| As always, if you're new to foraging and want to give it a try, please read the first diary in the FFF series for some important information.
  Today's first plant is motherwort, yet another member of the prodigious mint family (Lamiaceae). Other mint family members previously covered include lemon balm, catmint and ground ivy. In the discussion of catmint, I also explained some ways to identify whether or not a plant is a member of the mint family. (Left: Motherwort; Above: Motherwort Lower Leaf, both by wide eyed lib)
Motherwort is a non-native, non-branching, upright herb with a square stem and opposite leaves featuring pointed lobes. The lower leaves have about 5 main lobes, each of which is itself lobed, and vaguely resemble maple leaves while the upper leaves have only 3 lobes and resemble bird's feet. Looking straight down at a mature plant, you'll see each pair of leaves growing with regimental precision at 90 degrees from the last pair, so that the leaf stalks form a perfect cross shape. The flowers appear in early Summer, are light pink to lilac with brownish stamens and grow in a hairy whirl in the leaf axils of the upper half of the plant.  They also have exceedingly hard and sharp sepals so gathering them requires either a certain amount of care or a good pair of gloves. The flowers persist for a few weeks before giving way to small, brown seeds. The entire plant smells strongly minty but also a bit musty, and it grows in every southern Canadian province and every U.S. state except Alaska and, apparently, California. (I'm going by the USDA plants database there, but that seems almost as unbelievable as the USDA saying no pine trees grow in Kansas.)
Although motherwort is extremely nutritious, it's not used much for food because it's so strongly flavored. Nonetheless, the flowers can be used dried or fresh in small quantities to flavor soups or make tea, and a little minced leaf adds an exotic flavor to pasta sauce, salads and salad dressings. If I can ever make enough space in my freezer for the cartridge, I'd like to experiment with making motherwort ice cream (maybe with chocolate chips). (Right: Motherwort Flowers by wide eyed lib)
But motherwort is best known for its medicinal uses and has been strongly linked to strengthening women's systems for centuries. In Asia it was used to regulate menstruation and prevent pregnancy. (Using herbs as birth control = bad idea.) Some sources recommend it for prevention or mitigation of hemorrhaging associated with childbirth, although other sources claim it actually increases bleeding and can cause miscarriage. (Using herbs during pregnancy without expert supervision = don't even think about it.) It also has antispasmodic, astringent, cardiac, diaphoretic, nervine, stomachic, tonic and uterine stimulant properties. On the safer side, motherwort is a nervine with effects similar to valerian and can be used to promote relaxation.
Although valerian works fantastically well for me as a sleep aid, I'm drying some motherwort to give it a try. If I can save a few dollars a year, why not?
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 Motherwort may have prickly sepals, but it's got nothing on bull thistle. Belonging to the genus Cirsium, bull thistle is one of the true thistles, all of which are characterized by thorns, long, often lobed and wavy leaves, and compound flower heads called inflorescences that resemble old fashioned shaving brushes. Bull thistle flowers are purple, but other thistle flowers can also be pink, white or yellow. No true thistles are known to be toxic, although they vary in palatability, with some species being too stringy or bitter to make worthwhile eating. Although this entry will focus primarily on bull thistle, other true thistles can be used in the same ways. (Right: Bull Thistle by wide eyed lib)
Bull thistles begin life in Spring as basal rosettes. The leaves have a white or nearly white midrib, light wooly undersides and deep lobes with each lobe ending in a sharp spine. Bull thistles remain as a basal rosette their first year, gathering up the energy necessary to send up a spiny, leaved flower stalk that can reach 6 feet in height in mid-Spring of the second year. By early Summer, terminal buds burst open to display the familiar purple flowers. These give way in late Summer to tiny tan seeds, each equipt with its own feathery parachute, hoping for a passing breeze to carry them away to fertile soil. Bull thistle is non-native, grows in every U.S. state and most Canadian provinces, and is classified as invasive in several states. It grows in sun and partial shade in fields, on lawns and at the edges of woods.
