Amelanchier alnifolia

Amelanchier alnifolia

Serviceberries grow on a small tree. In early spring it is recognizable from the white flowers with five narrow petals which soon fall away, but most of the year the most distinctive feature is the leaf which is only toothed on the half toward the tip; the teeth usually smooth out lower down, and the base of the leaf has a smooth edge.

The berries themselves are red and firm when not yet ripe, and become dark purple and soft when they are ripe. The inner flesh is whitish and there are a few dark seeds, but the seeds are not large or hard enough to bother you much when eating them. The berries have a very pleasant, slightly sweet flavor. They can almost be called juicy, but it is more like a berry full of apple sauce in consistency and they taste like apple sauce with a bit of grape flavor mixed in. My mouth was somewhat dry after eating them, so they may have a slightly astringent property, which I didn't notice at all while eating them.

When I pick a bunch of these, I can keep them in the fridge for a few weeks, and use them in the same way I would use blueberries.

When I pick a gallon or more, which is not hard to do if you find an area with lots of trees, there are a variety of ways to preserve them. They make a very good jam if you simply blend them up with a food processor. They have a lot of pectin, and are already jelled up when you remove the mass from the foot processor. But it doesn't hurt to add a small amount of sugar and water, and boil them for a few minutes to make them more preservable. I used about 2 cups of berries, 1/4 cup of water, and 3 tablespoons of sugar, and boiled for 5-10 minutes, to get a very good flavored jam. For long term storage, you might want to add a little lemon juice for acidity and process the jars in a boiling water bath to make sure all the germs are dead.

Another good way to preserve serviceberries is as fruit leather. You can simply crush them and spread them on a fruit drying sheet. You can also use the jam recipe above, and spread that on the fruit drying sheet. The extra sugar-water and boiling makes it more pliable, so the result was a smoother leather without and breaks. Also, I thought the fruit lost some of its sweetness while drying, so I liked restoring that with a little sugar. The plain fruit leather developed a lot of cracks from shrinkage while drying, but some of my family preferred its crunchier texture over the jam-style leather. You may want to try both methods to see which you prefer.

Oenothera caespitosa

Oenothera caespitosa

Evening Primrose is a fairly well-known edible plant, and we have a few species in this area which are fairly common. The one I see the most is Oenothera caespitosa, commonly known as Tufted Evening Primrose. This species differs in several ways from the Evening Primrose  which is most commonly used for food, which is Oenothera biennis.

Most importantly, O. biennis is a biennial (as implied by the name), while O. caespitosa is a perennial. This means the root grows completely differently. A biennial plant is like a carrot: it will not flower the first year; instead it just grows a rosette of leaves and stores up energy in a fat root the first year, and then the second year it will use that energy to send up a large flower stalk. A biennial root is best at the end of the first year. In the second year it soon turns tough or woody as the flower stalk forms. A perennial plant will flower every year mostly with the energy generated that year, so the root never needs to get fat with sugars. This means the root of our O. caespitosa is not particularly good to eat. It is always somewhat tough. If you want to eat it, the best part is the crown at the base of the leaves. The tap root can be quite long, but almost immediately gets woody and soon becomes small. It's best to stick with the root crown, which is more tender.

Another important difference is what caespitosa or tufted implies: this plant is entirely stemless. The leaves and flowers grow directly from the root crown. So don't look for edible shoots on this plant, since there aren't any.

As for the taste, I'm afraid there is more bad news there. All parts of the plant have a spicy flavor, and leave a bit of a burny/tingly sensation in the mouth. As you eat more the sensation will slowly increase until you don't want to eat more. Some people have compared it with horseradish, but I don't feel anything in the sinuses, so I would say it is more comparable with capsicum or hot peppers. The burning sensation also stays in the mouth for quite a while afterwards. The leaves are a bit tough, and remind me of kale. Boiling them will make them slightly less tough, but doesn't reduce the spiciness much. One should use them sparingly and combine them with other greens.

The root crown also has this spiciness. It is white and tender and somewhat mucilaginous. It could be used along with other less spicy root, as some people suggest, but I'm not sure it the small amounts you can get from the crowns are worth the effort.

