small pieces and tossed it all with a little balsamic vinaigrette.

The flavor of these raw is quite good. They are fairly tender, with a mild and slightly sweetish flavor. The wet salad vegetables, cucumber and tomato, were a good accompaniment in the salad I made with them. I have not tried them cooked, because I like them so much as a raw salad.

These are best fresh and raw, but I tried cooking them to see how they would taste. After boiling for 5 minutes, they turned mushy and bland tasting, although the water/tea from them had a nice, hearty flavor. I decided it would be better to not separate any juice from the samara, so I next tried them in an omelet, with a bit of onion, salt, and pepper. This was quite good, and the family wanted more. Because they can get mushy, these could be used whereever you might consider using cooked spinach.

Elm samara omlet ("Elmlet"), slightly scrambled

Identifying these seeds is very easy. No other tree-born seed is quite like them. Although a few mustard seeds look similar, they do not grow as trees. Look for the round-winged seeds, as a fairly dense first growth on trees early in the spring. Fruit trees will be in full blossom and other trees might be putting out their first leaves, so from a distance it may look like any other tree putting out new leaves. Get up close and get to know your trees, and you will soon find this one as well. The leaves, when they appear, are sharply serrate (toothed), and sometimes doubly-serrate (having smaller serrations inside large serrations).

This food is available fresh for only a few weeks in the spring, but it is super-abundant during that time. Elm trees can grow well over 50 feet tall, and cover themselves with seeds before the leaves come out. A single tree produces more salad than one could eat during that time.

Later, the dried fallen seeds can be rubbed and winnowed clean of the dried samara. This leaves a lentil-like seed, but I have not yet experimented with the seeds in this stage.

There are several species of Elm trees around. Siberian Elm (Ulmus pumila) is considered to be a weed by many people, so there is a good chance of finding that species. It may be difficult to distinguish some of the species before the leaves come out. American Elm (Ulmus americana), which is now endangered after being wiped out by dutch elm disease, has hairs around the edges of the wing.

Sambucus cerulea

Sambucus cerulea

Blue Elderberries are abundant and delicious in the late summer and fall months. Even though the individual berries are small, they grow in large clusters, so it is easy to gather a lot of them. I enjoy snacking on a cluster full of berries while on a hike. They have a tart and pleasant flavor. I save a few from the cluster to throw out somewhere else, where hopefully they will grow into more elderberry bushes.

Elderberries are fairly easy to identify. The leaves are opposite and compound. Compound means that botanically, each leaf is a collection of leaflets (5-9) on a short branch. Opposite means that the leaf branches occur in pairs on opposite sides of the main stem. The leaflets are longish and tapered, with serrated edges. The center of the stalks is filled with pith. The closest thing to Sambucus cerulea (blue elderberry) in this area is Sambucus racemosa (red elderberry). The difference is obvious in the fall when the berries are ripe, but you can tell them apart earlier because blue elderberries grow in flat-topped clusters, while red elderberry clusters are more rounded. Another look-alike is Dogwood, which has similar opposite compound leaves, but the stem-bark is red, and dogwood flowers have 4 petals, while elderberry flowers have 5 petals.

Besides nibbling them on the trail, I like to collect bunches of them in the fall and make elderberry syrup. Once you train your eyes to see them, you can spot the bushes from a distance, and wander from bush to bush, breaking off large clusters of the ripe berries from each one. Later at home, the berries need to be removed from the stems, and one way to make this easier is to freeze the berries first, so that they can be easily stripped of the stems without worrying about crushing them too soon and losing the juices. I have used either a mechanical juicer or boiled and strained them to extract the juice. Using the juicer makes a thicker end product with more solids in the juice. I then combine the elderberry juice with about an equal amount of sugar or honey, boil it, and preserve in jars. This syrup is delicious on pancakes and is also a good medicine for colds and flu. The syrup tastes even better when combined with 1 part hawthorn berry for 4 parts elderberries.

