high country | Wild Food Girl

Forgotten rhubarb of the old west

June 18, 2016 By Erica M. Davis 2 Comments

I love my Old West town for many reasons, and one of them is rhubarb (Rheum spp.). It is one of the few food plants that can be cultivated here up high where I live, due to our extremely short growing season and cold nights. I’m hardly the first to discover this, for the rhubarb … [Read more...]

Wild Food Girl

3 months ago

Another edible plant I found on my road trip through Utah was red barberry (Berberis haematocarpa syn. Mahonia haematocarpa). It has holly-like, tough leaves with spines on the points—features I am most familiar with in the related, low-growing Oregon grape (Mahonia repens), whose tart, powder-blue berries I enjoy. But this high-desert-loving red barberry is a shrub bearing big, sweet/tart, fruity red berries. It was growing on a dry hilltop amidst pinyon pines (Pinus edulis) and juniper, where it stood out because of all the fruit it bore. I gathered a small sample to study and nibble, but I look forward to collecting enough for a jam or jelly next time I make this lovely plant’s acquaintance! ... See MoreSee Less

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Wild Food Girl

3 months ago

I took myself on a solo road trip to Nevada last week, and I’m so happy I did! I have been studying pinyon pines, primarily our local two-needle pinyon (Pinus edulis), but I wanted to check out the singleleaf pinyons (P. monophylla) of the Great Basin too. They are having a mast year there, so the trees and ground were covered with pinyon nuts of many colors, shapes, and sizes. Even better, when I pulled into the campground I met a nice Navajo couple up from Arizona to do the same, so we camped and harvested pinyons together for a couple days.

It is a Navajo belief that if you shake the trees, early winter will come—so we just gathered from the ground, talking and telling stories to pass the time. I am embarrassed to say it took some work to keep up with my new 65 and 70-year-old friends, who could go for 6 hours straight. But I learned so much—how they winnowed out the blanks, and roasted and salted pinyon nuts to perfection, not to mention other things like how various other plants are used for medicine, food, and utility, and how to make ash bread and fry bread and nixtamalize corn with juniper ash.

I am counting my blessings for such a wonderful and unexpected experience with new friends—and of course, all the pinyones I’m stuffing my face with right now. ... See MoreSee Less

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Wild Food Girl

4 months ago

Here is a neat plant I found for the first time on my cross-country trip last week—purple poppy mallow (Callirhoe involucrata). I first read about this plant in Kelly Kindscher’s book, Edible Wild Plants of the Prairie. Then Sam Thayer chose it to grace the cover of his latest book, Incredible Wild Edibles (2017), and of course included a very useful account.

This relative of common mallow (Malva neglecta) is also low-growing with leaves that are similarly structured, but more deeply lobed. It is also known as “prairie winecups” for its pretty flowers, which I was glad to find too.The green parts and flowers are edible, as is the taproot. Sadly, I didn’t find a place to dig any purple poppy mallow on my trip. The first place I found it had only a couple specimens, and this native perennial should only be dug where there is a healthy population, preferable one that needs thinning, Sam writes. The second spot had a decent-sized population in the mowed grass along an Arby’s parking lot, but I didn’t think Arby’s would love it if I dug up their lawn. So, next time!

Sam shows eastern Colorado as the starting point (headed east) for this Great Plains species, but I didn’t find any in Colorado. The two populations I found were in central Nebraska. These are often cultivated as landscaping plants too. ... See MoreSee Less

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