The flowers and buds are better than the leaves, but also have the spiciness in them. Evening primrose flowers have a long tube below where the petals spread out. It looks like a stem as first glance, but is all part of the flower. The part I would recommend most, is the base of the flower or immature seed pod, including the long tube. It is sweeter and more tender than the leaves.

Oenothera caespitosa is rather disappointing compared to the reports for O. biennis. But it's not entirely bad, so I'm still going to try some of the species which put up stalks for their flowers when I get a chance.

Calochortus species

Calochortus is a genus of lilies which includes the Utah state flower, Sego lily or Calochortus nuttallii. This post is about two other species I found while hiking in Montana.

All calochortus species are known as mariposa lilies, and break with the usual lily pattern, in that the sepals and petals are not identical. The sepals, or outer three tepals, are smaller, while the petals, or inner three tepals, are larger and usually colorful, especially near the center.

Calochortus apiculatus

Calochortus apiculatus is a close relative of the more famous sego lily. Instead of multiple colors in the throat of the flower, like the sega lily, this species of mariposa lily is yellow and hairy in the center, with a black dot near the base of each petal, from which comes its common name, 3-spotted mariposa lily.

The bulbs can be difficult to dig up successfully, since the stem easily breaks off of it. I only have a success rate of around 50%, but I console myself by thinking that the bulbs I miss will grow again the next year.

The bulbs have several layers, first a dirty brown outer layer, then a lighter colored layer, then a shiny brown layer, and finally the white inner bulb. This white inner bulb is the good part, and is typically about a half-inch (or 1 centimeter) is diameter. The taste is crisp and slightly sweet, and reminds me of the taste of jicama root.

Calochortus elegans

Calochortus elegans is a smaller mariposa lily, known by the common name of Cat's Ear. It is also hairy down in the inner flower, but they are smaller in size and have purple markings on the lower portion of both the sepals and petals.

The taste of the bulb is the same as other mariposa lilies. The leaves are tough and grass-like, so not much fun to try to eat. The three-winged fruits are tender and taste good; they remind me somewhat of sweet-pea pods, but not as sweet. The unopened flower buds are also good, but the mature flowers taste a bit bitter to me.

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.

I also brought with me a print out of the federal regulations, along with interpretations posted on the forest service website by the local national forest, and several other national forests with good interpretations for comparison. The federal regulations explicitly allow taking “incidental” amounts, but leave it to the local forest service to define what “incidental” actually means. So it is a good idea to contact your local forest service for clarification if you have any doubt, but contact someone higher up, such as the regional botanist. The botanist at my local office had never seen the federal regulations before.

When I spoke to the regional botanist, he spent a while discussing ethical practices of collection with me. This is an important topic, so I have another post dedicated to my own personal rules. Some specific things he mentioned were: no collecting in wilderness areas; no collecting in campgrounds or withing 30 feet of trails; only take 1 plant in 30 as a general rule of thumb; do not take any plant on the list of threatened species; collect any and all weedy species you care to; do not leave collection sites in a disturbed condition.

This does not apply to National Parks. You really cannot pick anything in a National Park, and you will  be prosecuted if you are caught.

You definitely need a permit for any commercial use, or taking more than “incidental” amounts.

But for taking small amounts (a rock, a flower, etc.), no permit is needed at all. This is in compliance with federal code. A general guideline of 1 plant in 30 was expressed, as an ethical amount.

He suggested other ethical standards such as not collecting in wilderness areas, not collecting in campgrounds or within 30 feet of trails.

Here is the relevant portion of the email I asked him to send me, to be clear about the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest interpretation of the federal regulations.

Based on your description of proposed collection levels and purpose, a special forest products free-use permit (FS-2400-9) is not needed. This is because your collection levels are considered incidental in nature and your purpose is to personally enjoy wild edibles. We discussed how you will adhere to proper ethics of plant collecting, will avoid over-collecting at any one site, and will avoid collection of the species on the attached list or in special management areas (eg., designated Wilderness Areas and RNA’s), campgrounds/picnic grounds, and directly along trails.

They can also issue a free use permit (based on calendar year). This comes with certain conditions which would not necessarily apply to you if you did not have a permit. I asked them to go ahead and issue a permit to me, for this year at least, so that I could experience the process of getting one.

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.