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Autumn is an excellent time of year to harvest burdock root.

If you haven’t received our eBook all about Burdock, including how to identify and harvest burdock, and recipes and projects using burdock, please sign up for our free newsletter on the right margin.

Aside from being an excellent vegetable (called Gobo in Japan), burdock root is used medicinally to cleanse the blood.

Some reasons that blood may need to be “cleansed” include:

• parasites
• toxins from cigarette smoke or pollution
• toxins from alcohol or junk food
• bacteria or viruses, including chronic viruses from things such as Lyme’s disease
• heavy metal exposure, like mercury, lead, or arsenic

This time of year you’ll find burdock, a biennial plant, in both phases: one being the brown dead plant covered with burrs that stick to your clothes (do not harvest these roots, they are dead - pictured below), and a plant with a rosette of green leaves, still close to the ground, with no flower or seed stalk. This is the first year plant, and it is from this plant you want to harvest the roots (shown above).

We harvested some burdock root the other day, and prepared it three ways:

• dried for use as a tea


Sliced Burdock Root Drying on a Dehydrator Tray

• tinctured in alcohol


Sliced Burdock Root Steeping in 100 Proof Vodka, Before Blending

• fermented with cabbage in cultured vegetables (also known as sauerkraut.)


Shredded Burdock Root, Cabbage, and Seaweed Fermenting on the Counter

Over the next few days, I’ll post step-by-step pictorials of how I made the above remedies. The sauerkraut is absolutely delicious! The recipe is in our free e-book, so please sign up (green box to the right) if you haven’t yet!

Happy Harvesting!

~ Melissa

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Another edible mushroom we found on our hike with the Western Pa Mushroom Club was a bolete called Old Man of the Woods.

Boletes are mushrooms that grow up from the ground, and the underside has pores instead of gills. The Old Man of the Woods has characteristic black bumps along the top and stalk and has white to gray pores underneath. When bruised or cut, the mushroom eventually turns black. (Beware of boletes which bruise blue quickly, these are often poisonous.)

This mushroom was positively identified for us by members of the club, and we carefully wrapped it in wax paper and placed it in our bag with our other edible mushrooms (the chanterelles).

We’d heard the Old Man is a tasty mushroom, as long as you don’t mind it turning everything black as it cooks. In the books, though, we found it was “edible” but not worth eating. We decided to try it.

We sliced the Old Man when we got home

and sauteed it in olive oil, red onions and salt.

It did turn black. It is a meaty mushroom, though had a bit of slimy-ness to it. All in all, it was very good, reminiscent of portebellos.

A couple good mushroom guide books are National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms (National Audubon Society Field Guides), and Mushrooms Demystified
), which is especially good for those on the west coast.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
by Michael Pollan has a wonderful chapter about mushrooms in it as well, be sure to check that out.

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Let’s continue our summer wild edibles walk.

Here’s another of my favorite herbs to find: Mullein. The flowering plant is the second year (mullein is a two year plant, like Burdock.)

We collect and dry the fuzzy soft mullein leaves, the tea from which is excellent for the lungs. Those beautiful yellow flowers can be steeped in olive oil for an excellent ear oil to use in cases of ear aches (safe on animals, as well.) We often mix mullein oil with garlic oil to use as drops in the ear.

Here is the beautiful Milkweed in bloom:

Monarch butterfly chrysalises can be found on milkweed plants. Some people find the catepillar eggs early in the season and collect the leaves of the plant, feeding the catepillars throughout the year (milkweed leaves, of course) and will hatch a monarch butterfly to release in the summer!

The flowers smell like lilacs. Some people steam the flowers to eat.

Finally we have the very delicious black raspberries, whose season is nearly done here in Pittsburgh.

In this picture I am demonstrating that the underside of the raspberry leaves are white, as opposed to blackberries, (which will ripen later), which are green underneathe.

Of course, you’ll also still find dandelions blooming, chicory flowering, burdock and thistles in purple bloom…it’s just gorgeous out there. I’ll post more pictures and let you know what we’re up to!