Bull thistles have several edible parts. From early Spring until just before the flowers bloom, the largest leaf midribs can be stripped of their spines and eaten. Here's my method of accomplishing this tricky task. Wearing heavy gloves, grasp a sharp pocket knife in your dominant hand and the end of a large leaf firmly between the thumb and index finger of the other hand (the end spine should be close to but not actually touch your palm). Carefully cut the leaf from the stem, continuing to grasp it at the end and allowing it to hang straight down. Take the pocket knife and cut downward in one smooth motion along one side of the midrib, using a deep lobe as close to the top as possible as a starting point. Repeat on the other side of the midrib. Now you can switch your grip to the bottom of the midrib itself in order to cut off whatever thorns remain at the top. Rinsed and gently rubbed to remove any fuzz, the midribs taste like sweet celery, strings and all. They can be cooked and I'm sure they're delicious that way, but they rarely make it home for me to experiment.
 Before the buds form and while it's still flexible, the flower stalk itself can also be eaten. It's easiest to remove the leaves starting at the bottom and working up. Then you can lop off the top as well as the largest spines on the stalk while it's sticking out of the ground before cutting off at ground level. The stalks should be rinsed and peeled before eating and again resemble celery, although they're more woody than the midribs. The mature but not yet open flowerbuds can be stripped of thorns and their fuzzy choke and eaten like artichokes (and in fact artichoke is a related true thistle), but their small size has never made this a tempting proposition for me. Finally, the roots can be dug up at any time that the plant doesn't have a flower stalk. They're less fibrous than other wild roots like burdock and easier to clean, and they have a mild crispness that resembles water chestnut but is a bit more bland. (Bull thistle roots tend to be fairly small, but pasture thistle (C. discolor) often has very long, thick roots that are well worth the time and effort to dig up.) Thistle roots should be roasted or cooked in soups or boiling salted water until they can be pierced by a fork. If you identify first year plants now (i.e., those that didn't create a flower stalk), you'll be ready to dig them up as soon as the leaves die in October or November. (Above Left: Bull Thistle Leaf by wide eyed lib. Note the tiny seed with its parachute on the lower right.)
Medicinally, bull thistle doesn't have that many applications, but it's been used as a poultice for sore jaws, inhalation of the steam from an infusion of all parts has been used for arthritic joints, and a decoction has been used internally and externally for hemorrhoids.
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 Our final plant for today is the common sunflower. This native plant features golden yellow ray petals surrounding yellow to brown to purple disk flowers and grows in sunny fields in every U.S. state and most Canadian provinces. It's been cultivated for food for at least 1,000 years (not to mention worshipped by the Incas and Aztecs), which explains why some of the heliotropic flower heads are less than 3 inches across and others can exceed 3 feet across or more. The plants themselves grows 3 to 16 feet tall (more on those monsters in a minute) and have huge, dark green, alternate, elongated heart-shaped leaves with finely serrated edges. The leaves and stems feel coarse and a bit sandpapery. (Right: Common Sunflower Plant by wide eyed lib)
European explorers brought sunflower seeds back to Europe, where they were a huge hit and spread all the way west to Russia. The Russians were so crazy about them that they used selective breeding to create giant sunflowers that need outside support to prevent them from falling over. These were in turn imported back into the U.S.
To gather wild sunflower seeds, you first probably want to find sunflowers with a larger head than the ones pictured (alas, the only ones I've been able to find this year). Anything with a center that's less than 1.5 inches across is probably not worth collecting because the seeds will be too small to reasonably shell. Once you find appropriate flowerheads, gather them in late Summer before the seeds fully develop and put them in breathable bags (the netted bags that onions come in work well) to allow them to dry and finish ripening. The seeds can then be scraped out to eat raw or roasted and salted first.
