Foraging Resources Continued: Determining Plant Families and Genus with Tom Elpel's "Botany in a Day"

Outdoorsy types are a breed apart from your "average" person. I have had some lengthy discussions with non-outdoor folks about why my idea of "fun" involves giving up the creature comforts of home in exchange for a camp outdoors. A camp that is hopefully not being invaded by the creatures of the forest. Like the bumper sticker says "if I have to explain it to you, you wouldn't understand anyway."

Joey and Jag sampling Spruce needles in Roaring Plains, WV

Growing up I always styled myself as a modern day pioneer woman; the idea of living off the land is so romantic, albeit in a rather masochistic way. I loved to play in the woods when other girls were playing Barbie dolls. My earliest recollection of foraging was about the age of 10, when a classmate introduced me to Sassafras tea. I was instantly hooked!

Learning to identify plants can be very overwhelming to the uninitiated. The easiest way to start is to learn from others. BUT, if you don't have a local plant enthusiast, please don't despair. Spend some time flipping through plant books that identify what is in your are in season now. Peterson's Field Guides are a good beginner i.d. book, along with some others that I mention in another post. The more plants you learn, the more easily you can determine the family/genus/species of other plants.

On my regular hiking or jogging routes, I may see a plant in fruit or flower that is unfamiliar. Upon return to my house, I look it up in my identification books, starting the tentative identification process. But what about those plants that just elude identification? Something that looks like it should be edible. A fruit that looks downright delectable but remains untouchable because I JUST CAN'T FIGURE OUT WHAT THE DARN THING IS!!

Well, herein lies a big problem with plant identification for the neophyte; some plants can't be 100% positively identified. Ummm, what is this, you say? How can a plant be absolutely identified if it may not really "exist" in any plant classification.



Unfamiliar Chickweed in the desert

The good news is that although you may not be able to determine a species, with some detective work you can narrow your plant down into a particular family and genus. There are some plant families I would not mess with unless I could determine a genus AND species. Nightshades (Solanaceae) and parsleys (Apiaceae) come instantly to mind ; very bad if you screw up i.d.'ing one of these. However, some plant genuses are fairly benign, regardless of the species. Mints (Lamiaceae), mustards (Brassicaceae), and roses (Rosaceae) are examples. 
One way plants are classified is through their reproductive methods. Other than algae (such as seaweeds), and mosses, the plants we are interested in reproduce through seeds.  Seeds come from flowers or cones.  Therefore, to determine a plant family requires observation of the plants during a period of reproduction. A plant's reproductive cycle can be fairly lengthy; sometimes months. However, with the right tools, you can usually figure out a plant family through observations of the flowers.

One tool I highly recommend is a small pocket magnifying lens.  I have a very lightweight 2" plastic one that remains in my daypack at all times. Another tool is a camera.  I like to take some pictures of the plants and later identify them while the family is monopolizing the T.V. (what teenagers watch these days, lol!).  Lastly (and most important, IMHO), a tool that I cannot do without is "Botany in a Day" by Thomas Elpel. 

Mr. Elpel takes most of the guesswork out of plant identification and actually gives the reader a sense of "Hey, I can learn this stuff!" I say most, because the book is great for narrowing down most plant families, but the genus and species included in the book are for Montana, where Mr. Elpel resides.  Fortunately, many of the same plants can be found in much of the United States.  Or, at least the reader can narrow down their plant to a family and then genus.

Elpel provides the beginning botanist a cursory education in the parts of flowers, as well as main characteristics of different plant families. This does take a little effort in the beginning, but the learning curve is fairly steep.  Once you get the basics down, then identification of the family becomes easier with each successive plant.  The Family leads to the Genus, which leads to the Species.

Before you know it, you can look at a flower and figure out the genus before you can say "Pea Family." 

Happy Hiking!

Trail Baking with a Foster's Pot, Caldera Cone, and Starlyte Stove

Backpacking is a lot of different things to different people. Ask a dozen backpackers what makes them love the sport, and you will probably get a dozen vapid stares.  Maybe you will get a couple coherent answers :-)

To me, backpacking combines several of my favorite things.  Foremost is celebrating nature.  There is no problem that can't be solved after pounding the trail for an hour or two. Why does this happen? Who knows, but my theory: when you are on the trail, away from people and external stressors, you focus on simply living.

Another reason I love to backpack is how it strips away creature comforts, allowing me to live like a cavegirl (with the best down quilts and cuben fiber stuff money can buy). Hmmm, okay, a modern cavegirl with a few creature creature comforts :-) 

Lastly, a healthy dollop of heart-pounding exercise is just Pure Bliss.  Collapsing into a comfy hammock at the end of climbing up and down ridges and mountains is amazingly satisfying.  The breathtaking views are the cherry on top!

