Identification: Large white flower to 5" in diameter with numerous petals and yellow reproductive parts; roots submerged in freshwater; leaves flat, platter shaped, 6"–10" across.
Habitat: Found floating on still or gently moving shallow water to 3' in depth. Found across the northern tier of states, farther south in the East, and rarely in the Southwest.
Food uses: Eat the unfurled leaves of spring and unopened flower buds. Wash petals and cook to remove potential larvae and other aquatic pests.
Medicinal uses: Dried and powdered root sucked in mouth to relieve mouth sores. Juice of root used to treat colds. Numerous tribes used the root juice, decoction, and powdered roots in many ways, primarily to treat colds and coughs.
Identification: Arrow-shaped leaves, widely and deeply cleft, veins palmate; white, platter-shaped flowers with 3 petals; deep-set tube growing up from a soft bottom.
Habitat: Edges of slow-moving streams, ponds, and along shorelines of lakes with soft bottom edges; ranges across northern tier of states, from Maine to Washington.
Food uses: Harvest tuber in fall or early spring. Boil until tender, pluck away skin, and sauté or smash and cook like hash browns. Native Americans roasted the tubers, peeled them, and ate out of hand.
Medicinal uses: Root said to settle the stomach, alleviate indigestion. Poultice of root applied to cuts and abrasions.
Identification: Wetland grass with long sword-shaped leaves, 2-headed flower, male spike on top and female just below. Grows to 7'; flower heads develop in May and June, later in the mountain states.
Habitat: Numerous species worldwide. Broadleaf (Typha angustifolia) and narrow leaf (T. latifolia) are common across the central and northerntier states. Found along streams, in marshes, fens, bogs, and other wetlands with still or slow-moving water.
Male and female heads; Typha latifolia (left) and Typha angustifolia (right)
Food uses: Collect the male flowering parts in late May and June in Michigan, about 2 or 3 pounds, and then freeze. Add the male parts to pizza dough, bread dough, cookies, and biscuits—anything you bake—to enrich the final product with essential amino acids and bioflavonoids. Strip young shoots (through June) of their tough outer leaves down to the delicate core. Eat on the spot or sauté or stir-fry. Roots are starch rich and provide needed energy for beavers, muskrats, and humans. The young (June) female flower spike is boiled and eaten like corn on the cob; alas it does not taste like corn on the cob, but once again, it may be the difference between starving and survival.
Medicinal uses: The mucilaginous chopped root applied to wounds, minor abrasions, inflammations, and burns. Burned cattail ash is styptic and used to stop bleeding and disinfect wounds.
Note: Dried cattail fluff is an excellent fire accelerator; use in the fire nest.
Identification: Green flower with numerous spikes. Grows to 3', with flat seeds surrounded by 4 bracts at 90 degrees to one another; leaves are slender, tough, grasslike (but not a grass), and grow from an underground tuber.
Habitat: In or near wetlands, escaped to gardens—prefers damp soil. Found coast to coast, in all states except perhaps Montana and Wyoming.
Food uses: Roots dried, ground, and cooked with other food; or simply dig roots, wash, and eat raw. They are also baked or boiled.
Medicinal uses: Pima and other tribes chewed roots to treat colds.
Identification: Leaves on long, jointed stolons (delicate stem-like appendages). Two types of leaves: oval or elliptical (which are much smaller and have sharply toothed leaflets up to 1¼" long), with small buttercup-like flower. Both species can be found on waste ground or in gravelly or sandy habitats.
Habitat: Potentilla canadensis found in the eastern United States to the Mississippi in fields, waste ground, roadsides, and meadows.
Food uses: P. canadensis is used to make a gold-colored tea that is high in calcium. For a quick roast, cook the leaves in a hot (covered) Dutch oven for 2–3 minutes or pour boiling water over the leaves. P. anserina roots are edible. Gather the roots, wash them thoroughly, and steam in a wok. Native Americans steamed the roots in cedar boxes and served them with duck fat. To this day the Ditidaht peoples of British Columbia gather and prepare the roots in this traditional way.
Medicinal uses: Roots are rich in tannins and are used by some naturopathic physicians to treat diarrhea, Crohn's disease, colitis, gastritis, and peptic ulcers. Use only under the supervision of a trained holistic health-care practitioner.
Identification: One of the smallest flowering plants, it covers still water and turns pond surfaces green by early summer—from a distance it looks like green pond scum. Up close it is a single or double leaf floating on the surface of the water, with 2 root hairs siphoning nutrients from the water. It is the habitat of many larval forms of life, so cooking is imperative. Size: smaller than the nail on your pinky, to 1 centimeter.
