Eat the Weeds Newsletter 2 December 2014
by Green Deane
Sabal palmetto berries are small with a large seed. Photo by Green Deane
There’s a lot of misinformation about our native palm, the Sabal palmetto. It’s not protected, its heart does not taste like cabbage, and it is doubtful the fruit were ground up by natives to make bread.
Florida’s state tree was once endangered.
The tree is indeed the state of Florida tree but it not protected as said. As for the heart of palm, it has a flavor and texture more in line with artichokes. The heart is difficult to extract from the tree even with metal tools. It is not a calorie positive source of food in that it takes more energy to get the heart of palm than the heart of palm provides. (This and time is one reason why an electric chain saw oiled with olive oil is a handy tool to have when harvesting heart of palm.) Then there’s the fruit…
The small date-flavored fruit has a large seed (and very little pulp.) More to the point the seed is extremely hard, and Florida does not have any rocks worthy of grinding those hard seeds into meal or flour for cooking. To say the natives made bread out of them is to leave out how they did it. While technologies change ancient folks were not less clever than we and also appreciated efficiency. I think the natives ate the pulp off the seed then sprouted the seeds before drying them then making the resulting meal into bread, kind of like sprouted wheat bread today. To read more about the palm go here.
A young Sonchus asper, or Spiny Sow Thistle. Photo by Green Deane
Sow thistles are up for the season. I even saw one blossoming this weekend during a class in Port Charlotte. While a spring and summer plant up north here it favors the mild winter. The particular species I saw was Sonchus asper but there you find it Sonchus oleraeus is sure to follow. The latter is less rank and more pleasant to eat than S. asper, which is also called the Spiny Sow Thistle. They can be eaten raw but are slightly on the bitter side. Boiling them a few minutes renders them tender and mild. To read more about the sow thistles go here.
I am often invited to see someone’s vegetable garden, and it’s usually growing well. Then I’m asked if I see any edible weeds, and usually there are some. I point them out. Then I hear something like, “oh, is that what it is?” There is professed interest but few gardeners ever eat any of their edible weeds. They are intentionally growing certain plants. Interlopers are not welcome even when edible: A baby sow thistle in a vinaigrette is not on their menu.
Pellitory is a common garden invasive. Photo by Green Deane
At first that would seem a strange, after all a vegetable garden is all about food, fresh and nutritious. But on reflection perhaps a gardener’s reluctance to eat weeds is understandable. Weeds don’t need gardeners whereas cultivated crops are almost entirely dependent upon gardeners. Weeds are independent adults who go their own way, crops need protection like children and die off without constant supervision and intervention.
Dogs are perpetual puppy canines.
That may be stretching psychology a little, but once something is labeled a weed, or more so a noxious weed that threatens agriculture, it ceases to be a positive plant. It becomes a drain on resources such as space, water, sunshine, fertilizer and time. The edible wild sow thistle we welcomed a century ago into our garden is now chemically killed. Or looked at it another way: The sow thistle wasn’t as clever as spinach. We believe we choose which crops to cultivate Perhaps in the grander scheme the crops choose us. Lawn grass certainly knows a patsy when it sees it. Let’s make an analogy between plants and canines.
Wolves are adult canines.
In the United States there are some 75 million dogs, and only about 15,000 wolves. The dogs are clearly giving people something people want and the wolves are not. We recognize wolves as the superior canine but it is dogs we choose to raise. One in three of us “own” at least one dog. Weeds are the superior plant, but we raise crops. As dogs have outwitted wolves, crops have outwitted weeds. Cultivated crops seduced man with taste, texture and energy. Weeds offered more nutrition but don’t like to obey. They lost. There is one more aspect, ease of cultivation. Like the dog who figured out — “if I act friendly they’ll feed me” — some crops have figured out if they give up some independence man will do all the work of taking care of them.
Grasshoppers eating leaves.
Weeds fight a constant battle with their pest, and as a consequence succeed or die off. They are strong. Crops are totally depend upon man to fight off pests. They are weak. Like dogs and wolves there are 11 million acres of potatoes planted every year but not one acre of cattails though it produces more starch per acre than potatoes. The potato is clearly playing the game of popularity better than the cattail. The question is who or what is controlling whom and are there consequences?
The problem is man’s seduction by crops, also know as agriculture. Like run-off nutrients into a lake cultivated crops have produced a bloom in the human population. We are under cultivation by crops and now nearly seven billion of us on a planet that would support without crops only one million. Like an algae bloom that kills off the environment of a lake our shear numbers is killing off the earthly environment. Paying attention to crops is a major portion of all human activity. It is the fabric of civilization itself. We like to think we are the cultivated crops’ masters but it just might be the other way around. We are doing what they want, which is taking care of them. More importantly will or can crops protect us when a human pest comes around that threatens us en masse like ebola, or AIDS? Often a disease cure is found in a chemical factory called a wild plant.
Animals and plants that gain and benefit from our favor cannot survive without us. If humanity dies off cultivated crops and dogs will disappear. But, there will still be weeds and wolves. Perhaps humans need to be a bit more resilient, like weeds.