New Pork State Cullege of Agriculture At Carnell University Ithaca, BL Y. Library Be MY |2 Co Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924001786965 (‘0Z a8ed vag) ‘Jeaur oT puNosZ aq 0} ‘suI0de Suyjeys UeWOM UeIpUy = SRR ae USEFUL WILD PLANTS OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA BY CHARLES FRANCIS SAUNDERS Author of “Under the Sky in California,’? ‘‘With the Flowers and Trees in California,”? “Finding the Worth While in California,” “‘F inding the Worth While in the Southwest,’’ Ete. ILLUSTRATED BY PHOTOGRAPHS, AND BY NUMEROUS LINE DRAWINGS BY LUCY HAMILTON ARING ‘ NEW YORK ROBERT M. McBRIDE @ CO. 1920 Copyright, 1920, by Rozgerr M. McBrine & Co. @ SBIOT S15 @!7505 Published, » 1920 TO DOROTHY F. H. LOVER OF WILD THINGS THIS VOLUME 1S AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT LL the familiar vegetables and fruits of our kitchen gardens, as well as the cereals of our fields, were once wild plants; or, to put it more ac- curately, they are the descendants, improved by cultivation and selection, of ancestors as untamed in their way as the primitive men and women who first learned the secret of their nutritiousness. Many of these—as, for example, the potato, Indian corn, cer- tain sorts of beans and squashes, and the tomato— are of New World origin; and the purpose of this volume is to call attention to certain other useful plants, particularly those available as a source of human meat and drink, that are to-day growing wild in the woods, waters and open country of the United States. Though now largely neglected, many ‘of these plants formed in past years an important element in the diet of the aborigines, who were vegetarians to a greater extent than is generally suspected, and whose patient investigation and in- genuity have opened the way to most that we know of the economic possibilities of our indigenous flora. White explorers, hunters and settlers have also, at INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT times, made use of many of these plants to advan- tage, though with the settlement of the country a return to the more familiar fruits and products of civilization has naturally followed. Man’s tendency to nurse a habit is nowhere more marked than in his stubborn indisposition to take up with new foods, if the first taste does not please, as frequently it does not; witness the slowness with which the tomato came into favor, and the Englishman’s con- tinued indifference to maize for human consumption. Sometimes, however, the claims of necessity over- ride taste, and there would seem to be a service in presenting in a succinct way the known facts about at least the more readily utilized of our wild plants. The data herein given, the writer owes in part to the published statements of travelers and investi- gators (to whom credit is given in the text), and in part to his own first hand observations, particularly in the West, where the Indian is not yet altogether out of his blanket, and where some practices still linger that antedate the white man’s coming. The essential worth of the plants discussed having been proved by experience, it is hoped that to dwellers in rural districts, to campers and vacationists in the wild, as well as to nature students and naturalists generally, the work may be practically suggestive. The reader is referred to the following standard INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT works for complete scientific descriptions of the plants discussed: Gray’s Manual of Botany of the Northern United States (east of the Rockies) ; Brit- ton and Brown’s Illustrated Flora of the United States and Canada (the same territory as covered by Gray); Small’s Flora of the Southeastern United States; Watson’s Botany of the Geological Survey of California; Coulter’s New Manual of Botany of the Central Rocky Mountains; Wootton and Standley’s Flora of New Mexico. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Inrropuctory STATEMENT. . . . . . . . | Vil I Witp Puants with Eprste Tusers, Buss or Roors 1 II Witp Puants with Episte Tusers, Buss or Roots (Continued). . . 2 1. we ew ew ewe III Witp Seeps or Foop VaALur, anp How Tury Have Been UTILIZED . . . . . . ee ee CD IV Tue Acorn as Human Foon anp Some OTHER WILD NUGS ws «3 wwe ee ee ee ee V_ Some Littie Recarpep WILD Fruits anp Berrigs . 83 VI Win Piants witH Episuz Stems anp Leaves . . 114 VII Beverace Puants or FienpD anD Woop. . . . . 141 VIII VecEetTasLe Susstirutes ror Soap. . . . . . 167 IX Some MepicinaL WitpIncs WortuH Knowince . . 184 X Muscevnansous Uses or Winn Puants « . . . 210 XI A Cautionary CHAPTER ON CERTAIN PoISONOUS PLANTS: « @ & wow @ @ « © @ Js « «236 Recionan InpEx . . . . . . . - « « + 209 Genzran Inpex . . 02... 6. ee 269 THE ILLUSTRATIONS IN HALF-TONE Indian woman shelling acorns, to be ground into meal. . . . sw et ee et) Frontispiece FACING . PAGE Prickly Pear (Opuntia tuna), one of the important food plants of the desert regions. . . . . +. . . « 18 An Indian of the Great Lakes Region ees wild rice by means of dasher-like stick . . . . » «¢ ~ 46 Red Maple (Acer rubrum), the source of a dark blue dye in vogue among the Pennsylvania colonists . . . . 54 A Western mountain Indian’s storage baskets for preserving acorns and pine-nuts. They are elevated to forestall the depredations of rodents . . . . 70 A Southwestern desert hillside, which, in os of its desolate look, bears plants yielding food, soap, textile fiber and drniing water. The man in the foreground is cutting MeS@Al 2 i Bs ww ww Bo we Ee Se we Se 190 Gathering tunas, fruit.of the nopal cactus, California . . 108 California Fan Palm (Washingtonia), which furnishes food, clothing and building materials . . . . . . . 122 Cereus giganteus—Sahuaro—producing a fruit that is used for wine, syrup and butter. . .-. . . . . . 112 Southwestern Indian cutting mescal (Agave deserti) for baking. 3. ae kee ae a DSB Echinocactus, a sis user water barrel of the Southwestern deserts . . . < % a ow & oe ow a we wy 168 A California Soap Root, Chenopodium Californicum . . 158 THE ILLUSTRATIONS IN HALF-TONE FACING PAGE A Pacific soap plant (Chlorogalum pomeridianum). The bulb, stripped of its fibrous covering, is highly sapona- ceous. The fiber is useful for making coarse brushes and mattresses . . .... .... .- 174 Tunas, fruit of a Southwestern cactus. Showing how it is opened to secure the meaty pulp . . . . . . . 174 Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida, L.) The bark is used in making a medicine similar to quinine, and produces also a red dye used by the Indians . . . . .. «. 204 Blood-root (Sanguinaria Canadensis), valuable as the ‘source of abright red dye . . . ... . . . . « 224 Butternut (Juglans cinerea). The bark is the source of a dye used for the uniforms of Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. . . . . . 2... ee 240 Indian woman preparing ee oe ee for basket making. . . . ee . . « . 252 Mesquit Beans, utilized by the Indians for food and beverage 270 Wild Date (Yucca glauca) . The root furnishes a satisfactory substitute for soap . . . . . « « ae ss « 270 THE ILLUSTRATIONS IN LINE Groundnut (Apios tuberosa) . Jerusalem Artichoke (Helianthus dubictass) Indian Breadroot (Psoralea esculenta) . Biseuit-Root (Peucedanum Sp.) Biseuit-Root (Peucedanum ambiguum) Bitter Root (Lewisia rediviva) Wild Leek (Allium tricoceum) Sego Lily (Calochortus Nuitalliz) Wild Onion (Brodiaea capitata) Camas (Camassia esculenta) Chufa (Cyperus esculentus) . Florida Arrowroot (Zamia sp.) Conte (Smilax Pseudo-China) Arrowhead (Sagitturia variabilis) Water Chinquapin (Nelumbo lutea) Jack-in-the-Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) . Chia (Salvia Columbariae) ‘ 5 Wild Rice (Zizania aquatica) Islay (Prunus ilicifolia) . Hog Peanut (Amphicarpaea monoica) Mesquit (Prosopis juliflora) Jojoba (Simmondsia Californica) Buffalo-Berry (Shepherdia argentea) Tomato del Campo (Physalis longifolia) Service-Berry (Amelanchier Canadensis) American Hawthorn (Crataegus mollis) Manzanita (Arctostaphylos Manzanita) Oregon Grape (Berberis aquifolium) May Apple (Podophyllum peltatum) Salal (Gaultheria Shallon) ; Bracken Shoots (Péeris aquilina) THE ILLUSTRATIONS IN LINE } Chicory (Cichorium Intybus) . Milkweed (Asclepias Syriaca) Wild Rhubarb (Rumex hymenosepalus) Winter Cress (Barbarea vulgaris) Miner’s Lettuce (Montia perfoliata) New Jersey Tea (Ceanothus Americanus) Spicewood (Lindera Benzoin) . . Yerba Buena (Micromeria Douglasi) Sumae (Rhus glabra) Lemonade-Berry (Rhus integrifolia) Cassena (Ilex vomitoria) California Soap-Plant (Chieragatim: pomeridianum) . Soap-Berry (Sapindus marginatus) Missouri Gourd (Cucurbita foetidissima) Bouncing Bet (Saponaria officinalis) Wild Senna (Cassia Marylandica) Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) . Wild Cherry (Prunus serotina) . Dittany (Cunila Mariana) . Cascara Sagrada (Rhamnus Caltifornica) Yerba Santa (Eriodictyon glutinosum) Yerba Mansa (Anemopsis Californica) Creosote-Bush (Larrea Mexicana) Canchalagua (Erythraea venusta) Indian Hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) Puccoon (Lithospernum canescens) Kinnikinnik (Cornus sericea) . Sweet Colt’s-Foot (Petasites ‘salmrata Candleberry (Myrica Carolinensis) Death Cup (Amanita phalloides) Water Hemlock (Cicuta maculata) Poison Hemlock (Conium maculatum) . Moonseed (Menispermum Canadense) Loco-Weed (Astragalus mollissimus) Jimson-Weed (Datura Stramonium) Mescal-Button (Lophophora Williamsit) Swamp Sumac (Rhus venenata). . . Poison Ivy (Rhus Taxicodendron) . . . . 130 . 148 . 146 . 151 . 153 . 155 . 163 171,172 . 178 . 180 . 182 187, 188 . 190 . 191 . 193 . 196 . 199 . 201 . 203 . 208 212, 213 . 224 . 226 . 233 . 235 . 237 . 238 . 241 . 243 . 246 . 248 . 253 . 255 + 256 USEFUL WILD PLANTS CHAPTER I WILD PLANTS WITH EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS Your greatest want is you want much of meat. Why should you want? Behold the earth hath roots. Timon of Athens. HE plant life of the New World was always a subject of keen interest to the early explorers, whose narratives not only abound in quaint allu- sions to the new and curious products of Flora that came under their notice, but also record for many of our familiar plants uses that are a surprise to most modern readers. In that famous compilation of travelers’ tales, published in England some three centuries ago under the title of ‘‘Purchas: His Pil- grimage,’’ it is asserted of the tubers of a certain plant observed in New England that ‘‘boiled or sodden they are very good meate’’; and elsewhere in Master Purchas’s volumes there is note of the abun- 1 USEFUL WILD PLANTS dance of the same tubers, which were sometimes as many as ‘‘forty together on a string, some of them as big as hen’s eggs.’’ GRouUNDNUT (Apios tuberosa) This plant is readily identifiable as the Groundnut —Apios tuberosa, Moench., of the botanists—of fre- quent occurrence in marshy grounds and moist 2 EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS thickets throughout a large part of the United States and Canada from Ontario to Florida and westward to the Missouri River basin. It is a climbing peren- nial vine with milky juice and leaves composed of usually 5 to 7 leaflets. To the midsummer rambler it betrays its presence by the violet-like fragrance exhaled by bunchy racemes of odd, brownish-purple flowers of the type of the pea. Neither history nor tradition tells us what lucky Indian first chanced upon the pretty vine’s prime secret, that store of roundish tubers borne upon underground stems, which made it so valuable to the red men that they eventually took to cultivating it about some of their villages. Do not let the name Groundnut cause you to confuse this plant with the one that yields the familiar peanut of city street stands, which is quite a different thing. The Groundnut is really no nut at all but a starchy tuber, which, when cooked, tastes somewhat like a white potato. Indeed, Dr. Asa Gray expressed the belief that had civilization started in the New World instead of the Old, this would have been the first esculent tuber to be de- veloped and would have maintained its place in the same class with the potato. Narratives of white travelers in our American wilderness bear abundant evidence to the Ground- 3 USEFUL WILD PLANTS nut’s part in saving them from serious hunger. Being a vegetable, it made a grateful complement to the enforced meat diet of pioneers and explorers; and Major Long, whose share in making known the Rocky Mountain region to the world is commemo- rated in the name of one of our country’s loftiest peaks, tells in his journal of his soldiers’ finding the little tubers in quantities of a peck or more hoarded up in the brumal retreats of the field mice against the lean days of winter. They may be 5 cooked either by boiling or by roasting. Though the Groundnut has so far failed of se- curing a footing in the gardens of civilization, there is another tuber-bearing plant growing wild in the United States that has a recognized status in the world’s common stock of vegetables. This is a species of Sunflower (Helianthus tuberosus, L.), the so-called Jerusalem Artichoke. It is indigenous in moist, alluvial ground from middle and eastern Canada southward to Georgia and west to the Mis- sissippi Valley, attaining a height at‘times of 10 feet or more. The French explorers in the St. Lawrence region in the early seventeenth century saw the tubers in use by the Indians and found them so palatable when cooked, suggesting arti- chokes, that they sent specimens back to France. 4 i \ JERUSALEM “ARTICHOKE (Helianthus tuberosus) 5 USEFUL WILD PLANTS There they caught the popular taste and under the name of pommes de Canada, batatas de Canada or Canadiennes, their cultivation spread. In Italy they were grown in the famous Farnese gardens and called girasole articiocco, that is, Sunflower arti- choke. A perverted pronunciation of the Italian by the English (who became interested in the plant and were growing it extensively as early as 1621) ac- counts for the otherwise unaccountable association of Jerusalem with it. The tubers (borne at the tip of horizontal rootstocks) are in the wild plant but an inch or two in diameter, but in cultivation they may be much larger, as well as better flavored. They reach their maximum development in the au- tumn, when they may be taken up and stored in pits for winter use; or, since frost does not injure them, they may be left in the ground all winter, and dug in the spring. In spite of the Jerusalem Arti- choke’s popularity as a vegetable abroad, Americans have so far been indifferent to it, except as feed for cattle and hogs—another instance of the prophet’s lack of honor in his own country. 1There are about 40 species of wild sunflowers growing within the borders of the United States, and it is not always easy to identify some given species. The Artichoke Sunflower is a perennial with hairy, branching stems 6 to 12 feet tall, and rough, ovate leaves, taper pointed, toothed at the edges, 4 to 8 inches long and 11% to 3 inches wide, narrowing at the base to a rather long footstalk. 6 EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS Upon dry, elevated plains in and contiguous to the Missouri River basin ranging from Saskatchewan through Montana and the Dakotas southward to Texas, you may find, where the plough has not ex- terminated it, another famous wild food plant—the Indian Bread-root of the American pioneers, known to them also as Prairie Turnip and Prairie Potato, and to the French Canadians as pomme de prairie and pomme blanche. Botanically it is Psoralea escu- lenta, Pursh, and its smaller cousin P. hypogaea, Nutt. Itis a rather low, rough-hairy herb, resinous- dotted, with long-stalked leaves divided into five fingers, and bearing dense spikes of small bluish flowers like pea blossoms in shape. The tuberous root, a couple of inches in length, resembles a minia- ture sweet potato. Its nutritious properties were well known to Indians and such whites of other days as had any respect for the aboriginal dietary; and Indian women found a regular sale for it among the caravans of white traders, trappers and emigrants that traveled the far western plains in pre-railroad Flowers yellow, both disk and rays, the latter numbering 12 to 20, and 1 to 1% inches long. There is another species, H. giganteus, L., one form of which growing in moist ground in western Canada has thickened, tuber-like roots which are similarly edible. These are the “Indian potato” of the Assiniboine Indians. Mr. W. N. Clute, in “The American Botanist,” February, 1918, noted that the prairie species, Helianthus laetiflorus, Pers., also bears tubers, which are little inferior to those of H. twberosus. 7 USEFUL WILD PLANTS times. The fresh tubers, dug in late summer, may be eaten raw with a dressing of oil, vinegar and INDIAN BREAD-ROOT (Psoralea esculenta) salt, or they may be boiled or roasted. The Indians (who were habitual preservers of vegetable foods 8 EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS for winter use) were accustomed to save a portion of the Bread-root harvest, first slicing the tubers and then drying them in the sun or over a slow: fire. The dried article was ground between stones and added to stews or soups, or mixed with water and baked in the form of cakes. The heart of the tuber is white and granular, and, according to an analysis quoted by Dr. Havard,? contains 70% starch, 9% nitrogenous matter and 5% sugar. Some attempts have been made to introduce it into culti- vation as a rival of the potato, but the latter is so well entrenched in the popular regard that nothing has come of the effort. As a resource for those who are cut off from a potato supply, however, this free offering of Nature should be better known. John Colter, one of Lewis and Clarke’s men, escap- ing from some Blackfeet who were intent upon killing him, lived for a week entirely upon these Bread-root tubers, which he gathered as he made his painful way, afoot, wounded, and absolutely naked, back to the settlements of the whites. There are, by the way, two wild species of true potatoes indigenous to the mountains of New Mexico and Arizona—Solanum tuberosum boreale, Gray, and 2“Food Plants of the North American Indians,” Bulletin Torrey Botanical Club, Vol. 22, No. 3. 9 USEFUL WILD PLANTS 8. Jamesii, Torr. The tubers are about the size of grapes, are quite edible when cooked and long ago attracted the attention of the Navajo and other Indians, who use them. And curiously in contrast to this the sweet potato of cultivation has a wild cousin in the United States (Ipomoea pandurata, Meyer) with a huge, tuberous root weighing some- times 20 pounds, popularly called ‘‘man-of-the- earth.’’ It is found in dry ground throughout the eastern United States, a trailing or slightly climbing vine with flowers like a morning glory. So obvious a root could hardly have escaped the Indian quest for vegetables, and as a matter of fact it was eaten to some extent after long roasting. There is a plant family—the Umbelliferae—that has given to our gardens carrots, parsnips, celery and parsley. It includes also a number of wild members with food value, occurring principally in the Rocky Mountain region westward to the Pacific. Among these the genus Peucedanum, represented in western North America by over 50 species, is note- worthy because of the edible tuberous roots of several species. Of these the following may be noted, adopting Dr. Havard’s enumeration in his paper above quoted: P. Canbyi, C. and R. (the chuklusa of the Spokane Indians); P. ewrycarpum, 10 EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS C. and R. (the skelaps of the Spokanes) ; P. Geyeri, Wats.; P. ambiguum, T. and G., P. cous, Wats. (the cow-as of the In- dians). The tubers may be consumed raw and in that state have a celery : flavor. The most usual method of use among the Indians, however, was to remove the rind, dry the inside portion, and pul- verise it. The flour 5 S would then be mixed with water, flattened into , cakes and dried in the sun or baked. These y cakes, according to /¥7{ AL Kw Palmer,’ were custom- /; f i arily about half an inch thick but a yard long by a foot wide, with a hole Brscurr-Roor in the middle, by which (pace ae they could be tied to the saddle of the traveler. The taste of such cakes is rather like stale biscuits. On 3Edward Palmer, “Food Products of the North American Indians,” Ann. Rept. U. S. Dept. Agriculture, 1870, i Biscuit-Roor (Peucedanum ambiguum) 12 EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS this account, the Peucadanums were commonly termed Biscuit-root by the white Americans. The Canadian French call them racine blanche. The genus is marked by leaves pinnate in some species, finely dissected in others, sometimes stemless and never tall, and with small white or yellow flowers disposed in umbels like those of the carrot or parsley. Novices, however, should be warned that the Um- belliferae include several poisonous species, and the investigator should be well assured of the identity of his plant before experimenting with it. Then there is Yamp, of this same family, and cousin to the caraway. It is the botanists’ Carum Gairdneri, B. and H.—a slender, smooth herb, some- times four feet high, with scanty pinnate leaves 3- to 7-parted and white flowers like the carrot’s, growing usually on dry hillsides in mountainous country from British Columbia to Southern California and eastward to the Rockies. The clustered, spindle- shaped roots are about half an inch thick, and raw have an agreeable, nutty taste, with a considerable sugar content. Not only Indians but white settlers also have proved the nutritive value of this root, eating it either raw or cooked. In meadows and along stream borders in Central California a nearly related species (Carum Kelloggu, Gray) frequently 13 USEFUL WILD PLANTS occurs and goes among the whites by the name of Wild Anise.* Its roots bear in greater or less abundance flattish tubers, which are serviceable in the same way as Yamp. A more famous root of the Pacific Slope than Yamp is the Bitterroot (Lewisia rediviva, Pursh), the racine amére of the French explorers, and found from Arizona north to Montana (where it has given name to the Bitterroot Mountains and Bitterroot River) and west to the Pacific. It is a member of the Portulaca family, with showy, many-petaled white or pink blossoms sometimes two inches across and opening in the sunshine close to the ground, in form like a spoked wheel. Montana has adopted it as her State flower. It is one of the marvels in the history of alimentation that the unappetizing roots of this plant, intensely bitter when raw and smelling like tobacco when boiling, should have secured a stable place in any human bill of fare. Neverthe- less, by the Indians of the far Northwest it has been extensively consumed from time immemorial, and explorers’ journals contain many references to ab- 4Not to be confused with the mis-called Sweet Anise, which is really Fennel, the introduced Foeniculum vulgare. The latter is abundantly clothed with large, finely dissected leaves of a pronounced licorice flavor and has yellow flowers; while the Carum bears white flowers and its leaves are sparse and pinnate with simple seg- ments, 14 BITTERROOT (Lewisia rediviva) 15 USEFUL WILD PLANTS original ‘‘spreads’’ put before them in which spat- lum, as the Oregon Indians called it, had a prominent place. Boiling has the effect of dissipating the bitterness; and the white heart of the root, which is starchy and mucilaginous, is certainly nutritious, though ideas as to its palatability differ. The In- dian practice is to dig the roots in the spring, at which time the brownish bark slips off more easily than after the plant has flowered; and as the bitter principle is mainly resident in the bark, it is desir- able to reject this before cooking. A noteworthy character of the root is its tenacity of life. Speci- mens that have been dipped in boiling water, dried and laid away in an herbarium for over a year, have been known to revive on being put in the ground again, to grow and to produce flowers. An Eastern cousin of the Bitterroot is the charming woodland flower of early spring called Spring Beauty (Claytonia Virginica, L.). It rises from a small, deep-seated, round tuber of starchy composi- tion and nutty flavor, which might serve at a pinch to stave off starvation, and has indeed so served the aborigines. 