If you are patient enough and want to extract large quantities of nut meat, grind the raw seeds coarsely and submerse them in water. The meat will sink and the shells will float. The nut meat can be used as in recipes or further ground for a peanut butter substitute. Sunflower oil can be harvested by boiling raw ground seeds and shells in water and skimming the oil off the top (the refrigerator will help harden the oil if need be). I'd imagine  you'd need to submerge some kind of fine mesh screen to keep the debris down, but I've never tried it. The shells can be roasted and used as a coffee substitute. (Left: Common Sunflower Head by wide eyed lib)
For a different way to eat them, try sprouting. Take unshelled seeds and soak them overnight to get the process started. Then put them in a fine mesh bag and hang them over a shower or sink out of direct sunlight and run water over them at least twice a day. In 2 or 3 days the sprouts should be as big as the shells, at which point they can be transplanted into a pot in the sun and watered whenever the soil starts to dry out. In about a week, the sprouts can be harvested with scissors. They're peppery and delicious in salads, soups and sandwiches. If you continue to water the pot, you may get a 2nd harvest a week later.
Finally, some kinds of sunflowers have tubers similar to those of jerusalem artichokes (a close relative of the sunflower). These can be dug up in early Spring or late Fall and used in all the same ways that you might use jerusalem artichokes.
Sunflower seeds and sprouts are exceptionally nutritious. They are high in protein, linoleic acid, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin and Vitamin C.
Here are the medicinal uses of sunflower according to Plants for a Future:
A tea made from the leaves is astringent, diuretic and expectorant, it is used in the treatment of high fevers. The crushed leaves are used as a poultice on sores, swellings, snakebites and spider bites. The leaves are harvested as the plant comes into flower and are dried for later use. A tea made from the flowers is used in the treatment of malaria and lung ailments. The flowering head and seeds are febrifuge, nutritive and stomachic. The seed is also considered to be diuretic and expectorant. It has been used with success in the treatment of many pulmonary complaints. A decoction of the roots has been used as a warm wash on rheumatic aches and pains. (Ed. note: See original for citations.)
For the mathematically inclined, sunflowers are a living representation of Fibonacci numbers and Fermat's spiral:
The florets within the sunflower's cluster are arranged in a spiral pattern. Typically each floret is oriented toward the next by approximately the golden angle, 137.5°, producing a pattern of interconnecting spirals where the number of left spirals and the number of right spirals are successive Fibonacci numbers. Typically, there are 34 spirals in one direction and 55 in the other; on a very large sunflower there could be 89 in one direction and 144 in the other. This pattern produces the most efficient packing of seeds within the flower head...A model for the pattern of florets in the head of a sunflower was proposed by H Vogel in 1979. This is expressed in polar coordinates
r = c x square root of n
0 = n x 137.5°,
where 0 is the angle, r is the radius or distance from the center, and n is the index number of the floret and c is a constant scaling factor. It is a form of Fermat's spiral. The angle 137.5° is related to the golden ratio and gives a close packing of florets. This model has been used to produce computer graphics representations of sunflowers.
Bet you didn't expect to learn math in a foraging diary, did you?
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If you're interested in foraging and missed the earlier diaries in the series, you can click here for the previous 18 installments. As always, please feel free to post photos in the comments and I'll do my best to help identify what you've found. (And if you find any errors, let me know.)
Here are some helpful foraging resources:
"Wildman" Steve Brill's site covers many edibles and includes nice drawings.
"Green" Deane Jordan's site is quite comprehensive and has color photos and stories about many plants.
Green Deane's foraging how-to clips on youtube each cover a single plant in reassuring detail.
Linda Runyon's site features only a few plants but has great deals on her dvd, wild cards and books (check out the package deals in particular).
Steve Brill's book, Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and Not So Wild) Places is my primary foraging guide. (Read reviews here, but if you're feeling generous, please buy from Steve's website.)
Linda Runyon's book The Essential Wild Food Survival Guide contains especially detailed information about nutritional content and how to store and preserve wild foods.
Samuel Thayer's book The Forager's Harvest is perhaps the finest resource out there for the 32 plants covered. The color photos and detailed harvest and preparation information are top-notch.
Steve Brill also offers guided foraging tours in NYC-area parks. Details and contact info are on his website.
Don Wiss's website is a treasure trove featuring hundreds of photos of common northeastern edibles.
Finally, the USDA plants database is a great place to look up info on all sorts of plants.
See you next week!
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