I had forgotten the cattail corn, top of the list is where it belongs. Also collect the pollen from the flowers (it’s profuse) and mix it in your flour for a real treat in baking, pancakes. I have some recipes somewhere I’ll post when I find them. I believe the roots are edible but I’d check further if I can find my book. Yes, environment is a major factor in foraging.
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Correction - I said fried daisies above. It was actually fried dandelions.
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How so you collect the polen?
The pollen is on the flower top of the plant. You have to watch them grow and every few days go to the patch and just shake some random plants. If there’s pollen it will be a very obvious cloud when you shake the plant. Put a plastic bag over the top of the plant, bend the plant over and shake it into the bag. You’ll be amazed at how much pollen is on the mature plant. Go back every day, the flowering period is short.
Pepe
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I have some cattail in my pond sure will try that! How does it taste like?
l found a wild ground bees nest once and it was full of pollen with one egg in the center. It was amazing how tasty that litle ball of polen was! (without the egg 
)
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I have been drinking dandelion root tea. It is really good. There is no shortage of dandelions in my yard. Lol
Keep on foraging. Bob
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How do you make your tea Bob
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Hi All,
I found a few recipes and a vid on collecting.
pollen starts @2:14
Cattail Pollen Pancakes
Cattail pollen pancakes are an experience you will never forget! They are absolutely delicious!
1 cup flour
1 cup cattail pollen
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
½ cup honey
¼ cup oil
2 cups milk
- Mix dry ingredients together in a bowl.
- Add eggs, honey, oil and milk and mix thoroughly.
- If the batter seems to thick to pour, add more milk until it has a good pancake batter consistency.
- Cook on a hot griddle until golden brown.
Cattail Pollen Biscuits
You’ll never be the same after eating these golden, melt-in-your-mouth biscuits, worth every minute of your time and effort in harvesting the cattail pollen. My secret for making light biscuits is to make the dough in a food processor.
1 cup white flour (wheat flour just doesn’t make ‘em light enough!)
1 cup cattail pollen
¼ cup butter
1 Tbsp honey or sugar
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
¾ cup milk
- Preheat oven to 450 °.
- Put flour, cattail pollen, salt and baking powder, and butter in a food processor and run on high until you have a course mixture. (If no food processor, cut with a fork or pastry cutter until mixture resembles fine crumbs.)
- Add honey or sugar plus the milk and whiz just until the dough forms a lump. Do not overmix!
- Shape into biscuits and bake on ungreased cookie sheet 10-12 minutes until golden brown.
You can make drop biscuits by increasing the milk to 1 cup and dropping by large spoonfuls until a cookie sheet.
Buttermilk biscuits: For the ultimate biscuit, substitute buttermilk for the milk, decrease baking powder to 2 tsp, and add ¼ tsp baking soda
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Arvid, first dig up the dandelion root. Remove the green tops. Clean it and roast it in the oven until brown, don’t burn it. Grind it up to a fine powder like instant coffee. Put a spoon full into a mug and hot water. Yummy and it is good for you. There is a brand out there called. Dandy Blend. It is alright. But it is not fresh like making your oun. The best part is you will never kill your dandelions in your yard again. You will just let them grow and enjoy them. Some people think it’s better than coffee. There is no caffeine in it so I like to mix it with green tea for the morning wake up call.
Bob
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I read an article on anti cancer propertys of dendilion tea but that one shuldnt be roasted. It isnt as tasty as roasted but its ok.
Its alsow possible to pickle young roots but havent tryed that yet
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That is great Kristijant, I will just have to try it unroasted. I will just dry it and grind to a power in my coffee mill. Pickling it does sound interesting though. I like pickle things to eat.
Bob
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Thank Bob, and everyone else that had posted here
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Well, I’m pushing the season, but not the spirit of the conversation. This is wild rice (black) on the St. Regis River in the northeastern part of the Adirondack Mountains of NY. We were touring, just happened to have our poles. Later, we did the canoe gathering. Paddle through, bend the plants over into the canoe and beat the plants to drop the rice. Takes like an hour to cook. Has a mild taste, not like white rice, but good. Gets better as you hunger.
