Foraging seeds for food

[woodsorrel]

Hi Everyone!

Native peoples in my area practiced the “seasonal round”. This is an annual cycle in the production of food. In spring, they climbed into the hills to harvest seeds from grasses and wildflowers. I assume ancient peoples in the UK did this as well?

I thought it might be fun to take a look at harvesting seeds for food. I put notes online that describe how I harvest seeds from sunflowers, plants in the Asteraceae family, when I am out foraging.

The most common plants near me are Mule’s Ears, Arrowleaf Balsamroot, and Mountain Sunflower. Here is a Mule’s Ears plant (Wyethia sp.):

There are several ways you can use the seeds. In the picture below, the seeds are for seasoning. They are consumed while still in the shell. In other cases, the seeds are parched and the nutmeats separated and consumed.

Here is a link with my method of harvesting sunflower seeds from wild plants (link).

Do you harvest seeds for food? If so, what is your method?

- Woodsorrel

 

[Toddy]

I do. Everything from the wood millet to the dockens; they're all good food and there's always something to be foraged.
It's both the seasonal round and what actually grows where that's the biggest issue in foraging here.

Woodsorrel; lots of members have real bandwidth problems, we ask that folks who post things post them here and not to off site links. It keeps things easy.

cheers,
M

 

[woodsorrel]

Toddy, how do you extract the seeds?

Lack of abundance is the biggest problem where I am. The early settlers planted annual grasses to feed their livestock. These largely supplanted the native bunch grasses and wildflowers that once sustained people. What was once a plentiful resource is now scarce. We have to forage very carefully and ethically to make sure our activities are sustainable.

- Woodsorrel

 

[nephilim]

I'm currently cultivating various plants. If I buy a fruit at the greengrocers I'll extract as many seeds as possible from said fruit and plant them around locally. So far I've done this for strawberries, raspberries, blackberries (turned into a reasonably large bramble), blueberries and this year apples, oranges, cherries, and kiwis. Not sure how they'll fair but hopefully they'll fruit in a decade or so. Playing the long game obviously with those.

 

[Coldfeet]

I'm currently cultivating various plants. If I buy a fruit at the greengrocers I'll extract as many seeds as possible from said fruit and plant them around locally. So far I've done this for strawberries, raspberries, blackberries (turned into a reasonably large bramble), blueberries and this year apples, oranges, cherries, and kiwis. Not sure how they'll fair but hopefully they'll fruit in a decade or so. Playing the long game obviously with those.

Good on you; I would love to see more edible species growing "wild". I'm not too far from Todmorden, which seems to have the same attitude to these things.

 

[Jack Bounder]

I'm currently cultivating various plants. If I buy a fruit at the greengrocers I'll extract as many seeds as possible from said fruit and plant them around locally. So far I've done this for strawberries, raspberries, blackberries (turned into a reasonably large bramble), blueberries and this year apples, oranges, cherries, and kiwis. Not sure how they'll fair but hopefully they'll fruit in a decade or so. Playing the long game obviously with those.

I'm not entirely sure it's a good idea to introduce non-native species into British habitats. They can upset the delicate balance of native plant communities to the detriment of the habitat as a whole. Personally, I would not plant anything into natural or semi-natural habitats unless it was agreed within a management plan for the site.

 

[nephilim]

The council gave the go ahead. I haven't done it without permission and they know near enough within the yard where it's all been planted.

 

[Toddy]

I know that in the past people took seeds of wildings that were good eating and moved them nearer to their homes and gardens. I know that all of the wild plants are slightly different from each other; some elderberries are sweet, others are foul, some flourish smells delightful, some of catpee….which would you prefer to see multiply ?

I won't plant what isn't native, I do encourage native plantings in areas that look 'right' for them. The woodmillet for instance is an ancient plant, indicative of long standing native woodlands. No reason it shouldn't be encouraged to grow in modern planted ones

Lesser celandines, pignuts, ransoms, fat hen, good king Henry, even the wild strawberries, are all good food, all worth finding little niches for.
Loads of water plants too are deserving of being more widely available. Industrialisation and urbanisation trashed many areas; we're through the worst of it now, and those areas could do with native plantings.
Even if it's just a wild bit of the garden, it's worth encouraging them

Caveat…..though I use the wild strawberries, they might need care, John Fenna says they try to take over his tattie bed

The wild millet grows in long feathery heads, and when dry-ish the seeds thresh out easily. A bit like mini linseeds (which is another native plant that grows edible seeds and incredibly useful fibres). The dockens need to be roasted to open up and drop their seeds onto a cloth. Light a fire and pass the dryish frothy rust coloured heads through the flames. You really want the
outside scales to crisp off and the seeds thresh out just by beating the bunches against a stick above a cloth or fine meshed basket.
Fat Hen is edible in it's entirety, while the seeds from the plantains just rub off the stems. They will thicken a stew or boil up a bit like cress, the outsides soak up liquid and that makes them sticky.
Pendulous rush can be gathered just by plucking the heads off the stems, letting them dry a bit and then stripping them off or just shaking them vigorously in a bag. Winnow the seeds by pouring them from a bowl onto a cloth when there's a gentle wind blowing. Cleans them up remarkably quickly.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Jack Bounder]

The problem with planting ancient woodland indicators into modern woodlands is that the indicator species can no longer be trusted as an indicator of ancient woodland....an area which has been continually wooded since 1600AD or 1750AD in Scotland.