16 CHAPTER II WILD PLANTS WITH EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS (Continued) T is a character of the Lily family that the plants are usually produced from subterranean bulbs or corms, and many such growing wild in the United States are of proved nutritiousness and palatability. Among these, for instance, are species of Allium, wild onion or leek, one of which particularly (A. tricoccum, Ait.) is recommended by those who have tried it for the sweetness and flavor of its young bulbs. It inhabits rich woodlands of the eastern Atlantic States north of South Carolina, its umbel of white flowers borne on naked stalks, appearing in June or July after its rather broad, odorous leaves have withered away. It is the Pacific Coast, how- ever, that has a special fame for edible wild bulbs, many of which are known to the world at large only for the beauty of their flowers. There the Indians have, from before history began, been consuming such bulbs either raw or cooked. To some extent, 17 Witp Leek (Allium tricocewm) 18 (R01 eBed 99g) ‘suor1as y49s ap ay} yo syueld pooy yuezsodurt ay} yo uo ‘(puny vYyUNgQ) IeIg Alou g ER i PER Pe wee r ee iS EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS also, they have been drawn upon for food by white travelers and settlers—the most palatable species being of the genera Calochortus, Brodiaea and Camassia, and com- monly called ‘‘In- dian potatoes.’’ The genus Calochortus furnishes the flower gardens of both hemi- spheres with the charming Mariposa Tulips, and few who enjoy their beauty re- alize the gastronomic possibilities of the homely, farinaceous corms out of which the lovely blossoms spring. The species most widely known as a food source is Calo- chortus Nuttallu, T. and G., the Sego Lily, which has the distinction of being Utah’s State flower. It may be recognized by its showy, tulip-shaped blossoms, whitish or lilac with a purple spot above the yellow heart of the 19 Seco Lity (Calochortus Nuttallit) USEFUL WILD PLANTS flower, the leaves few and grass-like. It is in- digenous to an extensive territory ranging from Dakota to Mexico and westward to the Pacific Coast. It was, I believe, a common article of diet among the first Mormons in Utah, under the name ‘‘Wild Sago,’’ through a misunderstanding, perhaps, of the word ‘‘Sego,’’ which is the Ute Indian term for this plant. A California species (C. venustus, Benth.) with white or lilac flowers variously tinged or blotched with red, yellow or brown, is also highly esteemed for its sweet corms. The cooking may be done by the simple process known to campers of roasting in hot ashes, or by steaming in pits, a method tHat will be described later. on. Brodiaea is a genus comprising numerous species, of which the so-called California Hyacinth, Grass- nut or Wild Onion (B. capitata, Benth.), common throughout the State, is perhaps the best known. Its clustered, pale blue flowers bunched at the tip of a slender stem are a familiar sight in grassy places in spring. The bulbs are about the size of marbles and noticeably mucilaginous. Haten raw they seem rather flat at first, but the taste grows on one very quickly. They are also very good if boiled slowly for a half hour or so. The Harvest Brodiaea (B. 20 EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS grandiflora, Smith), with elusters of blue, funnel- shaped flowers like familiar species common in fields and grassy glades from Central Cali- fornia northward to Washington. Its bulbs are best cook- ed, as by slow roast- ing in hot ashes, which develops the sweetness. But the liliaceous bulb that has enter- ed to the most im- portant extent in- to the menus both ff of aborigines and white pioneers is the Camas or Qua- mash—‘‘the queen root of this clime,’’ as Father De Smet little blue lilies, is another Wrp ONIon (Brodiaea capitata) puts it in his ‘‘Oregon Missions.”’ It is a hand- some plant when in flower, which is in early 21 USEFUL WILD PLANTS summer. The 6-parted, usually blue blossoms, an inch or more across, occur in ample racemes at the top of stalks a foot or two high; the leaves all radical and grass-like. The bulb somewhat resembles a small onion, but is almost tasteless in the raw state. The range of the plant is from Idaho and Utah west- ward to central California, Oregon and Washington; and when undisturbed it grows so abundantly in open meadows and swampy lands as to convert them at a distance into the appearance of blue lakes ef water. John K. Townsend, a Philadelphian who published an interesting narrative of a journey to the Rocky Mountains in 1839, has left us a pleasant, old-fash- ioned picture of a Camas feast in central Idaho. ‘‘In the afternoon,’’? he writes, ‘‘we arrived at Kamas Prairie, so called from a vast abundance of this succulent root which it produces. The plain is a beautiful level one of about a mile over, hemmed in by low, rocky hills, and in spring the pretty blue flowers of the Kamas are said to give it a peculiar and very pleasing appearance. ... We encamped here near a small branch of the Mallade River; and soon after all hands took their kettles and scattered over the prairie to dig a mess of Kamas. We were of course eminently successful, and were furnished with an excellent and wholesome meal. When boiled, 22 EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS this little root is palatable and somewhat resembles the taste of the common potato. The Indian method of preparing it, however, is the best.’’ This method, which embodies really the principle of our present day fireless cooker and has been em- ployed by the aborigines from time immemorial for cooking numberless things, is briefly this: A hole of perhaps three feet in diameter and a foot or so in depth is dug in the ground and lined, bottom and sides, with flat stones. A fire of brushwood is then maintained in the hole until the stones are thoroughly heated through, when the embers are re- moved and fresh grass or green leaves (or, failing these, dampened dried grass) are spread upon the hot rocks and ashes. Upon this the bulbs are laid, covered with another layer of verdure or wet hay; | and the whole is then topped with a mound of earth. In this air-tight oven the bulbs are left to steam for a day and a night, or even longer. The pit is then opened and the Camas will be found to be soft, dark brown in color, and sweet—almost chestnutty— in taste. The cooked mass, if pressed into cakes and then dried in the sun, may be preserved for future use. There are several species of Camas, but the one best known is the botanist’s Camassia esculenta, 23 CaMas (Camassia esculenta) 24 EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS Lindl., the plant of the preceding paragraphs. A closely allied species is Camassia Leichtlinii (Baker) Cov., common in northern California and Oregon. White settlers, in the days before their orchards and gardens were established, found in Camas a wel- come addition to their meager and monotonous bill of fare, and Camas pie was a not uncommon dish in many an old time Oregon or California household. Related to the Lily tribe is the Sedge family, of which two or three species are utilizable for human food. One of these is a bulrush of wide occurrence in the United States (Scirpus lacustris, L.), the Far Western form of which is commonly known as Tule. Its tuberous roots are starchy and may be ground, after drying, into a white, nutritious flour. They may also be chewed to advantage by travelers in arid regions as a preventive of thirst. Of more worth, however, are two species of Cyperus—C. rotundus, L., and C. esculentus, L. The former, commonly known as Nut-grass, is a denizen of fields in the Southern Atlantic States; tthe latter, popu- larly called Chufa, is abundant in moist fields on both our seaboards. Both, also, are widely dis- tributed in the Old World. Like all of their genus, they are distinguished by triangular stems, naked ex- cept for a few grass-like leaves at the base, and bear- 29 EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS ing at the summit of the stem an umbel of incon- spicuous, purplish-green florets. The dietetic in- terest in them centers in the rootstocks, which bear small tubers of a pleasant, nutty flavor, and both white men and Indians have approved them, as well as the white men’s pigs. The Chufa’s hard tubers, especially, are sweet and tasty, and in some parts of the South have been considered worthy of cultiva- tion, though by reason of rapid increase and difficulty to eradicate, the plant has a tendency to become a bad weed. We get the name Chufa from Spain, where the tubers are used in emulsion as a refresh- ment in the same class with ‘‘almonds in the milk, pasties, strawberries, azaroles, sugar icing and sherbets,’’ according to some lines of a Spanish poem T ran across the other day.? Of quite restricted occurrence in the United States, but worthy of mention because of its importance, is a member of a peculiar natural order of plants called Cycads. They resemble the palms in some respects and in others the ferns, their leaves, for instance, having a fashion of unrolling from base to apex in the manner of fern croziers. Many species inhabit tropical America, and two reach the southern 1“Almendrucos y pasteles, Chufas, fresas y acerolas, Garapifias y sorbetes.” 27 USEFUL WILD PLANTS tip of our country, being indigenous to the Florida peninsula. One, known to botanists as Zamia pumila, L., occurs in dense, damp woods of central S\\\ =a, =X / F SOOVTEWM |, f Ki pulls le ar SO We WPF iK( yy Ss K a EAN \ FLoRIDA ARROWROOT (Zamia sp.) Florida: the other, Z. Floridana, DC., is a wilding of the open, dry, pine region of the east coast of southern Florida. They are popularly called Coon- tie or Coontah, the Indian name. The stiff, fern- 28 EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS like foliage arises in a clump from the crown (at the ground level) of a thick, subterranean stem which is exceedingly rich in starch. A nutritious flour made from the stem- and root-content of Zamia has had some vogue in the shops under the name of Florida Arrowroot. It has long been a staple article of diet with the Seminole Indians, and the plant has even found its way into the literature of juvenile adventure, as readers of boy romances may recall. Similar in name to Coontie—indeed, probably the same name applied to a different food—is Conte or Contee, mentioned by William Bartram? as served to him by the Seminoles, and prepared from the starchy, tuberous roots of the China-brier (Smilax Pseudo-China, L.). This dish was made by chopping up the root, pounding the pieces thoroughly in a mortar, then mixing with water and straining through a sort of basket filter. The sediment was dried and appeared as a fine, reddish meal. A small quantity of this mixed with warm water and honey, says Bartram, ‘‘when cool, becomes a beautiful, delicious jelly, very nourishing and wholesome. They also mix it with fine corn flour, which, being fried in fresh bear’s grease, makes very good hot 2“Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, etc.,” 1773, Chap. VII. 29 (Smilax Pseudo-China) 30 EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS cakes or fritters.’’ So, you see, the wilderness as well as the town had its gastronomic delicacies, and dallied with dyspepsia. The China-brier, sometimes . called Bull-brier, is a perennial woody vine of dry thickets from Maryland to the Gulf of Mexico, adorned in autumn with showy umbels of black ber- ries not known to be edible. The whites have used the knotty, tuberous roots as the basis of a home- made rootbeer in association with molasses and parched corn. Our waters, too, yield some native roots of economic worth. Among these aquatic wildings per- haps the commonest is the Arrowhead (Sagittaria variabilis, Eng.), so called from the shape of its leaves. It is found in swamps, ditches, ponds and shallow waters very generally throughout North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Canada to Mexico, flowering in summer with 3- petaled white blossoms arranged in verticels of three. All Indians, whether of the. Atlantic Slope, the Middle West or the Pacific Coast, have set great store by the plant because of its starchy, white tubers, somewhat resembling small potatoes, de- veloped in autumn at the ends of the rootstocks. It is nearly related to a cultivated vegetable of the Chinese—Sagittaria Sinensis, a native of Asia. 31 (Sagittaria variabilis) 32 EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS Lewis and Clarke, in their narrative, speak of an island in the Columbia River, which they call Wap- patoo Island, because of the numerous ponds in its interior abounding in the Arrowhead plant, which in the Indian language is termed Wappatoo. Those doughty explorers have given a picturesque descrip- tion of the aboriginal Arrowhead business in the Columbia River country of Oregon as it was a century ago. ‘‘The bulb,’’ to quote from their Nar- rative, ‘‘is a great article of food and almost the staple of commerce on the Columbia. . . . It is col- lected by the women, who employ for the purpose canoes .. . sufficient to contain a single person and several bushels of roots, yet so very light a woman can carry them with ease. She takes one of these canoes into a pond where the water is as high as the breast, and by means of her toes separates from the root the bulb which on being freed from the mud rises immediately to the surface of the water and is thrown into the canoe.’’ Roasted or boiled, the tubers become soft, palatable and digestible, and to travelers in the wild make a fairly good substitute for bread. Also as bread upon the waters is that majestic aquatic, native to quiet streams and ponds of the in- terior United States from the Great Lakes to the 33 USEFUL WILD PLANTS Gulf, the American Lotus or Water Chinquapin (Velumbo lutea, Pers.). It is easily recognized by its huge, round leaves (sometimes two feet across and a favorite sunning place, by the way, for water snakes) lifted high above the water on foot- Water CHINQUAPIN (Nelumbo lutea) stalks attached to the center of the concave leaf, and its showy, pale yellow, papery flowers of numerous petals curving upward to be succeeded by curious, flat-topped, pitted seed-vessels. It is an American cousin of the famous lotus of India and oriental ro- mance. To the American Indian, however, it seems 34 EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS never to have appealed as a flower of contemplation, but quite prosaically as an addition—and an im- portant one—to his dinner table. In this réle he found it trebly useful: first, because of the young leaves and footstalks which may be turned to ac- count in the same way as spinach; secondly, because of the ripened seeds which, roasted or boiled, are palatable and nutritious with a taste that has given rise to the popular name Water Chinquapin; and thirdly, because of the large tubers, weighing some- times half a pound each, which, when baked, are sweet and mealy with a flavor somewhat like a sweet potato. This is the plant whose flower is rather exuberantly referred to by Longfellow in ‘‘Evan- geline’’: “Resplendent in beauty, the lotus Lifted her golden crown above the heads of the boatmen.” Though the customary habitat of this Nelumbo is the Mississippi basin, some isolated stations for it are known near the north Atlantic coast, notably in the Connecticut and Delaware Valleys, suggesting the view that it may have been introduced into such localities and cultivated by the Indian inhabitants. However the fact may be, its value as a food source is such as would have warranted such introduction. 35 USEFUL WILD PLANTS The aroids—a plant family abundant in the tropics and of which several species, as the taro of the Pacific, possess nutritious, starchy, tuberous roots of importance as human foods—are represented in the United States by two or three plants of proved value. One of these is the Golden Club (Orontium aquaticum, L.), whose flower spikes of a rich, bright yellow, lifted above velvety, green, strap-like leaves from which water rolls as from a duck’s back, are a familiar sight in the spring in ponds and marshes along the Atlantic coast. The bulbous rootstock, when cooked, is possessed of considerable nutriment, but owing to its deep seat in the muck is difficult of extraction. The ripened seeds, which resemble peas, are more easily gathered, and both whites and Indians have included them in their diet. Accord- ing to Peter Kalm, an observant and inquisitive Swede whose book of travels in the North American Colonies in 1748 is still an interesting narrative to any who enjoy a look into the vanished past, the dried seeds, not the fresh, should be used, and they must be boiled and re-boiled repeatedly before they are fit to eat; yet his Swedish acquaintances thought it worth their while to do so. Of even greater interest is another aroid, the Arrow Arum or Virginia Tuckaho (Peltandra Vir- 36 EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS ginica, [L] Kunth, and perhaps the nearly related species P. alba, Raf., of the Southern States, a plant with large, arrow-shaped leaves and inconspicuous flowers enveloped in a green spathe. Peltandra Vir- gimica is common in shallow waters of the Atlantic seaboard from Canada to Florida. I have never dug up the rootstock, about which I find the recorded descriptions differ. Havard, in his ‘‘Food Plants of the North American Indians,’’ describes it, doubt- less rightly, as short, deep-seated, sometimes six inches in diameter and weighing five or six pounds. As in the case of all aroids, the raw flesh of the root- stock is exceedingly acrid, indeed poisonous; but when dried and thoroughly cooked, it is found to have lost this objectionable principle, and in this state is a starchy food of proved nutrition. I think it is this plant that is meant in Purchas’s Pilgrimage, where in the delicious English of the day record is made of the Virginians’ ‘‘Tockawhough . . . of the greatness and taste of a potato, which passeth a fiery purgation before they may eate it, being poison whiles it is raw.’’ The approved treatment appears to have been to steam it in the aboriginal heated pit, covered over with earth and left undisturbed for a day or two. Similarly the familiar Jack-in-the-Pul- pit (Arisaema triphyllum, Torr.), whose small, 37 USEFUL WILD PLANTS turnip-shaped corm, bitten into raw, stings the tongue like red hot needles; becomes thoroughly tamed when dried and cooked, and its starchy con- POO lie t JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT f (Arisaema triphyllum) tent was once a source of bread to the Seneca In- dians. The name Tuckaho has also been applied to a sub- 38 EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS terranean fungus (Pachyma Cocos, Fries), often found attached to old tree roots in the Southern States. It resembles roughly a cocoanut, though sometimes of more irregular shape. Inside the brown rind is a firm, white meat, which would be quite insipid, except for a trace of sweetness that is present. Its most common name is Indian Bread, because of the Indian use of it as a food. It is de- void of starch and seems of questionable nutritive value. Another subterranean parasite, though not a fungus, that is of genuine worth as an edible, is the curious Sand Food (Ammobroma Sonorae, Torr.), abundant in sandhills of southern Arizona and across the Mexican line in the dunes bordering on the Gulf of California, where it is called camote de los médanos. It consists underground of a slender, fleshy, leafless but scaly stem, two to three feet long, while above the sand during the flowering season in the spring is a small, funnel-like top on which the tiny, purple blossoms appear. After flowering, the overground part withers and disappears, and the plant presents no sign of its existence except to the experts who know where to dig. The subterranean stem is tender, juicy and sweet—a refreshing and luscious morsel, meat and drink in one. It may be eaten either raw or roasted, and is relished by red- 39 USEFUL WILD PLANTS men and white alike. Mr. Carl Lumholtz in his in- teresting book ‘‘New Trails in Mexico’’ tells of an Indian who lived almost entirely on Ammobroma, being able to find it out of season—a remarkable testimony to the nutritiousness of the plant and the abstemiousness of the Indian! The creeping rootstocks of the common Cat-tail (Typha latifolia, L.) which covers great areas of our swamp lands throughout the United States, hold a nutritious secret, too, for they contain a core of al- most solid starch. They were dug and dried in for- mer times by Indians, who ground them into a meal. A recent analysis of such meal by one of the Gov- ernment chemists showed it to contain about the same amount of protein as is in rice- and corn- flours, but less fat. It may make a useful mixture with the ordinary flours, and be substituted for corn- starch in puddings, as it seems entirely palatable. 