Sometime in August my friend Eric Lewis sends me a message. Eric is a teacher of plant knowledge and permaculture practices in the Maryland area. He’s found a large stand of wild rice in a local river. I’d never harvested wild rice before so the idea of gathering some was exciting, especially rice that was local to the Chesapeake Bay bioregion, only a couple hours drive away from me. I knew that wild rice or Zizania aquatica was a fairly common tidal grass up and down the east coast but I had no experience with it. Wild rice normally conjures up ideas of the north country regions surrounding the Great Lakes, but as I was soon to find out, it is more common and abundant than I had imagined. Eric kept daily watch over the ripening rice, and when it was ready for harvest, I borrowed a canoe and we took to the river…
The Jerusalem artichoke, sunchoke, or sunroot – Helianthus tuberosus
Jerusalem artichoke, Helianthus tuberosus, is not from Jerusalem nor is it an artichoke! Some use the shorthand “sunchoke” as an alternate name; others simply call Helianthus tuberosus “sunroot,” and this is what I prefer. It’s a tuberous perennial sunflower in the Asteraceae family (or Compositae) native to eastern & central North America. It has been cultivated for centuries as a root crop by indigenous peoples and western farmers alike. To the Cree who lived beside Lake Superior, it was called askipaw, and to the Huron north of Lake Ontario it was called skibwan. Buffalo Bird Woman in interview with Gilbert Wilson (vol. 16, 1914) names the plant kakca or kaakca in Hidatsa. Other names for this plant in indigenous languages are pange (Omaha-Ponca), panhi (Winnebago), and kisu-sit (Pawnee). In Passamaquoddy-Maliseet the word for the tuber is ktahkitom (k’tAH-kee-tOM).
The lily family (Liliaceae) contains many plants that make for excellent edibles, and cucumber root (Medeola virginiana) is no exception. Cucumber root gets it’s name from its flavor — very much like cucumber, but sweeter. The leaves have a flavor also like cucumber. All parts of the plant may be eaten raw or cooked, with a caveat regarding the berries (although non-toxic, they have a taste which may not be the most palatable in the world to us of human persuasion).
To indigenous groups around the Rocky Mountains and Great Basin, Yampah was one of the most useful and cherished root foods. In 1843, an early explorer of the American West, John Frémont, described the root as “a common article of food,” and said that the Native Americans took “pleasure in offering the root to strangers.”
Giant Solomon’s Seal flowers (Polygonatum biflorum var. commutatum)
Solomon’s Seal (genus Polygonatum) is a really cool native plant of eastern and central North America. It is in the asparagus family, Asparagaceae. The young shoots are edible raw or cooked just as garden asparagus — they are mucilaginous but flavorful and nutritive. The flower blossoms are a real delicacy — tender and sweet. Even the rhizome has been used as a human staple food rich in starch. It is from the rhizome that we get the common name “Solomon’s Seal.” Somewhere down the line, somebody thought that the indented “seals” left behind on the rootstock from last year’s shoots had the quality of a royal stamp to them, so they named the plant King Solomon’s Seal. Go figure! But the name has stuck.