Similarly, one used to be able to estimate the age of a hedgerow based on the number of tree and shrub species it contained...100years per species. That's because the hedges were originally planted up with Hawthorn and it took time for other species to find their way into the hedge. Nowadays conservation groups plant mixed hedgerows (I have done it myself), so the simple rule of thumb no longer applies.

Does this matter? It depends on your point of view, I guess.

 

[Toddy]

I don't think that nowadays it does matter, what does matter though is that we do encourage native biodiversity.

In this area the upper reaches of the Clyde have many steep sided burns. We call them gills. Those gills were too steep to be grazed or cropped or even felled for firewood.
Now the thrust of the biodiversity is to encourage the native flora and fauna to spread down and out of the gills and along the river side and thus restore the natural balance of the area again.
That's all that introducing native species back into woodlands and hedgerows is really doing.

Ancient hedges are still detectable, so are ancient woodlands. Encouraging the spread of both of those is a good thing

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Jack Bounder]

I guess we are both on the same page, in that we both wish to encourage biodiversity. In my view, however, the best way to encourage that biodiversity is through the appropriate management of habitats, rather than introducing species / specimens from elsewhere. Of course, this approach takes time......so is not popular in these instant fix times.

Of course, in some circumstances one cannot rely on nature to fix itself due to the gross fragmentation of habitats making natural colonisation unlikely. For instance, the Great Bustard has been introduced onto Salisbury Plain. Could it have got there under its own steam? Probably not. Would I be excited to see one? Absolutely? Do I support the reintroduction? No, not really. For me, introducing the bird has made the habitat less natural somehow.

The Beaver is another example. However, the Beaver is a manager of habitat in a way that the Great Bustard is not. So, I would support the reintroduction of Beaver because of the potential benefits it would bring. Of course, any introduction would need to be carefully controlled and monitored to assess the resulting impact....to ensure it wasn't ultimately detrimental to native species.

Fortunately perhaps, I am no longer directly involved in conservation or ecology. So, my words are little more than hot air

 

[woodsorrel]

Toddy, thanks for the great description of processing different seeds.

We are experiencing a continuous drought in Northern California (3 years). This has inspired talk of planting more native species as ground cover and for landscaping. In this case, we would be reintroducing natives to areas previously dominated by introduced species.

Wouldn't it be cool if people began planting native wildflowers that make edible seeds?!! Excuse me, I'm salivating...

- Woodsorrel

 

[Robson Valley]

Beaver are "forest rats' here. They do a perfect job of destroying a flowing water habitat and creating a still-water, stagnant, mosquito-breeding paradise of a pond instead.
That totally upsets to ecology of any flowing stream. They flood the forests, they butcher standing timber for acres around their ponds.

By plugging highway culverts, the beaver profess to use the entire highway as a pond dam. Next, the highway roadbed saturates with water. Blink and you will miss this =
20-100m of highway slides off down the mountainside in a river of stone gravy. You see, there are no other roads here. Just the one. Cut that and we are isolated.
Of course we have to put up with rock-slides, mud-slides, black ice/freezing rain and avalanches closing HWY 16. For safety's sake, we need no help from the rats.

I do hope that they are better received in your neighborhood.

 

[Toddy]

Jack….that would mean that only the 'professionals' who 'know what they're doing' could do anything.
The reality is that we all live here, and many hands make light work. Most of us have at least postage stamp sized bits of garden. I happily bring in useful wild varieties and grow them close to hand. They proliferate and I return their offspring to suitable areas. I routinely weed out a couple of hundred tree seedlings every year. If I didn't I wouldn't get out the door within two. I grow reedmace in a pond, but it thrives in a bucket too, I grow the wood millet and what I don't eat I sow elsewhere. I grow fat hen, lesser celandines, etc., etc. and they all spread, they're all doing well elsewhere now too. This area has much post industrial land, it's rapidly re-greening Better by far that it's native plants than the Oxford Ragwort, Japanese Knotweed, or Himalayan Balsam.

Be aware; what 'is' native to your area, and simply encourage it along

My tuppence halfpenny worth

RobsonValley….we don't have beavers here, yet ? we do have the blasted American mink though
http://www.scottishmink.org.uk

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Jimmy Bojangles]

Can anyone tell me definitively whether the seeds from welsh poppies are ok to eat? The kids love gathering them but up untill now I've never been able to find out if here safe to eat.
cheers