how many edible plants are near you?

Submitted by ratratratrat in AskRaddle

i was wondering how many edible plants raddlers know about / can find in their area. in my yard there are a couple yummy ones, mostly salad type things like dandelion and wood sorrel. over in a nearby park there is some wild onion, and farther away in another park that you have to drive to there is some dock as well as what i talked about before. there are other plants that are harder for me to get to so i haven’t been able to try them yet like some native tubers and palmetto hearts which you need to dig up. there are also mulberry trees that will be ripe soon so i can’t wait to try mulberries for the first time.

even in places taken over by civ, life is still there. if you want to look for wild food in your area, you can probably find books online about your ecosystem, especially if you live on turtle island where there are a lot of books about each state/province.

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Majrelende wrote (edited )

I'm stopping at seventy-two for the moment, but I'm sure there are many more than I can currently name. I don't eat all of them, because some of the carrot family members (angelica and bishop's elder) have scared me in the past, and some of the plants themselves are rare.

You may be interested in lily roots (Lilium spp.) but daylily roots are also...fine. Not as tasty but probably more common. And maybe there are some wild or feral sunchokes along riverbanks.

Edit: How did I forget brambles? That makes it seventy-five. And now I'm remembering... seventy-six? seventy-seven for wild broccoli? Too many! And elderberry-how could I? Seventy-eight. Stop, mind! Eighty-two. There are better things to worry about!

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ratratratrat OP wrote

you really must know a lot about your area! hopefully ill get there some day :)

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fortmis wrote

Recently found out that "wandering jew" aka inch plant is edible and medicinal. huge news since everyone and their mother grows it

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ratratratrat OP wrote

that’s an ‘interesting’ name 😐

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fortmis wrote

it is, I wouldn't have used it if there was a popular enough alternative name. We can stick with 'inchplant" from now on and hope it catches on

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kano wrote

Probaby way more then I know about.
There are blackberries, wild blueberries, plums, cherries, apples, chestnuts, acorns, dandelions, wood sorrel, Hagebutte(idk the english word), barlauch (some strong onion/garlic thing), multiple species of mushrrooms including (sorry for German) Steinpilz, Parasol, Tintlinge, fliegenpilz aka fly agaric and more

Farmers also grow rapeseed, potatoes, maize(for animal feed), turnips, sugar beets, celery, and mustard in the area.

I'm pretty sure I've seen some sort of wild parsley in the area too, but I'm not good enough at identifying plants to be sure.

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stagn wrote (edited )

I cannot count them, I catagorize just the few plants that particularly intrigue me.
Except for a couple of plants that I consider too poisonous I eat everything else that comes in front me.
So if I have to, I have an easier time counting the poisonous plants I know, since I eat everything else.
Also, should very similar plants in the same family be counted separately? What about subspecies of the same species?

For me the line between edible and poisonous is also very blurred.
I usually ingest plants that are not even considered "god to eat" by people in the area.

However, most of them I eat very few of them, are actually few the plants (or fruits, seeds...) that I am able to eat in "large" quantities.
Still less the plants that are caloric enough to satiate me

Little story: Once I found very small and tasty berries after eating about 20 berries, I search on internet and read "European mistletoe is potentially fatal, in a concentrated form, and people can become seriously ill from eating the berries" but they didn't do anything to me and I continued to eat them in moderation Even today.

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stagn wrote (edited )

Still less the plants that are caloric enough to satiate me

Mainly chestnuts.
Acorns are very promising

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fortmis wrote

Mainly chestnuts.
Acorns are very promising

avant garde poetry

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ManyGodsNoMasters wrote

Wild plants and fungi that I’ve consumed in the last year: wild grape, wild mint, red clover, milkweed, cattail, dandelion, mullein, staghorn sumac, mulberry, blackberry, nettles, elderflower, feral cucumber, carpenter’s ground cherry, lawn mower’s mushroom, fairy ring mushroom, wild yeast, an indeterminate fungi that looks like a mix of oyster and dryad’s saddle, turkey tail, pig’s ear. Thank the gods foraging season is returning!

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Fool wrote

Near me? In the toilet?

Ummm...

Actually there's a fern, I don't think I should eat it though.

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lentils wrote

I'm pretty new to foraging. Atm when I go foraging I usually pick nettles and what I think is scientifically called galium aparine but is sometimes referred to as sticky willy, at least by a couple of people I know lol. There are probably a lot more edible plants near where I live that Idk of yet and hopefully soon there will be more of them growing in the uk.

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rattledlove1139 wrote

i know like 2 but that is only so low because i do not know how identify things, i live near really open space with lots plants. I wish know how identify!!!

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Majrelende wrote

People usually end up identifying intuitively, but that of course is not where we begin.

There are a few methods of doing it when we are not sure:

  • Using a field guide (flip through and look for the right categories, then match the images and descriptions)
  • Using a dichotomous key (a set of two choices, which lead to more sets of two choices, and on and on until an identification is reached)
  • Asking a more knowledgable person or using some sort of identification app (such as Seek, which seems good with privacy These can be either useful, or very wrong (like calling a seed a snail) depending on how well they know the plant.)

It can also be helpful to use some or all of them to better know the identification. Then, hopefully with practice you might memorize the characteristics, and then move on to identifying them without thinking.

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IHateTories69420 wrote

I know nothing about my natural ecosystems, does anybody have any recommendations to learn about like Scottish nature and ecosystems and plants and shit ?

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ratratratrat OP wrote

i found an OK list at this this link: https://www.nature.scot/sites/default/files/2020-03/Publication%202020%20-%20Foraging%20for%20Wild%20Plants.pdf

for a free resource it has a big list but it does not have pictures so you will have to search them yourself. I am moving in with my granny in scotland in a couple of years so knowing scottish plants is also needed for me. if i find any more resources i will try to post them, the only problem is most good advice is in hardly printed books that are hard to find free online.

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IHateTories69420 wrote

oooh thank you this is very groovy I like it . scotland is rly nice but the weather can be a bit iffy. personally I like wind tho

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