And I just happen to love the sound of my Merc at full bore!
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Wild edibles are survival food for sure, but you can plant some cut and come again foods that will be your survival food right in the garden. Asparagus is one. I also have strawberries, blueberries , raspberries, gooseberries, Arctic Beauty kiwi fruit and grapes. Not a whole bunch of any one, but a pretty good mix of grown here fruits. There are also wild apple trees all over.
Also on that list are ; chives, garlic chives and bunching onions. Eaten fresh or cooked, leaves dried or used fresh in soups, stews, chopped into salad, eggs, etc.
Garlic chives have flat bladed leaves and smell and taste like garlic, no need to “run” to the store for a bulb of garlic. Pot some up for indoors in winter. Grow your own garlic for winter. I plant garlic in the fall here.
Regular chives have tubular leaves. Have onion like flavor and smell.
Bunching onions, Evergreen long white, I believe.
Dig and divide a serving size clump. Sort them big and small
Replant the small, start new rows, etc.
Snap off the flowers. This forces the onion to divide to survive and provide you with;
next years scallions.
Yes, it’s a bit tedious, but hunger is far more so. I’m thankful to have the opportunity to live this close to the earth.
Pepe
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I’ll have to try the arctic beauty kiwi… we moved the garden this year so everything is up in the air…
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I’ll post more pics of flowers and fruit as they happen. The fruit is small, but there’s a lot of them.
I have plabted those bouncing onions (called winter onion here) seeds this spring but i had wery litle info about it so thanks for the nice pictures. Is it true that they self reproduce?
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Yes, it’s true. The individual onions will reproduce by division. I’ll try to dig a clump that shows this and post it later. You will see this as your onions mature and the single plants start producing clumps of onions. Think of planting a single clove of garlic. Eventually, it becomes a clump of cloves with a single root system.
A permanent location should be used as you only have to plant theses once and as long as you leave a plant to form another clump.
Pepe
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Hi David,
Here’s a few pics of the Arctic Beauty kiwi flowers.
This is the female flower with prominent white pistils.
More female flowers. Every one will be a kiwi fruit. These vines are prolific. We have to cover them to keep the birds off.
This is the male kiwi flower which has pollen producing stamens and variegated leaves (only on male plants). Can’t remember which is which, just think, stamens- stud. Pistils uhhh, ummm, err, well, you know.
Now I can identify the other vines that have popped up and cull out the males since one male vine is plenty for all the females I have. The real young male vines don’t seem to develop the variegation right off, thus the flower is your cue.
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The wild edibles continue as Spring progresses.
This is lamb’s quarter. Looks like a weed in your garden, but it is a wild green. Early on, like here, pick the whole plant and lightly steam or boil. Later when the plants are big you can harvest just the leaves. Cooks like spinach, but tastes much better. Serve with a pat of butter, salt and pepper if you like. There is also another green, red root, but it’s not up yet. I’ll post a pic when they start to grow. Both are delicious if you like greens! You’ll never pull these and toss them in the compost pile again.
This helps identify another wild edible in the fall with its stand of tall stalks. It is Jerusalem artichoke. It’s not an artichoke. Some call it wild sunflower because of its tall stalks and yellow flowers.
Fall is harvest time, although the “tubers” persist into spring when they renew the patch. I started this patch from tubers found elsewhere.
They grow to a good size. I usually peel, slice thinly and fry like potatoes, but you can cook and mash (not my favorite prep as they tend to be pasty in texture). Recommended for diabetics instead of potatoes.
Here’s that same patch in spring to help identify. They kind of resemble sunflowers. Some folks call them sun chokes. They are loaded with yellow flowers later on. I’ll post the flowers later this season.
This is another cut/harvest and come again survival food flowering in Spring, horse radish. I’ll post some harvesting pics in the fall. If you look closely, you’ll see some missed garlic growing in this bed. Looks like small onion plants.
I just found some red root. Cook it like lamb’s quarter. Another very good green available early in the season. I’ll let this “weed” patch grow so i can harvest my greens.
Pepe
Edit: This is actually pigweed. I called it red root which it has, but lamb’s quarter also has a red root, so leaf id better.
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