Habitat: Surface of still freshwater. Found coast to coast.
Food uses: Thoroughly wash, then cook in soups and stews. What I consider a survival food, and there is plenty of it. It's texture is crunchy, especially when larval snails are not removed from the food.
Medicinal uses: In poultice and applied to swellings and inflammations.
Identification: The plant my brother and I called snakeweed when kids, the segmented stem can be pulled apart and put back together at the joints to make necklaces and bracelets. It appears in the spring as a naked segmented stem with a dry-tipped sporangium with spores. Later the sterile stage stems arise with many long needlelike branches arranged in whorls up the stem.
Habitat: Found around marshes, fens, bogs, streams, lakes, streams, rivers, and in my garden.
Food uses: Native Americans of the Northwest eat the tender young shoots of the plant as a blood purifier (tonic). The tips (the strobili) are boiled and eaten in Japan-mix vinegar and soy; boil 5 minutes and enjoy. Native Americans of the Southwest eat the roots.
Medicinal uses: Mexican Americans use dried whole aerial plant parts of horsetail in infusion or decoction to treat painful urination. Therapy not supported by scientific evidence. But equisetonin and bioflavonoids in the plant may account for its diuretic effect. Native Americans used a poultice of the stem to treat rashes of the armpit and groin, and an infusion of the stem was used by Blackfoot as a diuretic. Cherokee used aerial part infusion to treat coughs in their horses. Infusion of the plant used to treat dropsy, backaches, cuts, and sores. Baths of the herb reported to treat syphilis and gonorrhea. This is one of the First People's most widely used herbs.
Young jewelweed shoots
Jewelweed flower
Identification: Fleshy annual of wetlands to 7' in height. Simple green, almost translucent stems with swollen nodes. Deep-green leaves are thin, ovate, with 5–14 teeth. Plants grow in dense colonies, often with stinging nettle. Flowers are orange-yellow with reddish-brown spots. They are spur shaped and irregular, with the spur curving back and lying parallel to the sac. Flower is about ½" wide and ¾" in length. Fruit is oblong capsule that when ripe bursts open and disperses the seeds.
Habitat: Lowlands, wetlands, edges of lakes and streams, wet fens, edges of bogs, and relocates to the garden, providing food and medicine. Young shoots of spring bolt form a complete ground cover in wet lowlands, along streams, wetlands, lakes.
Food uses: Eat the small flowers of summer in salads and stir-fry. Pick the young shoots of spring and add to your mushroom soup, egg dishes, stir-fry, or sauté with spring vegetables.
Medicinal uses: Traditional treatment for poison ivy. Crush and rub the aerial parts of plants over inflamed area of dermatitis for an immediate anti-inflammatory effect, reducing itching and inflammation. The Creek tribe used an infusion of smashed spicebush berries and jewelweed as a bath for congestive heart failure. Crushed flowers used on bruises, cuts, and burns. Repeated applications of the juice may remove warts. Whole herb infused as an appetite stimulant and diuretic. Used by naturopaths to treat dyspepsia.
Identification: Evergreen shrub 15"–30" or more; flowers with 5 petals (⅜" wide) that form flat terminal clusters; fruits in round nodding capsules—leaves evergreen, oval to lance shaped down rolled edges, wooly underneath.
Habitat: Found in boggy areas of the western mountains and northern tier of eastern states and southern Canadian provinces.
Food uses: Leaves and flowers are used to make tea. Labrador tea is preferred over glandular Labrador tea, as it is slightly toxic and mildly narcotic, causing stomach distress and even death from an overdose. Be careful, as these species can be confused with bog laurels.
Medicinal uses: Native Americans used the leaf and floral tea to treat acute infections such as colds and sore throats. Smoking the dried leaves claimed to induce euphoria. Crushed and powdered leaves were used as snuff to treat inflammation of the nasal passages. Tea said to help alleviate allergies. The tea is diuretic, laxative, and a smooth muscle relaxant. According to Kershaw in Edible and Medicinal Plants of the Rockies, crushed leaves used by Scandinavians to flavor schnapps—the alcoholic nightcap is used as a sleep aid. Alcohol extracts used to treat numerous skin conditions including inflammation, scabies, fungus, chiggers, and lice bites. Powdered roots were applied to ulcers. And fresh leaves are chewed as a general tonic.
Identification: One of first plants to flower in the spring, it has broadly heartshaped leaves ¾"–1½" wide. Bright-yellow flowers to 1½" wide, sepals are petal-like; blooms in early spring. Many seeded fruits, in a recurved capsule forming in early summer.