40 CHAPTER III WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE, AND HOW THEY HAVE BEEN UTILIZED The bounteous housewife, nature, on each bush Lays her full mess before you. Shakespeare. HE Spanish conquest of Mexico and Peru brought to the knowledge of the white race a number of vegetable foods that are to-day on every American table—such as Indian corn, the potato, the pepper, and certain varieties of beans. Others are still unknown to the world at large. Among the latter that Cortés found in every-day use in Mexico was a square-stemmed, blue-flowered herb, which the chroniclers of that time called Chian or Chia. It seems to have ranked in popularity with staples like maize, frijoles, maguey, cacao and chili; and was grown with these in the fields and floating gardens of the Aztecs, for the sake of the small but numerous nutritious seeds of a pleasant, nutty flavor. Writers on the products of the New World 41 USEFUL WILD PLANTS in the first couple of centuries of the Spanish domina- tion always speak of Chia with respect. Later, when upper California came in for settlement, the diarist of Portola’s expedition to the Bay of San Francisco specifies it as among the gifts offered by the Indians to their white visitors; and archeologists, grubbing in prehistoric graves in Southern California, have turned up deposits of the seed left as viaticum of departed souls, which attest the antiquity of its use within the limits of the United States. Even to-day, shopkeepers in the Spanish quarters of our own Southwestern cities as well as street venders in the towns of Mexico include Chia as part of their stock in trade. One wonders what this all but forgotten food can be. It is the name applied to at least five or six dis- tinct species of plants, of somewhat different aspects, most of them belonging to the genus Salvia. The seeds are flattish and more or less shining, suggest- ing small flaxseed, of whose character they some- what partake, being oily and mucilaginous. For human consumption they should be parched and ground, when they may advantageously be added to corn-meal, and this mixture made with water into a mush was a favorite item in the old Mexican 42 WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE dietary. Some of the present-day Indians of Southern California mix Chia meal with ground wheat, imparting to the latter a delicate, nut-like flavor, though the mucilaginous character of Chia disposes the mixture to gumminess. Pure Chia meal, mixed with water, cold or hot, swells to several times the original bulk, and is best eaten as a semi- fluid gruel. Old time travelers in our desert regions used to provide themselves with this meal, which constituted an easily portable and highly nutritious ration eaten dry with the addition of a little sugar. The species indigenous to the United States are Salvia Columbariae, Benth., and S. carduacea, Benth. Both are winter annuals native to the Pacific side of the continent. The former is the more common, found in dry ground throughout Southern Cali- fornia and adjacent parts of Nevada, Arizona and Mexico. The small, blue flowers, crowded in dense, prickly, globular heads, interrupted upon the stalk (which passes through the midst like a skewer), ap- pear from March to June, and the seeds are ripe a month or so later. They are easily gathered by bending the stalks over a bowl or finely woven basket, and beating the heads with a paddle or fan, which shatters out the seeds. That is the Indian method; but when the plants grow plentifully, as 43 Cara (Salvia Columbariae) 44 , WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE they sometimes do as thick as grass in a field, or as they may be made to do by sowing the seed in cul- tivated ground, they can be cut, threshed and win- nowed like flax or wheat. A wild food plant that has had a remarkable: in- fluence in geographic nomenclature is the Wild Rice (Zizania aquatica, L.). It is the folle avoine of the French voyageurs, and the mendmin of the North- west Indians, to one tribe of whom—the Menominees —it gave a name. Mr. Albert E. Jenks, whose exhaustive monograph, ‘‘The Wild Rice Gatherers of the Upper Lakes,’ is a mine of information about the plant, instances over 160 places (counties, townships, towns, railway stations, rivers, creeks, lakes and ponds) which have borne a name synony- mous with this same Wild Rice. It is of the same family as the rice of commerce, and is a species of annual grass found growing by the acre, even the hundreds of acres, in ponds, swamps and still water- ways, both fresh and brackish, in virtually every State of the Union east of the Rocky Mountains, and also in Japan and China. It is exceptionally abundant in the regions bordering on the Great 1 An important use of Chia is as the basis of a soft drink. See the chapter on Beverage Plants. 2 Printed in the 19th Ann. Report, Bur. Amer. Ethnology. 45 USEFUL WILD PLANTS Witp Rice (Zizania aquatica) Hi Lakes both in American and Canadian territory—a beautiful, stately grass, rising from two to twelve feet above the water and bearing in summer ample panicles of delicate, yellowish-green blossoms of two 46 An Indian of the Great Lakes Region threshing wild rice by means of a dasher-like stick. (Courtesy of the Bureau of American Ethnology.) \ WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE sexes. These are succeeded in September by the purplish spikes of ripened seeds occupying the tip of the panicle. The seeds are slender and cylindri- cal, one-half to three-fourths of an inch long, within a long-bearded husk and attached so loosely to the branchlet that bears them that they drop at a touch. They must needs be gathered, therefore, with great care or many may be lost. The Indians customarily harvest them just before they attain complete ripe- ness, visiting the rice swamps with canoes, which they push ahead of them, pulling the fruiting stalks over the hold of the canoe and beating the seeds into it with a stick. The grain is then taken ashore where it is dried, either in the sun or by artificial heat upon racks under which a slow fire is kept burn- ing. The husk must then be threshed off, which may be done by pounding with a heavy-ended stick in a bucket; and finally the chaff is got rid of by winnowing. ‘The seeds are then ready for use or for storing away. Readers of old journals of the so- journers in the Northwestern wilderness will recall the important réle played by such stores of Wild 3 The best results are attained by first tying the standing stalks together at the head into small bunchés. This is done a couple of weeks before maturity and serves to conserve the grain and lessen the depredations of the birds—particularly the bobolinks— which are famous rice eaters. 47 USEFUL WILD PLANTS Rice (or Wild Oats, as the seed was as often but improperly called) in fighting hunger through the long, remorseless, northern winters. The food value of Wild Rice is high. It is rich in carbohydrates (starch and sugar) and is also well stocked with flesh-producing proteids. Indeed, as a nutrient, it seems quite in the class of its cousin, the cultivated rice; and, like the latter, it swells with boiling, so that a little goes along way. The Indians use it generally in mixture with stews. If cooked alone, two parts of water to one of rice is the usual proportion, and from a half to an entire hour is re- quired for boiling it. White people who test Wild Rice usually pronounce it palatable, particularly in the form of a mush served with cream and sugar, and Mr. Jenks reports a wilderness soup made of Wild Rice and blueberries that sounds as if it ought to be good even in New York. Two other water plants should be noted for their valuable edible seeds. One is the Water Chinqua- pin, mentioned in the previous chapter because of its useful roots, but which owes its popular name to the more obvious virtue of its palatable, nutlike seeds. These, boiled or baked, are considered by many the equal of chestnuts. The other is the Great Yellow Pond Lily of the northwestern Pacific Coast 48 WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE (Nuphar polysepalum, Engelm.), whose globose, yellow flowers, sometimes as much as five inches in diameter, are a frequent and charming sight afloat on the bosom of shallow lakes and marshy ponds of the coast region from northern California to British Columbia. The globular seed vessels are full grown in summer, and it is the practice of the Indians to gather them in July and August, and, after drying the pods, to extract the seeds, which may then be kept indefinitely. These are commonly prepared for consumption by tossing them about in a frying pan over a fire until they swell and crack open some- what as popcorn does, which they resemble in taste. They may be eaten thus out of hand, or ground into meal for making bread or mush.* The common Sunflower of our gardens, whose monster heads appeal to esthetes because of a par- ticular style of languid beauty they possess, and to birds and chickens because of their luscious, oleagin- ous seeds, is but a coddled form of one of our com- monest wild plants—the Annual Sunflower (Heli- anthus annuus, L.). This species is indigenous throughout western North America, and sheets summer and autumnal plains for miles with the gen- 4Coville, “Notes on Plants Used by the Klamath Indians of Oregon.” 49 USEFUL WILD PLANTS erous gold of its cheery blossoms. The dark gray or blackish seeds of the wild plant are much smaller than those of the cultivated form, but are exceed: ingly numerous, with a white, oily, floury content that is rich in nutriment. They used to form an im- portant part of the dietary of the Plains Indians, who sometimes cultivated the plants amid their corn. The ripe seeds were parched and ground into meal, and bread made of this meal has been spoken of with approbation by white travelers—even as the equal of corn bread. There can be no doubt of its value in situations where the flours of civilization are difficult to procure. As a source of oil sunflower seed is by no means insignificant, yielding, according to Havard, about twenty per cent. of an excellent table article. To most of us, indeed, the Wild Sun- flower is a plant of unsuspected uses: its stalks possess a fibre of some worth and its flowers are good honey producers as well as a basis of a yellow dye said to be fast.® Tn our Spanish Southwest the term pinole is in use 5 Helianthus annuus is a coarse, much branched plant, three to six feet tall, the rough stem frequently mottled, the root (being annual) easily pulled up. The large flower heads are yellow-rayed with a dark center that is an inch or so across. Leaves petioled, ovate, six inches or more long, with toothed edges, rough to the touch. The seeds of the closely related species, H. petiolaris, Nutt., are similarly useful. 50 WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE to mean meal made from the seeds of wild plants. Of these a great number have been utilized in past times for this purpose by the aborigines, and still are to some extent by old Indians whose taste for the pabulum of the long ago has not been lost. There is, it seems, a certain tang to the native vegetable foods of the wild comparable to the gaminess of wild flesh, that meets a need in untamed man not satis- fied by the suaver products of civilization. The preparation of pinole is in a general way as follows: Provided with a large gathering basket of close weave and a paddle, usually of rough basket-work, the harvester beats the seeds—one sort at a time —into the basket, until a sufficient quantity is ob- tained. The chaff is then separated by sifting or by winnowing in a light breeze, and any prickles or hairiness natural to the seeds are singed off by drop- ping hot pebbles or live coals among them in a shal- low basket and tossing all about at a lively rate. More prosaically, the same end may be attained with a frying pan kept agitated over a flame. This singeing process, moreover, serves to parch or partially cook the seeds, which are then ground in a mortar and the husks winnowed out. The resid- uum of meal, mixed with a little salt, may be eaten dry without further preparation. Indians in old 51 USEFUL WILD PLANTS times frequently made forced marches of a day on no other ration than a small sack of pinole, con- sumed in instalments as they traveled.® More often, however, it is moistened with water and eaten as mush or thinner as a gruel, or baked in the form of cakes. While the different sorts of seeds are col- lected and ground separately, it is not unusual to combine them for consumption, as taste may dictate.” It would be tedious to enumerate all the plants which have been found of sufficient food value to grind into pinole, but the following may be men- tioned as of especial interest and worth: Of wide distribution in our Far West are two annual species of the homely Goosefoot or Pigweed. One is Chenopodium Fremontu, Wats., with more or less mealy leaves of triangular shape, a plant usually a foot or two high but sometimes attaining in over- flowed lands a height of six feet or over; the other is C. leptophyllum, Nutt., with very narrow leaves that are scarcely mealy. The latter species occurs also in seashore sands of the Atlantic coast from Con- necticut to New Jersey. The inconspicuous green 6 For white consumption, the digestibility of this ration is im- proved by thorough and repeated grinding and parching after each operation. 