One area of comfort where skimping is not an option is food.  After a few thousand feet of elevation gain, this body needs healthy meals that taste good and require little preparation.  While not into freeze-dried store-bought meals (they cost too much and usually have waayyy too much sodium for my liking), I do like to make my own meals from freeze-dried ingredients.  That is not to say I don't enjoy a steak on the trail - I just don't like lugging fresh food. I would rather lug wine and eat dried food :-)

Here is a little demo of trail baking with my current favorite stove set-up. Rand at Trail Designs makes the Caldera Cone; an amazing combination of a pot stand and wind screen. Combine that with a Starlyte stove from Zelph and a repurposed Foster's beer can, and you have one amazingly light and flexible COMPLETE stove system.  Yummy baked treats.  No sacrifice required :-)

 

Foraging Resources

A frequent question I get when discussing wild edibles is "where can I learn this?"  Unfortunately, the short answer is to do your homework, but this takes some time to accomplish.  You can't learn plant identification overnight.  However, you can learn it at night. When the rest of the family is watching TV, good foragers are looking through plant identification books. For fun. Boring, huh? 

The good news is that a wealth of information is literally at your fingertips.  In addition to some really amazing books, there are cell phone apps, and websites that make plant identification easy and fun.  The internet makes meeting fellow foragers much easier, albeit still a little difficult in some areas of the U.S.

Great foraging books:

Steve "Wildman" Brill has a great book: "Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants".  The line drawings in the book are beautifully done. When I first saw the book, I was skeptical that the pencil drawings would help me identify the plants.  Actually, the converse is true; the drawings allow you to focus on important identifying characteristics and leave out less important and distracting plant traits.

Steve also leads walks in the New York City area, but also leads some walks near Philly.  I really like his cookbook "The Wild Vegan." He discusses how to cook just about anything you find in the wild, from milkweed to poke weed.  Although I am not into some creative vegan cooking (think lecithin granules and nutritional yeast cheese), the book is a great resource.

Two books that are a must have for anyone wanting to sustain themselves on wild foods are written by Sam Thayer. "Forager's Harvest" and "Nature's Garden" are fun to read even if you are not planning on subsisting on acorns (51 pages devoted to acorns!). With lots of color photographs and very detailed descriptions, the books are really a necessity for anyone wanting to know a plant really well.  Instead of covering several hundred plants, Sam discusses fewer plants but in great depth.   I really appreciate the way Thayer debunks plant myths, including the edibility of some nightshades, and how Chris McCandless really died when he went "Into the Wild"...

Other Resources:

A way more fun method of honing your identification skills, IMHO, is attending a plant walk.  Meetup.com is a great way to meet others in your area.  Let me just say that *our people* can be a very nerdy bunch.  Trust me - I am the worlds biggest nerd; just ask my kids.  But, someone who can walk into the woods and find food is super cool, in my book. The Mycological Association of Washington D.C. has frequent mushroom forays during prime mushroom season.  Last year I found a bunch of Chanterelles with the group.  Can't wait for morel season in the spring!!

Another resource is the internet; when you tentatively identified a plant, but just can't find a picture or description that jives, boot up the laptop.  Remember to take a camera on your walks so you can post pictures on the internet at Eat the Weeds Forum. The forum is run by plant guru Green Deane who has a fabulous monthly newsletter with what is in season in his area, which is .  Florida and the Southeastern U.S.

Of course, be sure to sign up for email notifications of new blog posts from me as well, since I will try to send out notifications of what is in season in the rest of the East Coast.. :-)

Facebook has some foraging pages, like Meriweather's Foraging Texas, which is awesome for people living in the southern U.S.

Enjoy and Happy Hiking!
:-)
Demeter

Homemade Energy Gel Packets Video

I really like the ease and simplicity of those little packs of energy gel.  The only thing is that they are really expensive.  I can find them on sale for $1 each, but most of the time they are in the $1.50-$2.00 range.  For 100-ish calories that is a lot of money per calorie. 

I decided to try and make my own packets of energy gel with store bought ingredients.  The results were quite satisfying!!  Although, I must admit that sugar alone doesn't do a lot for me. I tend to get the sugar-crash thing going during my hikes, so I prefer nut butters over straight sugar gel packets.  Regardless, the idea is the same, and I love to play around in my kitchen.

Here is my video of homemade energy gel. Please comment if you have any packet-worthy recipes!

Ginkgo Biloba Nuts (Urban Foraging)

My small city is loaded with Gingko trees.  Sometime in the last century, either a town administrator or the guy in charge of landscaping decided it would be a great idea to beautify the city streets with Gingko trees.  The Gingko is very pretty in the summer, lush with dark green fan-shaped leaves. 

 

Gingkos really shine in the fall, however.  Beautifully bright yellow in fall, the fan-shaped leaves litter the ground making a pretty yellow contrast to the light brown dead grass and dark brown of the fallen hardwood leaves. The large trees also look interesting without their leaves; they grow tall and wide - up to 100 feet or more, but 50' are the norm in my neck of the woods. The wood is dark and knotty, the limbs branch in a gnarled kind of way. 



Female Gingko Biloba tree in the fall



Beautiful tree, check. Wild edible, check. So why don't more people plant Gingko trees?  The problem is the male, or non-fruiting, trees are indistinguishable from the female, or fruiting trees when they are young and being planted. 