Habitat: In marshes, swamps, along edges of all sorts of wetlands: stream banks, lakeshores. Found north to Alaska, from Washington State to the East Coast and as far south as the Carolinas.
Food uses: Early flowering buds are pickled. I use dill brine (reuse the juice in an empty pickle jar), boil the brine, add dried buds (dry in a food dryer) for 3 minutes at boil, pour juice and rehydrated buds back into pickle jar, and refrigerate. Native Americans cooked leaves and also ate seeds. Leaves cooked in animal fats. On the other hand, a few tribes considered the plant too toxic to eat (see warning).
Warning: All parts of this plant are toxic (with protoanemonin and helleborine). When the bud is dried, the volatile toxic principles denature or gas off, making buds edible. The 3 minutes in brine is an extra measure I take. After all that work, mix a martini, drop in a bud, and take a break. Don't drink. Stuff bud in an olive and nibble away. Decoction of root used to induce emesis.
Medicinal uses: Caustic plant juice applied to warts and a poultice of leaves applied to arthritic joints as a counterirritant.
Mentha aquatic
Identification: There are many American members of the mint family. The genus has several characteristics in common: a square stem, almost always aromatic when crushed, typically aggressive and spreading. Flowers are in dense whorls culminating in a terminal spike of blossoms that crown the stem, or in the leaf axils. Color varies by species—white, violet, blue…. The root is a spreading rhizome with erect stems. Leaves are ovate to roundish and elongated in a few species, typically serrated.
Habitat: Mentha aquatic and M. piperita can usually be found around water, shorelines, stream banks, dunes of the Great Lakes, and mountain passes, blow-downs, avalanche slides, and wet meadows.
Food uses: Leaves in teas, salads, cold drinks, sautéed vegetables; wonderful in Mexican bean soups, and as an integral part of the subcontinent and Middle Eastern flavor principles.
Medicinal uses: Leaf and flower infusion (or the extracted oil) are antiseptic, carminative, warming, and relieve muscle spasms and increase perspiration. Tea stimulates bile secretion. Leaf and flower extraction are Commission E–approved in Germany for treating dyspepsia and gallbladder and liver problems.
Identification: Arrow-shaped leaf, veins spread from base, merge at tip like venation in grass leaves; blue flowers, densely clustered spikes.
Habitat: Ponds and lakes in entire United States, except extreme desert, southern California, and lower Florida.
Food uses: Young leaves (before they emerge from the water), mature seeds and leaves eaten. Leaves are most tender in spring, while unfurling beneath water. Cook leaves with dandelions and mustard greens. Season cooked greens with Italian dressing or herbes de Provence; serve hot. Add flower petals to salads. In late summer seeds mature in tough, leathery capsules. Open capsule to get fruit. Munch as a trail food, or dry and grind into flour.
Medicinal uses: Infusion of whole plant historically used by 2 North American native tribes as a contraceptive. See Daniel Moerman, Native American Ethnobotany.
Identification: Tall wetland grass; lance-shaped leaves up to 1' in length; flowers in tall, dense plume. Plants grow in dense cluster. Found around the margins of streams and in wet lowlands. The root of reed grass, like cattail roots, harvested and leached of its starch.
Habitat: Wetlands throughout the United States.
Food uses: The first shoots of spring eaten raw but are best steamed until tender. I prefer to cut open the reed shoot to chew and suck the young shoots, then spit out the pulp. Prepare the plant immediately after picking, as delays in preparation make for a tough, stringy meal. Simply chop the new shoots into a manageable size and place them in a steamer. They are ready to eat in 5 minutes. In the fall, seeds ground into flour or stripped, crushed, and cooked with berries. Also, try reed seeds cooked in stews and soups.
Medicinal uses: The Chinese use plant to clear fevers, quench thirst, promote diuresis, and promote salivation.
Note: The dried, hollow stalks of reed cut to 4" lengths and used as spigots for tapping maple trees for syrup.
Identification: Tall grass with a somewhat reedlike flower head; long, narrow leaf blades; flowers in tall plume; upper flowers female, lower flowers male.
Habitat: Wild rice found growing in shallow, clean, slow-moving water, east of the Missouri River.