We’d love to hear what you’ve been doing as well! Any new finds, recipes, tinctures, or oils? Please let us know!!

Thanks!
~ Melissa

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I just love watching what happens to the plants around me as the seasons change!

Here in Pittsburgh, it is getting HOT, summer is here.

With it bring a whole new crop of wild edibles, herbal remedies, and poisonous plants to watch:

Here is the St. John’s Wort, (Hypericum perforatum) now if full bloom. In the picture I am demonstrating that if you crush a bud in your fingers, you get a dark red pigment, which is the Hypericin - one of the active ingredients in St. John’s Wort.

Now is the time to harvest St. John’s Wort to make oils or tinctures. The oil is great to soothe sore muscles, ease jangled nerves, and treat sunburns. The tincture of St. John’s wort is used as an anti-viral, and also an anti-depressant. In fact, in European countries like Germany, St. John’s wort is used to treat depression more commonly than the prescribed medications like Prosac, which are used more in this country.

Here is Queen Anne’s Lace, or Wild Carrot:

Even though the greens of carrots are full of nutrition, and the root of this plant has a distinctly carrot-like smell, we do not eat this plant at all! That is because it so closely resembles the deadly poisonous Water Hemlock and Poison Hemlock, that we do not feel it is worth the risk of making a mistake. We tell everyone who comes on our walks that it is our policy NOT TO EAT wild carrot, and we strongly suggest they do the same.

Here is a poison plant: Pokeweed. It’s berries are not fully ripe yet, they will get dark purple/black when ripe. Pokeweed is eaten (mostly down south) when it is just shooting from the ground in early spring. Now it is TOXIC, and the berries are highly poisonous. It is used, however, as a dye:

Here is one of our favorites, yummy plantain (Plantago major). We love to use the green leaves of this plant in smoothies, chopped in salads, and marinated and dehydrated into yummy crisps. Here you see the stalks. In the fall (once they turn brown) we will collect the seeds of plantain and use them just like psyllium seeds (which is from another Plantago: Plantago psyllium and Plantago ovata, both of which grown in the middle east.)

We’ll use these seeds just as we would use psyllium seeds: as a thickener for puddings and sauces, and also added to oatmeals and breads. In Chinese medicine, the seeds are used to treat urinary tract infections.

We’ll have more on our virtual summer wild edible walk tomorrow…please stay tuned!!

~ Melissa

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One wild edible plant you’ll find in bloom this time of year along city roadsides, fields and waste areas is beautiful, sky-blue chicory (Cichorium intybus). Not only is chicory edible, but it has a long tradition of medicinal use, especially to detoxify the liver.

If you pay attention, you’ll notice that chicory flowers open and close precisely the same time every day.

Chicory is similar to dandelion in many ways. For one thing, the leaves look very similar, and another, they are both especially good for the liver. Another similarity is that chicory leaves can be eaten in early spring, but get quite bitter once the plant flowers. The roots can be dug, dried and roasted to use as a coffee substitute, and in fact is commonly used in that respect in commercial teas and coffee substitutes.

The roots can also be dug and planted in a dark cellar, and the plant will grow small pale leaf heads: we know this vegetable as Belgian endive; it is the same species as roadside chicory (Cichorium intybus.)

Chicory root is used medicinally as a decoction (strong tea) or tincture (steeped in alcohol) and used to clear the liver. Eating the chicory leaves or Belgium endive is used to treat Liver fire: bursting headache, thirst, congested face and fever.

Chicory is used to treat all kinds of liver ailments, including jaundice, gall stones (and urinary stones), moodiness, depression, constipation, indigestion, headache and right side pain under the ribs.

The milky sap of the chicory is used similarly to dandelion: to promote lactation in breastfeeding women.

Chicory in bloom is an erect, branched plant, with alternate leaves and sky-blue (or sometimes pink or white) flowers.

The root can be harvested in the fall, when the plant stops flowering.

Let us know if you have chicory blooming near you…and other uses you have for it!

Thanks,
~ Melissa
Food Under Foot

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Have I not done an entry on one of my very favorite wild edibles, chickweed?