7V. K. Chesnut: “Plants Used by the Indians of Mendocino Co., California.” Printed as Contributions from the U.S, National Herbarium, Vol. VII, No. 3. 52 WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE flowers of both species, clustered in panicled spikes, are succeeded in late summer and autumn by an abundance of small black seeds of farinaceous con- tent. It stimulates our respect for these humble, weedy plants to know that the seeds of an allied species, Chenopodium Quinoa, have from the dawn of history been a valued food of the native Peruvians and Bolivians, and have been cultivated by those races. The Zuni Indians of New Mexico, according to Stevenson, have a tradition that the seeds of C. leptophyllum were one of their principal foodstuffs in the infancy of the race before the gods sent them the corn plant. Afterwards, Chenopodium meal mixed with corn meal and salt, made into a stiff batter and moulded into balls or pats and steamed, became a favorite dish with epicurean Zufiis.2 The seeds of a prostrate, mat-like Amaranth (Amaran- thus blitoides, Wats.), a weedy plant with spikelets of greenish, chaffy flowers, native to the Rocky Mountain region and westward, also formed an im- portant item in the ancient diet of the Zuifis, who believed that the original seeds of it had been brought up from the underworld at the time of the race’s emergence into the light of day. In later years, the 8“Ethnobotany of the Zufi Indians.” 30th Ann. Report Bur. Amer. Ethnology. 53 USEFUL WILD PLANTS meal made from these seeds has been used, like that from Chenopodium, in admixture with corn meal. Similarly useful to desert Indian's are the seeds of species of Saltbush (Atriplex canescens, James, A. lentiformis, Wats., A. Powellii, Wats., A. conferti- folia, Wats., etc.). White Sage (Audibertia polystachya, Benth.), one of the most famous of Pacific Coast honey plants, produces slender, wandlike thyrses of pale blossoms whose seeds, though small and husky, are exceed- ingly numerous and rich in oil. They are still gathered by Southern California Indians, who bend the plants over a large basket and beat the seeds into it by striking with a seed-beater, as described before when treating of Chia. The seeds, mixed with wheat, are parched in a frying pan, and all is reduced to a fine meal by pounding in a mortar. This stirred in water with a sprinkling of salt is then ready to be eaten, or drunk, according as the mixture is thick or thin. It, too, is called pinole. The sage seeds have much the taste of Chia, the botanical relationship be- ing close, but they are not mucilaginous. Several species of wild grasses are utilizable for pinole. One of these is the Wild Oat (Avena fatua, L.), suspected of being the progenitor of the culti- - vated oat, and abundant in certain parts of the West, 54 Red Maple (Acer rubrum), the source of a dark blue dye in vogue among the Pennsylvania colonists. (See page 226.) (Courtesy of the New York Botanical Gardens.) WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE particularly on the Pacific Coast where extensive areas are covered with it as with a crop. The seed resembles the cultivated grain, but is so hairy as to stick in one’s throat and choke one. After thoroughly singeing off the hairs in a pan or basket tray, the grain may be reduced to flour, and used like ordinary oat-flour. Another pinole grass is Elymus triticoides, Buckl., locally known as ‘‘wild wheat’’ and ‘‘squaw grass.’’ It is a tall, slim grass with usually glaucous stems, and grows densely in moist meadows and alkaline soil throughout the Pacific Coast and eastward to Colorado and Arizona. An allied species, more robust, with very dense flower-spikes of a foot long and larger seeds, serves a similar purpose. It is commonly called ‘‘rye grass’’ and is the Elymus condensatus, Presl., of the botanists. It, too, is abundant in damp, alkaline ground and along streams throughout the Far West, and Mr. Coville ® has suggested that it may be worthy of experimentation as a cultivated grain for that region. A Southwestern grass of wide distribution, par- ticularly in the deserts, in sandy places (both moist and dry) and on arid hillsides, is the so-called Indian 9 “Plants Used by the Klamath Indians,” Washington, Gov’t Print- ing Office, 1897. -. 55 USEFUL WILD PLANTS Millet or Sand-grass (Eriocoma cuspidata, Nutt.). it is a perennial, growing in bunches a foot or two high, with peculiar panicles whose thread-like, twist- ing branchlets are tipped with husks containing small, blackish seeds, which have long been valued by desert Indians for flour making. This is one of the wild grains upon which the Zufii Indians of New Mexico have been in the habit of relying in times of failure of their cultivated crops; and Dr. Edward Palmer tells of parties of Zufiis being seen as far as ten miles from their villages carrying enormous loads of these seeds for winter provision. Still an- other desert grass with edible seeds, but restricted in its distribution in our country to Southern Cali- fornia, is Panicum Urvilleanum, Kunth, which the desert Coahuillas call song-wal. It is a stout per- ennial, one to two feet high, the whole plant, includ- ing the seeds, more or less hairy, and is quite near of kin to the millet of the Old World, whose nutri- tious properties it shares. Among the various gummy plants of the Pacific Coast known there as Tarweeds is one called Chile Tarweed (Madia sativa, Molina). It is a heavy- scented annual, one to three feet high, sticky and hairy, with rather narrow, entire leaves, and incon- spicuous, pale yellow flowers of the daisy type, the 56 WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE rays barely a quarter of an inch long, expanding only at evening and early morning. This and some kindred species have been utilized by the California Indians for pinole. The Chile Tarweed has a spe- cial interest in the fact that in Chile, where it is also abundant, it has been cultivated from very early times. The seeds, when scalded, yield under com- pression a considerable percentage of a mild, agree- able oil, suitable for table purposes, soap-making, and notably for lubricating machinery, as it does not solidify short of 10° Fahr. Some eighty years ago, the plant was introduced into cultivation in Europe, where, I believe, it is still grown to some extent, and an oil-cake is made of the seeds for cattle. To the traveler in the hill country of central and Southern California and western Arizona a familiar shrub is a species of wild plum with shining, ever- green, holly-like leaves (Prunus ilicifolia, Walp.), maturing in autumn an abundance of crimson or dark purple fruits in size and appearance like small damson plums. They are disappointing, however, in that they are almost entirely stone, though such thin covering of pulp as there is, is pleasant enough to the taste. It is an interesting fact in connection with the Indian’s inventive genius that this fruit be- 57 USEFUL WILD PLANTS came long ago one of his important food sources; though it was not the pulp but the apparently hope- less pit that was turned to principal account. Gath- ering the plums in late summer, the Indians would wat Y ge IsLay PN be SiN’ ‘icifoli SAO, EE I pS (Prunus ilicifolia) ON.) AIS Nel 2 PR ee ; ; < ain a» a f spread them in the sun until thoroughly dry, when the stones would be cracked and the kernels ex- tracted. These.are bitter and astringent like acorns, and at first blush as unpromising as the uncracked pits themselves. When rid of that deleterious prin- ciple, however, the kernels are nutritious and diges- 58 WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE tible (by Indian organs, at least), and have always formed a cherished item in the native dietary, wherever the shrub grows. It is quite generally known by its Spanish-Indian name islay. Barrows, writing of this food,” states that the kernels are crushed in a mortar, leached in the sand basket (pre- sumably like acorn-meal) and boiled as mush; but an intelligent old Indian of Mission Santa Inés, one Fernando Cardenas, who is familiar with the customs practised by Southern California Indians, has in- formed me that the process as observed by him was to put the unground kernels into a bag and dip the sack in hot water again and again, until the meats became sweet. They were then ground, fashioned into balls and eaten so with great gusto. As I have personally never seen either process, I record both for the curious to test for themselves. It would seem reasonable to expect edible seeds of many of the wild members of the useful Pea family, which is abundantly represented in all parts of the country. As a matter of fact, few seem to have been found worth while even by Indians of the most catholic taste. The Groundnut, Apios tube- rosa, has been mentioned in a previous chapter as 10“The Ethnobotany of the Coahuilla Indians of Southern Cali- fornia.” 59 Hog PEANUT (Amphicarpaea monoica) 60 WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE having been utilized, both seeds and tubers; and something should be said of another leguminous plant popularly called Hog Peanut (Amphicarpaea monoica, Nutt.). It is a slender vine with trifoliate leaves, the stem clothed with brownish hairs, and is frequently met with in damp woodlands and thickets throughout the eastern half of the United States. In late summer it is graced with small bunches of pale purple or whitish pea-like blossoms, pen- dulous from the leaf-axils, while from near the root solitary, inconspicuous flowers on thread-like stems put out and bury themselves loosely in the ground, or creep shyly beneath a covering of fallen leaves. The showy upper blossoms are mostly abortive, though a few manage to develop short pods contain- ing three or four small purple seeds apiece, edible when cooked. Of much greater worth are the sub- terranean seed-vessels which bear a single large pea in each. These peas are quite nutritious. They are mature in September and October, but retain their vitality throughout the winter, so that they may be dug even in the spring if one knows where to look for them. The most valuable of all our wild legumes is doubtless the Mesquit-bean, the algarroba of the Mexicans. It is the product of a well-known tree 61 USEFUL WILD PLANTS (Prosopis juliflora, DC., and its varieties) abundant throughout the arid region on both sides of the Mexican border. It is, indeed, the characteristic tree of the Southwestern deserts, giving to those gray wastes touches of living color very grateful to the eyes starving for the sight of a really vivid green. The pods, in shape and size resembling string beans, are produced abundantly in drooping clusters, which, ripening in late summer, become lemon yellow. The juicy pulp, in which the hard, bony seeds are embedded, is exceedingly sweet, containing, according to Havard, more than half its Mesquir weight of assimilable nutritive (Prosopis juliflora) : Ss : properties, of which sugar is in the proportion of from twenty-five to thirty per cent. All stock thrives on the pods, and it is on this account rather than on any appeal to his own stomach that the white man’s regard for them is grounded; but upon the Indian, who has ever a sweet tooth, they have a strong claim as human food. There is before me, as I write, a jar of coarse mesquit 62 SSSSMQ Y ff UU tar, \ SN \ 2SS\ ; oi Be Py *) er Se ee (SRA ASA E's, p) SOP SESS teh PSM. Oss ¢ errs he Tre aye" Dery MESQuIT (Prosopis juliflora) 63 USEFUL WILD PLANTS meal, and it is as cloyingly fragrant as so much mo- lasses. Mr. Edward H. Davis, of Mesa Grande, California, to whom I am indebted for the specimen, writes concerning it: ‘‘The mesquit meal is used to-day by the desert Indians the same as centuries ago. The pod is pounded up in wooden mortars made from the mesquit-tree trunk hollowed out by fire and set firmly in the ground. A long, slender, stone pestle is used to pound with. The beans are so brittle that enough for dinner can be prepared in eight to ten minutes. The meal is mixed with water and eaten so, being sweet and nourishing. The edible part is the pulp of the pods only; the seeds are not diges- tible by either man or beast, but will pass through the digestive tract unchanged. However, by pour- ing warm water over the seeds a sweetish, rather lemon-tasting drink is made and much relished by the desert Coahuillas.”’ The Pima Indians of Southern Arizona formerly used mesquit meal as a makeshift for sugar, mingling it with their wheat or corn pinole to sweeten the latter.11 The raw beans picked from the tree may be chewed with enjoyment and some nutritive profit, _ 4John Russell Bartlett, “Personal Narrative of Explorations in Texas, New Mexico, California, ete.” Vol. II: 217. 64 WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE as one travels. The quality of mingled acidity and sweetness which they possess before perfect ma- turity acts also as a thirst preventive, much as do the pods of the carob-tree of the Mediterranean basin. Indeed, the Spanish term algarroba applied in Mexico and our Southwest to the Mesquit bean, is a case of transference, algarrobo being the word used_in Spain for the carob-tree. A feature of the Mesquit-bean, by the way, to be reckoned with, is the fact that the pods are a favorite resort of «a species of pea-weevil (Bruchus) for the deposit of their eggs. As a consequence Mesquit meal is par- ticularly liable to infestation by these small beings to a degree that is somewhat of a shock to white sensibilities, though the Indians are indifferent to their presence; yet, I suppose, after all, it is no worse than skippers in over-ripe cheese, which some white epicures delight in.'? The Mexicans make a sort of gruel, called atole de mezquite, by boiling the mesquit pods, mashing them to a pulp in fresh water, and straining. A nutritious beverage is thus obtained, agreeable to some tastes. So altogether useful is the mesquit tree that it is not surprising to learn that it figures 12 A useful by-product of the Mesquit-tree is a gum that exudes from the bruised bark and may be used for the purpose of gum arabic, which it much resembles. 65 USEFUL WILD PLANTS in the folklore of some regions where it grows. In Mexico a curious tradition is current to this effect: Long before the Spanish Conquest, the Apostle Thomas, in his heavenly home, became in- terested in the Aztecs, and descending to earth appeared to them in the guise of the Mexican hero- god Quetzacoatl and preached the gospel. The Aztecs heard the doctrine but coldly, and so San Tomas in most unchristian dudgeon departed, leav- ing the curse of sterility upon the plain of Andhuac and turning all its cacao trees into mesquites, which remain mesquites to this day! Closely related to the Mesquit-bean and of similar utility is the Screw-bean, called by the Mexicans tornilla. It is a curious, slender, spirally-twisted pod, borne in clusters, upon a small tree (Prosopis pubescens, Benth.) having much the same geographi- cal range as the mesquit. The Screw-bean is even more sugary than the Mesquit-bean, and it may be made by boiling to yield a very fair sort of molasses. Water in which a small quantity of the meal is soaked makes a palatable and nutritious beverage. In mak- ing Screw-bean meal, the Indians grind the whole pods, seeds and all. 66 CHAPTER IV THE ACORN AS HUMAN FOOD AND SOME OTHER WILD NUTS Happy age to which the ancients gave the name of golden... . None found it needful, in order to obtain sustenance, to re- sort to other labor than to stretch out his hand and take it from the sturdy live-oak, which liberally invited him. Don Quixote. ERTAIN nuts growing wild in the United States, such as the chestnut, the hickories, the pecan, the beech-nut and the walnuts, have secured so firm a place in our civilized dietary that every one knows them, and they need not be discussed here. Perhaps, though, we have not exhausted all their culinary possibilities. For instance, William Bar- tram tells us that the Creek Indians in his day pounded the shellbark nuts, cast them into boiling water and then passed the mass through a very fine strainer. The thicker, oily part of the liquid thus preserved was rich like fresh cream, and was called by a name signifying ‘‘hickory milk.’’? It formed an ingredient in much of their cookery, especially in 67 USEFUL WILD PLANTS hominy and corn cakes. Peter Kalm speaks of a similar practice observed by him with hickory nuts and black walnuts. A cooking oil is also said to have been obtained from acorns by some Eastern tribes, the nuts being pounded, boiled in water containing maple-wood ashes, and the oil skimmed off. Of the nuts of our country unregarded by the white population from the standpoint of human food value, the noble genus of oaks supplies the most im- portant. Every farmer realizes the worth of acorns for fattening hogs, but in America only the Indians, | I believe, have taken seriously to utilizing them for human consumption; and it is significant that among the fattest of all Indians are those—the Californians —whose staple diet from prehistoric times has been acorn meal. There is, to be sure, a difference in acorns. All are not bitter. Several species of oak produce nuts whose sweetness and edibility in the raw state make it easy to believe the acorn’s cousin- ship to the chestnut and beechnut. In this class are the different sorts of Chestnut Oaks, easily recog- nized by the resemblance of their leaves to the foliage of the chestnut tree; and of these perhaps the best, in respect of acorns, is Quercus Michauati, Nutt. —commonly known as Basket Oak or Cow Oak. It is a large tree, indigenous to the Southern Atlantic 68 THE ACORN AS HUMAN FOOD States in situations near streams and swamps, and ripening in September or October plump, sweet nuts an inch and a half long. Oddly enough it is not the sweet acorns but the bitter that have played the really noteworthy part in aboriginal history. The Indians of the Pacific Coast did not become maize growers until after the white occupation of their country, preferring to accept from the hand of indulgent Nature such nutrients as came ready made, among which the abounding fruit- age of extensive oak forests formed, and still forms, a conspicuous part. The acorns of all species of oaks indigenous to that coast are more or less stored with tannin, which imparts to the taste an unwhole- some bitterness and astringency as disagreeable to red men as to white. Some inventive Indian—and doubtless it was a woman, the aboriginal harvester as well as cook—long ago hit upon a simple but effective way of extracting the deleterious principle; that is, washing the finely ground acorns in water. ‘The process of preparing the acorn for human use, as still practiced in some parts of California, is as follows: In autumn when the nuts are ripe but not yet fallen, they are gathered in baskets and barley sacks, brought home and laid in the sun to dry. Some are 69 USEFUL WILD PLANTS then stored away for future use in the house or in huge storage baskets set outdoors on platforms that are raised on legs above the reach of rodents, and form a picturesque feature of primitive rancherias. The acorns for immediate consumption are divested of the shells by cracking, and the kernels then re- duced to the finest possible powder by grinding in the stone mortar, it having been found that digesti- bility depends upon thorough grinding. The next step is to get rid of the bitterness, which persists through all the milling. Every acorn-eating family maintains beside the nearest water a primitive leaching plant, varying more or less in the details of its make-up, but con- sisting primarily of a loose, concave nest of twigs, leaves or pine needles raised a foot or two above the ground and ensuring perfect drainage. Over this is stretched a piece of porous cloth—a clean burlap will do—sagging, basin-like, in the middle, upon which the meal is spread evenly about half an inch thick. Water, warm or cold, is then poured carefully over this and allowed to filter through, more being added from time to time until the bitter- ness is entirely leached away. The length of time required for this differs according to the variety of acorns used, some being less bitter than others. 70 ‘s}UdPOI JO suoTyepaidap sy} [yeIsatOy 0} peyeagja ase Ady], ‘synu-aurd pue sur09se SurAtasoid JOT sjayseq oseIOJS S,UeIPU] UTeJUNOW UsojsoM V THE ACORN AS HUMAN FOOD Two or three hours usually suffice. The result is a doughy mass, which is then transferred to a pot with water added, and boiled up for mush. It swells in cooking to about twice its original bulk, and when done is a pale chocolate color. In taste it is rather flat but with a suggestion of nuttiness that becomes distinctly agreeable even to some white palates. Judging from my own experience with it, I should pronounce it about as good as an average breakfast- food mush. Cream and sugar and a pinch of salt are considered needful concomitants by most white consumers. Formerly the Indians baked a sort of bread from acorn dough in their primitive fireless cooker—that is, in shallow pits first lined with thor- oughly heated rocks. For this purpose the dough was.usually, though not always, mixed with red clay in proportion of about five per cent., according to Mr. Chesnut, from whose valuable monograph, “Plants Used by the Indians of Mendocino Co., California,’? I have drawn for this statement,— the purpose of the clay being apparently to remove the last trace of tannin remaining in the dough. Upon a bed of green leaves placed at the bottom of the pit the dough was laid, covered with another layer of leaves, upon which a super-layer of heated stones was put, and all then covered with dirt, to 71 USEFUL WILD PLANTS remain over night. When removed after about twelve hours of slow cooking, the bread was coal black if the admixture of clay had been used or red- dish brown otherwise, and of the consistency of soft cheese, hardening, however, with exposure. Such bread is oily and heavy, but noticeably sweet in taste. The latter characteristic is doubtless due to sugar developed by the prolonged, slow steaming. Dr. C. Hart Merriam, in the ‘‘ National Geographic Magazine’’ for August, 1918, tells of a simpler way of making acorn bread as observed by him. The hot acorn-mush is dipped, a small quantity at a time, from the general stock and plunged into cold water, which causes the lumps to contract and stiffen. The ‘‘loaves’’ so made are then placed on a rock to harden and dry out, after which they may be kept for weeks until consumed. The same au- thority speaks of the excellence of a bread made from a mixture of acorn-flour and corn-meal, in the proportion of one of the former to four of the latter. While the acorns of any species may be utilized for human need, there is a distinct choice exercised by the Indians, the preference being based appar- ently on relative richness in oil and lowness in tannin. The best liked, according to my observation, are 72 THE ACORN AS HUMAN FOOD the Kellogg or California Black oak (Quercus Cali- fornica, [Torr.] Cooper), the Coast Live oak (Q. agrifolia, Nee), the Valparaiso or Canyon Live oak (Q. chrysolepis, Lieb), and the colossal Valley White oak (Q. lobata, Nee). An analysis of acorn meal made from the last named species is quoted by Chesnut as showing in percentage 5.7 protein, 18.6 