One of my other favorite uses for elderberry is to use the old dried stalks as hiking poles. They are light-weight because of the center pith and smooth on the outside, so they are easy to hold. While they are not as strong as heavier woods and will break eventually, they are adequate for hours of hiking and the lightness is appreciated for that.

Red Elderberries are also edible, but have higher amounts of "cyanide producing glycosides" in the seeds, so they need more careful processing. I have not personally used them yet, but here is a good first-person account. The bark and leaves of all elderberries are considered toxic; only the berries and flowers are considered edible. Also, note that until recently, blue elderberry was considered a subspecies of black elderberry (Sambucus nigra ssp. cerulea), so the scientific literature for Sambucus nigra applies to blue elderberry as well.

Nasturtium officinale

Nasturium offincinale

(notice the seed pods)

Watercress is a traditional food in Britain, where the herb was originally found in the wild, but became so popular that they have to cultivate it now to keep up with the demand. It is a member of the mustard family, and can be quite spicy on its own, but goes well with other food.

To find watercress, you must find clean, slow-moving water. Often that means a natural spring, but it can also be found growing in small rivulets. The biggest clue from a distance will be the white flowers with four petals. Upon closer examination you should find the alternate compound leaves. (Compound leaves look like a branch of smaller leaflets, but botanists consider it a single leaf.) Finally, find the sea pods, which should be growing underneath the flowers, unless it is very early in the spring. Technically, seed pods in the mustard are called "siliques". But the important thing is that they are about a centimeter long and slightly curved. You've found your watercress. Remember to make sure your water is clean. Usually that means no farm animals grazing upstream.

When I eat watercress plain, I can only enjoy a single stem's worth before it gets rather too burny-hot. However it combines very well with other food and in salads. I tried it the British way, on a sandwich with butter and hard-boiled egg, and I was piling more and more watercress on, because it tastes very good, and the egg and bread remove most of the hot spiciness.

Watercress has a lot of vitamins and some trace minerals. Compared to the same amount of spinach it has about twice as much vitamin C, a quarter the amount of vitamin A, and about half as much vitamin K. It has similar amounts of calcium, about half as much potassium, and about a quarter the magnesium and manganese as spinach.

Note that the ivory-tower botanists are still bickering over what to call watercress in Latin. Many call it Rorippa nasturtium-aquaticum instead of Nasturtium officinale. It has no relation to the garden flowers called nasturiums. Recent DNA studies are placing it closer to the Cardamine genus than the Rorippa genus, to which I say, "duh!"

I also noticed that there is something called "fool's watercress". This is a member of the carrot family. The flowers have five petals (not four, like watercress), and like all the carrot family, the flowers grow in umbels (all the flower stems come from a single point). In the mustard, including with watercress, the flowers grow in racemes, where each flower branches off individually from a central stalk. Fool's watercress is also edible, but some other members of the carrot family are poisonous.

Rubus parviflorus

Rubus parviflorus

Thimbleberries are one our favorite treats in the mountains. My daughter is especially fond of hiking when they are in season, usually ripening in August and September. They are closely related to raspberries, and taste somewhat tart, like a velvety raspberry.

They are easy to identify. When ripe, the resemble a raspberry, but the individual juicy segments of the fruit are smaller, and there are more of them, in a thimble shape, wider and shallower than raspberries. The leaves are quite large, around 8 inches wide, and the stems are unarmed, lacking the prickles that raspberry bushes have. In the spring, there will be large white flowers, from which the berries will form. The berries are white when unripe, bright red when ripe, and dty out as the age.

The berries are quite soft and fragile, but they come off of the receptacle easily. They are best eaten right off the plant, either by gingerly pulling the berry off with your fingers (and inevitably getting red-stained hands), or biting/sucking it off directly into your mouth.

I have never tried collecting the berries for jam or any other purpose, because they are so fragile and would not travel well. One would have to pick them directly into a clean mason jar, and plan to make jam, or perhaps a real velvet cake, very soon after picking.