This is such a delicious little plant. Like lambs quarters (another favorite of mine) chickweed stays tender and mild all season long (it doesn’t become bitter like dandelion, garlic mustard or chicory.)

I was so fortunate this year that a huge patch appeared under the peach tree in our yard! This was the first year we had this kind of delicate chickweed.

In the past, we’ve been graced with the mouse-eared variety, which looks and tastes the same but is a bit bigger, the leaves slightly darker green, and covered with hair. The chickweed above (Stellaria media) is hairless and light green.

Both chickweeds have tiny white flowers with 5 deeply lobed petals (actually looks like 10 tiny petals.) Chickweed is usually a low-growing plant, with the delicate stems trailing along the ground before growing upright. The leaves are opposite, simple, oval shaped with a pointed tip.

This is an excellent plant to add to salads (can even be the base of salads, if you find a big enough patch) or smoothies. It can replace spinach in recipes without altering the flavor. The flowers, leaves and stems can all be eaten.

It is often found in yards and especially gardens, and can grow in parks. We find it likes people, growing in disturbed soils (rather than deep in the woods), in places that people frequent…though it can be found in woodlands as well.

It has been used medicinally: in Chinese medicine it is used as a Yin tonic, especially for the lungs (dry, unproductive cough) and the heart. It can also reduce swelling: swollen glands, boils and cysts. It also is known to reduce fat cells and promote weight loss. (Peter Holmes, The Energetics of Western Herbs, Volume II.)

Enjoy!

~ Melissa
Food Under Foot

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It’s mulberry season!

We absolutely love mulberries, and we are lucky that there are mulberry trees literally all around Pittsburgh! We have one in our backyard, all around our neighborhood, down by the river, and any park in Pittsburgh is bursting with ripe mulberries right now.

Most people will first find the purple berries and purple stains on the sidewalk, and will look up and see a tree loaded with berries. The dark purple ones look like blackberries, but are sweeter and softer (mulberries don’t have those big pebbly seeds that blackberries and raspberries have.) There are also white mulberries (they stay white even when ripe), and some white ones that turn light purplish when they ripen.

In Chinese medicine, mulberries are potent medicine. Four different parts of the plants are used, in four different ways.

The berry is called sang shen, as enriches the blood and tonifies the yin. It can be used to treat dizziness, tinnitus, insomnia and premature graying of hair.

Mulberry leaf is called sang ye, and is used to clear heat from the Lungs, to treat fever, headach, sore throat and cough.

Mulberry root bark is called sang bai pi and stops coughing and wheezing, while also promoting urination to reduce enema, especially of the face.

Mulberry twig is sang zhi, and helps relieve arthritis in the joints of the arms.

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I made some plantain oil today!
Plantain is great for soothing painful or itchy bites, wounds or rashes, and bee stings. Making it into an oil is a great way to harness the magic of plantain year round.

If you are signed up for our 5 part eBook series (right top margin), you will know all about plantain! If you’re not signed up yet, please do so now.

Here is a step by step to making the oil:

I harvested a bunch of plantain leaves. My garden is filled with the thin leafed English variety, called Plantago minor or Plantago lanceolata, so that is what I used:

Then I pulled out everything I needed: knife and cutting board, jar and oil:

I chopped the plantain and begin filling the jar:

I covered with olive oil:

Finally, I labeled it, of course:

I covered it and put it in my cupboard. In about 4 to 6 weeks, I’ll strain the plantain out, saving the oil to use as a wonderful skin soother!

During the growing season, plantain is great to use fresh. If you or someone you love gets stung by a bee, reach for a plantain leave, chew it up (or otherwise crush it) and place it on the sting for instant relief.

For more chronic skin conditions, plantain oil is an excellent remedy to have around. When you can’t get to sleep at night because of itchy mosquito bites: plantain oil. It’s also safe to use on animals…so if your dog has red itchy skin, apply some plantain oil.

Have you ever made an oil from a plant? Let us know what you did and what you used it for in the comments below. Thanks!

~ Melissa