Food uses: Seeds harvested in August and September. Timing is critical, so check your stand of wild rice often. Mature seeds drop off easily. Return every other day to maximize the harvest. Use a rolling pin to thresh the husks from the seed. Simply roll back and forth over the grain. Use a fan or the wind to dispel the chaff. Cooking tips: The simplest way to cook wild rice is to boil 2 cups of lightly salted water, add 1 cup of wild rice, and cover and simmer for 35 minutes. Zizania is an excellent stuffing for wild turkey. Wild rice, cooked until tender, is an excellent addition to pancake and waffle mixes. It also goes well in 12- and 20-grain hot cereals and is a great substitute for white rice. Extend your supply by cooking it with equal parts of long-grain brown rice.
Medicinal uses: Staple cereal crop for Native Americans, providing winter nutrition in a harsh climate.
Swamp dock
Curly leaf dock
I include all docks here, although Rumex crispus and Rumex orbiculatus are typically found along the edges of roadsides, in gardens, and meadows.
Identification: The many varieties of dock are common weeds growing on disturbed ground, edges of fields, roadsides, and vacant lots. Leaves typically widest at base, narrow to tip, rounded at base; paper-like flower spikes; fruits 3 parted, brownish to red with 3 nutlets. Docks emerge in the spring, first as unfurling leaves, later the flower spike shoots up with smaller leaves attached. Flowers and eventually seeds cluster along the top several inches of the spikes. Swamp or water dock (R. orbiculatus) is found growing in water or along stream margins. It is stout and tall (to 6') with a long root and flat, narrow, dark-green leaves. Both curly dock (R. crispus) and yellow dock (R. patientia) have curly or wavy leaf margins.
Habitat: Entire United States except arid areas, along streams, in marshes and wetlands.
Warning: Contains oxalic acid; like spinach, do not eat more than twice a week.
Food uses: My favorite species is R. crispus. It grows in profusion in the garden and is available as food in March. Leaves and seeds edible; tender young leaves, as they emerge, are most edible. Older leaves are tough and bitter and must be cooked in 2 changes of water. Steam, sauté, or stir-fry young leaves, season with ginger, soy, lemon juice, and sesame seed oil. Leaves are great with walnuts and raisins. Dock seeds are edible in late summer and autumn. Hulled seeds can be ground into flour and used as a soup thickener or as a flour extender in baked goods.
Medicinal uses: Curly dock and yellow dock used by naturopaths and midwives as a tea to treat anemia and raise iron levels in pregnant women. Iron in this form does not cause constipation. Curly dock root also used with vinegar to treat ringworm. All dock roots are laxative, bitter digestive stimulants.
Identification: Grows along the margins of shallow, clean water. Alternate leaves to ¾" wide, ovate, simple, broad near base; small white flower with 4 petals. Avoid contamination from pesticides and herbicides—collect watercress (and, for that matter, all edible water plants) from a clean water source such as a highland stream or free-flowing spring.
Habitat: Throughout the United States, springs, free-flowing streams, with rich bottoms.
Warning: It's a good idea to cook all watercress gathered from the bush to avoid possible contamination with giardia and other waterborne parasites and contaminants.
Food uses: Watercress is a pungent, spicy green. It's an important ingredient in V8 vegetable juice and one of the most useful greens known to humankind. In the northern United States and Canada, watercress is available 10 months a year. South of the Mason-Dixon Line, it's a year-round food. Watercress is high in vitamins A and C. Scramble chopped watercress with eggs, stuff a pita sandwich, add it to salads, or make watercress soup. I like to stir-fry watercress with 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, 1 teaspoon of diced ginger root, and the juice of 1 pressed garlic clove. Cook briefly at medium heat for about 2 minutes. Use watercress as a stuffing when preparing smoked or baked bass. After washing the body cavity, stuff the fish with watercress, season to taste, and bake or smoke it. I like watercress as a wild ingredient on pizza.
Medicinal uses: Mild diuretic. A few Native American groups used watercress to dissolve gallstones.
Identification: These 2 closely related species found in ponds, shallow lakes, and streams. Their disk-shaped leaves unfurl above water. The yellow flower blooms through the summer and bears a primitive-looking fruit. The fruit pod contains numerous seeds—perhaps the only palatable part of this plant.
Habitat: Throughout the United States, except extreme mountain and desert regions. The Yellowstone National Park variety (long isolated) is about a third larger in size.
Food uses: The root stock of spatterdock is cut free and boiled. It smells sweet like an apple, but it is extremely bitter—even after cooking in 2 or 3 changes of water. Strictly a survival food; eat when nothing else is available. The seeds can be dried and ground into flour or prepared like popcorn. Place the dried seeds in a popcorn popper. Cover the machine so the small seeds don't become airborne. The results are usually disappointing. Seeds simply pop open, but they're edible with salt and butter.
Medicinal uses: Root poultice over wounds, swellings, boils, and inflammations. Root tea.