“Edible landscaping” has become a buzzword in gardening lately. It means cultivating edible plants — vegetables, fruits, nuts, herbs — instead of solely flowers, and integrating them into a garden design versus setting aside a food plot.
To me, however, the term means eating from your yard, regardless of whether you plant something or forage from the wild. I’ve always been keen on learning what’s edible and medicinal in the wild without actually wanting to consume or process the plants. So since I’ve fallen behind on my studies in recent years, it’s time to brush up.
First wildflower to bloom on my turf is coltsfoot. This is a peculiar little plant, in that the blossoms come weeks before the leaves. Yet the leaves are what it’s named for, forming a crude shape of a horse’s hoof viewed from below. The flowers are a yellow disk of thin rays, similar to a dandelion, one each atop a scaly stalk tinged with red. They open during the day and close at night, and stay closed during raw weather. The plant grows throughout the northeast in what the guidebooks call “waste ground.” Here I find it in the the moist, sandy soil found at roadside, even where salted in winter.
A native of Europe, it’s considered invasive in America in that it will form large colonies and push out native plants. I’ve never seen it spread; mostly it grows where nothing else wants to. It’s very welcome along my driveway as an announcer of spring.
Coltsfoot flowers disappear about the time the trees come into foliage. Its leaves follow, growing as big as horse hooves and sometimes dessert plates! The leaves have been used for centuries as a folk remedy, made into teas, decoctions, even smoke to treat sore throats, coughs, asthma, bronchitis, and lung congestion. Modern research, however, has turned up a chemical in them which can do bad things to your liver, so use is now discouraged. However, if you’re ever in a survival situation you can burn the leaves and use the ash as a salt substitute.
In ordinary times, you can just admire them. They lead the yellow parade that marches through in spring: coltsfoot, daffodils, forsythia, marsh marigolds, dandelions — all of which bring sunshine to any day and highlight the bright new green of the season.
PERPETUAL DISCLAIMER: Don’t mess with wild edibles without training!
Posted by: Opening the heart — Carolyn Haley
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This is such an excellent idea, and one I’ll bear in mind for next spring when I actually take a hand in my garden. (I moved recently into a house with a beautiful garden, so I’m spending the first year just seeing what’s here already. I do know that there’s some echinacea growing somewhere, though I’m quite sure I won’t recognize it in anything other than capsule form! …)
I am a great mushroom fan and also a fan of mystery books, so I know about the dangers of ingesting something one shouldn’t. Paul and I were out geocaching one day in the woods near here and came upon a whole family harvesting mushrooms. We talked with them for a bit and I expressed both my love of the fungus and my fear of poison. The family was from Russia and looked at me quite oddly before explaining how to choose the correct ones — in tones that clearly indicated they thought they were dealing with a mentally retarded person. Probably they all grew up knowing which ones to harvest!
But I’ll gladly try some of your suggestions next year, Carolyn, so that my garden can be both beautiful and useful!
– Jeannette
Comment by jcezanne — May 7, 2008 @ 7:48 am