 

The bane of most landowners is the fruit.  Like most fruit- or nut-bearing trees, many non-foragers fail to appreciate the produce from urban trees. Think of the bad rap the Black Walnut (Juglans nigra) has received all these years; my whole life I have been hearing about how these grand trees are not worth the hassle of the dark-staining fruit littering the ground, having to be picked up by the resident yard cleaner. 

 

Like the Black Walnut, the Gingko produces fruit that is a little bit of a nuisance.  The apricot- colored fruit is a little *ahem* smelly.  The smell has been likened to vomit, and I have to agree.   The first time I identified a Gingko tree was by the smell.  Emerging from a doctor's office, I thought "who puked next to my car?!"  But then became more than thrilled when I saw the fruit that covered the ground. 

 

Although I use the term "fruit," the reality is that Gingko "fruit" is really a seed with a smelly seed coat called a sarcotesta.  The pomegranate is another example of a seed with a sarcotesta. Like the pomegranate, the seed of Gingko is edible. A caveat is that Gingko seeds taste nothing like pomegranate seed, but the comparison isn't fair at all, since the sarcotesta of the pomegranate is edible, lending the seeds their tart-sweet flavor.

 

Gingko trees have been considered living fossils.  Like turtles and alligators, Gingkos haven't changed much over the millenia, as fossilized gingko leaves look a lot like the modern species.  The G. biloba is the only known living species of the Gingko genus. An interesting factoid about these trees is that scientests are unsure which taxonomic division to place them.  Taxonomists agree the trees are gymnosperms, or "naked seeds," but are they more like conifers or cycads?  Fortunately, you don't have to sit on the edge of your seat for long, because a recent genomic study found that Gingkoales are most likely a sister group to cycads! Whew, glad that is resolved :-)

 

So, with taxonomy questions answered, I returned later with nitrile gloves and heavy-duty ziplock bags to collect the seeds.  Hmmm, maybe I should have a clothespin for my nose..

 

The easiest way to harvest the seeds is to take a seat (after clearing away any smelly tree litter; wouldn't want to sit on that!).  A low, portable camp seat would probably be of great benefit.  With a ziplock in one hand, I pick up the seed and roll it between my gloved fingers until the seed coat is removed.  Within less than an hour I am able to collect 2 gallon-sized ziplock bags of the seeds.



Seed of Gingko biloba with outer layer removed



 

Once at home, I spread out the nuts to dry. Judging the reaction of my family to the stench that permeated my house, in the future this will be done outside. 

 

Gingko biloba nuts

 

 

So what to do with the 2 gallons of nuts?  First, you need to shell them.  After drying, the shells remove fairly easily; much easier than walnuts or pecans.  There are reports that the raw nut is toxic; how toxic is up for debate, and appears largely anecdotal.  However, the issue is easily resolved with cooking the nuts.

 

How to further prepare the nuts presents a small quandary. While the trees are commonly found in the United States, the recipes are not.  Fortunately the trees have been utilized in China for years, and the internet makes it easy to find something to do with the fruit of your labor. 

 

I brown my Gingko nuts in a little oil and spices, sprinkle with sea salt, and eat like any other nut.  The nuts can also be added to soups or stews, which may moderate the flavor.  Like any wild food that is not normally present in the Standard American Diet, the nuts are a little of an acquired taste.  My girls don't like the taste at all, thinking the nuts bitter. 

 

I think they are flavored with the effort of collecting them, the knowledge that they are the gift of a renewable resource from Mother Earth, and they are free! :-) 

 

Happy Foraging!!

 

Seneca Creek / Spruce Knob Backcountry - WV Winter Backpacking

This is a trip that I did with the meetup group DC Backpackers. I love hiking and backpacking with the group, as the people are easy going and fun.

I have visited the Spruce Knob area on an earlier backpacking trip in the late spring, but this was my second hardcore winter backpacking trip, and definitely the coldest.  The temps at the trailhead when we started hiking Friday was 6*.  The temp Friday night hit -3*.  Saturday was a beautiful day, with temps of 30's for a high, and 15* for a low. 

Our hike in was a fairly easy 3.5 miles, with half the miles going straight up to the ridge, and the other half going down the valley to the creek and the campsite.

This video was actually all shot with my cell phone, a Galaxy S3, because the cold killed my camera battery very quickly.  I am really surprised it turned out as well as it did.

Chilly Weather Chickweed

Foragers may lament cooler weather, since the prospect of identifying new plants is dim at best. However, winter is a time to indulge in delicious greens if you know what to look for.

A favorite winter staple is chickweed. Here in the Mid-Atlantic, common chickweed, or Stellaria media, usually makes an appearance in December and remains a source of renewable nutrition until February or March.  Another type of chickweed we see a lot of is mouse-eared chickweed, or Cerastium vulgarim, but this veggie comes up a little later.


This versatile green is great raw, right out of the ground. However, if you prefer cooked greens, chickweed is terrific thrown into a pot of soup. I also like to dress it up with a little olive oil, lemon, and salt.