Edible Weeds

            When the weather has finally warmed everything will start to grow exuberantly, especially the weeds.  At a recent conference in Washington D.C., one woman who was testifying  about the danger of herbicides commented " I have never known of weeds being  poisonous."    However, there are poisonous weeds such as jimson weed but there are many edible weeds as well.   

            Are you hungry for the taste of fresh peas but you don't have any in the garden?  Try the small young tender tops of the tumbleweed (salsola kali). Remove the roots as they are tough and wiry and tuck the tops into your next sandwich. If we ate all the tumbleweed while it was still young we wouldn't have to worry about the dried ones piling up against the fences or skidding across the road in our spring winds.

            Are you a greens lover and the spinach in the garden is all gone or bolted and gone to seed?  Try cooking the common purslane (portulaca oleracea) that grows so profusely in my garden (and probably yours too).  It can also be used raw just as the tumbleweed is.  The tiny seeds are also edible.

            When I was a child my mother used to go out and gather dandelions and cook them.  I remember one spring she harvested a large quantity and cooked them and tried to persuade us to eat them but they were too bitter for our taste so she ate them herself and got a severe stomach ache.  That was the last time we were ever asked to try dandelion greens.  I still hate anything that is supposed to be edible but that has a bitter taste.

            If you have violets in your yard both the flowers and tender young leaves are edible.  The flowers are often candied and used as a decoration while the leaves are most often used in salads.  You can also make an acceptable tea from them.

            Along Paseo del Norte and in many other places throughout the Albuquerque area spring is marked by the emergence of the broad leaves of the perennial curly dock (rumex).  In the later part of May the seed heads crown the plants but if you had gathered the young leaves before the plants bloomed you may find they made a tasty dish.  If they should be bitter or unpleasant tasting, the water in which they are cooked can be poured off and fresh water added until the bitterness or unpleasantness is gone.  The seeds are sometimes used as a substitute for tobacco and might have the added advantage of not being carcinogenic.

            Even the hated bindweed (convolvulus arvensis) has been used in Martinique as a flavoring for a liquor but the plant itself contains a toxin. 

            Another edible green is the pigweed or lambs quarters (chenopodium berlandieri).  This can be used either in salads or as a cooked vegetable like spinach. Many other members of the chenopodium family of plants are also edible. 

            Kochia scoparia (chenopodium family), or burning bush or Mexican fire weed can be used.  The tender new shoots are good in salads and the seeds were used in the Orient to make a bread.

            The blossoms of the desert willow (chilopsis linearis) as well as the seeds were used by the Indians to supplement their diets. 

            The list of edible foods that grow naturally is very long and some day we may need to use more of these natural foods.  If you wish to pursue the subject more, the book "How to live through a Famine" by Dean Rasmussen published by Horizon Publishers  may interest you.