fat, 65 carbohydrates (starch, sugar, etc.). Though the Californians are regarded as among the lowest of our North American aborigines in native culture, their self-devised treatment of the acorn to make of it a wholesome food staple is entitled to the greatest respect. Stephen Powers, in his classic work on the Tribes of California, finds in one use of acorn mush an aboriginal discovery of the principle of the Prus- sian pea-sausage; and quotes the practice of a central California tribe, who, upon starting a journey, would pack in their burden baskets a quantity of the mush. When stopping for refreshment, it was only necessary to dilute a portion of this with water and dinner was ready. A squaw, the traditional burden- bearer, could carry thirty pounds, enough to last two persons perhaps a fortnight. Naturally so im- portant an element as the acorn in the tribal life became associated with religious ceremonial as well as incorporated in native poetry; and the approach 73 USEFUL WILD PLANTS of the autumnal gathering of the nuts was celebrated with dances and songs of thanksgiving and rejoicing. One of these songs, quoted by Powers, is Englished thus: “The acorns come down from heaven; I plant the short acorns in the valley; I plant the long acorns in the valley; I sprout, I, the black acorn sprout; I sprout.” Such dances (and they still have some vogue in the remoter parts of the State) were night affairs in the open, stamped out in the glow of blazing log fires to the accompaniment of minor melodies of fascinating appeal, the words of the songs repeated endlessly and emphasized with dramatic gestures, until the morning star appeared in the east. To this day the oak groves in those parts of California where any considerable Indian population still lingers are invested with traditional acorn rights, and recognized by general consent as the harvest grounds of particular communities, none poaching upon the preserves of another. Traveling in mountainous regions of the West where coniferous forests prevail, one sometimes comes upon the remains of large camp-fires strewn roundabout with charred pine-cones and twig ends. 74 THE ACORN AS HUMAN FOOD These are associated with another sort of nut? har- vest, that of the Pifion or Pine-nut, the plump, oily seed of certain species of the Far Western pines. The most esteemed nut-pines are the Two-leaved Pine (Pinus edulis, Engelm.), a low, round-topped tree, generally known by its Spanish name pifion and common from Southern Colorado to Texas and west- _ ward to Arizona and Utah; the closely related One- leaved Pine (P. monophylla, Torr.), the piiion of the Great Basin region and desert slopes of thé Cali- fornia Sierras; the Digger Pine (P. Sabiniana, Dougl.), a widely distributed species of the Cali- fornia foothills and lower mountain slopes; and the stately Sugar Pine (P. Lambertiana, Dougl.), whose huge cones are frequently a foot and a half long or more. The ‘‘nuts’’ of these species vary from one-half to three-quarters of an inch in length, with thin shells easy but rather tedious to crack. The meat is delicious in flavor even to white people, tender, sweet, and highly nutritious. They are, moreover, of easiest digestibility, so that even delicate stomachs are undisturbed by them. Under the name of pifions they are sold in towns through- out the Southwest as well as Mexico, where another 1 The word “nut” is used in this chapter in its popular sense rather than with botanical accuracy. 19 USEFUL WILD PLANTS species of nut-pine (Pinus cembroides, Zuce.) is in- digenous. The Parry Pine (P. quadrifolia, Sudw.) is another good nut-pine, abundant in some parts of lower California, but only sparingly found on the United States side of the border. John Muir, in his picturesque way, characterizes the nut-pine forests as ‘‘the bountiful orchards of the red man.’’ Pine seeds are ripe in autumn, and the Indian method of gathering them is to cut or knock the un- opened cones from the trees and then roast them in a camp fire. This serves to dry out the pitch and open the cones, from which the nuts are then easily extracted. The piton harvest among the South- western Indians is a joyous time, and what they do not themselves consume is readily turned into money at the traders’. Dr. Edward Palmer, a veteran botanical collector whose notes are enlivened by many a human touch, describes a scene of this kind which he witnessed among the Cocopahs of Lower California. ‘‘It was an interesting sight to see these children of nature with their dirty, laughing faces, parching and eating the pine nuts . . . by the hand- ful. .. . At last we had the privilege of seeing prim- itive Americans gathering their uncultivated crop from primeval groves.’’ Though edible raw, the nuts are preferably toasted, which may be done very 76 THE ACORN AS HUMAN FOOD comfortably in a vessel kept in motion over a slow fire, as peanuts are heated. Not only is the flavor improved thereby, but the sweetness of the kernel is ensured for a longer time. The value of the pifion was quickly recognized by the Spanish conquerors of New Mexico, and Fray Alonzo de Benavides in his famous Memorial to the King of Spain (1630) makes particular mention of the Pifion trees, marvelous to him ‘‘because of their nuts so large and tender to crack and the trees and cones so small and the quantity so interminable.’’ It seems that at that early day there was trade in New Mexico pifions with the Mexican capital, a thousand miles away, where, Benavides tells us, they were worth at wholesale twenty-three to twenty-four pesos the fanega. They retail to-day in city shops of our Southwest at about twenty cents per pound. In taking leave of the pines, a word should be said about the fruits of their cousins, the Junipers of familiar habit. Although reckoned as a conifer, the Juniper bears seed vessels that are not cones in the popular acceptance of that word, but berry-like, due to the growing together of the fleshy cone- scales, with a compact pulp around the seeds. The resinous quality of these ‘‘berries’’ in most species renders them repugnant to the human palate, but in 17 USEFUL WILD PLANTS a few cases this feature is much reduced and the ‘‘berries’’ are relished because of the sweet flavor of their mealy pulp. In this edible class are the fruits of the California Juniper (Juniperus Cali- fornica, Carr.), the Utah Juniper (J. Utahensis, Lem.), and the Check-barked or Alligator Juniper (J. pachyphlaea, Torr.). The first two are stunted trees or shrubs of arid regions of pure desert. The last is a tree attaining sometimes a height of fifty feet or more, abundant at rather high elevations in Arizona, New Mexico and Southwestern Texas, and remarkable for its thick, hard bark, deeply furrowed and checked in squares. The ‘‘berries’’ of all these species have been approved by Indian palates, and are eaten either raw or dried and ground into a meal and prepared as mush or cakes. Under ne- cessity they might serve to keep body and soul together, those of the Alligator Juniper being con- sidered the best. Cakes made from these are said on good authority to be palatable even to whites, and to have the merit of easy digestibility. Little known to Americans but possessing a fas- cination all its own is the so-called Wild Hazel, Goat- nut or Sheep-nut, the fruit of a non-deciduous, gray- ish-green shrub, Simmondsia Californica, Nutt., locally abundant along the mountain borders of the 78 JOJOBA (Simmondsia Californica) 79 USEFUL WILD PLANTS desert in Southern California and extending into Arizona and northern Mexico. It is a distant cousin to the beloved boxwood of old gardens, though none but a botanist would suspect the relationship. The plant is diccious, so that not every individual is seed-bearing—only those possessing pistillate flowers. The capsules are mature in early autumn, and, gaping open, disgorge upon the ground the oily, chocolate-brown seeds, which are of about the size and appearance of hazelnut kernels. These, too, they somewhat resemble in taste, but are much easier of consumption because nature does the cracking for you. They are eaten with avidity by children, Indians, sheep and goats. Mexicans call them jojobas, and in Los Angeles I have seen them in the Spanish quarter in the shops of druggists, who find a steady sale for them for use in promoting the growth of deficient eyebrows! For this purpose, it seems, they are boiled, the oil extracted and this applied externally. The seed’s reputation as a hair restorer, indeed, is rather extended in the South- west. Mexicans in Lower California put it to still another use, which will be mentioned in the chapter - on Beverage Plants. According to M. Léon Dieguet in ‘‘Revue des Sciences Naturelles Appliquées’’ (October, 1895), 80 THE ACORN AS HUMAN FOOD ‘‘an analysis of the fire-dried seeds shows them to contain 48.30% of fatty matter. The oil solidifies at 5°, is suitable for food and of good quality, and possesses’ the immense advantage of not turning rancid.’’ The shrub has been recommended for culture in the desert regions of the French Colonies of North Africa. There is a beautiful little tree called the California Buckeye (Aesculus Californica, Nutt.) which whitens with its fine thyrses of bloom the hillsides of spring near streams in central and northern California. In summer and autumn it acquires another sort of con- spicuousness due to the early dropping of its foliage, baring the limbs even in August. It then becomes a very skeleton of a tree upon which the fruits, hanging thick, look like so many dry, plump figs. The leathery rind of the latter encloses one or two thin-shelled nuts, shiny and reddish brown like those of the tree’s cousins, the Buckeyes of the Middle West. To white folk these nuts, attractive as they appear, seem nevertheless devoid of food possibili- ties; indeed, in their raw state, they are known to be poisonous. That the Indian should have discov- ered how to turn them into fuel for the human machine seems, therefore, even more remarkable than the conversion of the acorn into an edible 81 USEFUL WILD PLANTS ration. Yet that is what the Indian did, by a method that consists essentially in roasting the nuts and then washing out the poison. One wonders how many prehistoric Californians died martyrs in the perfect- ing of the process. Mr. Chesnut, in his treatise al- ready quoted on California Indian uses of plants, re- cords in detail how the transformation into edibility is accomplished: The Buckeyes are placed in the con- ventional stone-lined baking pit which has been first made hot with a fire; they are then covered over with earth and allowed to steam for several hours, until the nuts have acquired the consistency of boiled potatoes. They may then be either sliced, placed in a basket and soaked in running water for from two to five days (depending upon the thinness of the slices), or mashed and rubbed up with water into a paste (the thin skin being incidentally sepa- rated by this process) and afterwards soaked from one to ten hours in a sand filter, the water as it drains away conveying with it the noxious principle. It was customary to eat the resultant mass cold and without salt. I have encountered no record of the similar use of the eastern Buckeye. The Cali- fornians’ treatment of the Pacific Coast species is an interesting instance, I think, of what may be done with the most unpromising material. 82 CHAPTER V SOME LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS AND BERRIES Greate store of forrest frute which hee Had for his food late gathered from the tree. The Faerie Queene. O one has to be told of the edibility of our wild strawberries, huckleberries, currants, cranber- ries, mulberries, raspberries, blackberries, elderber- ries, grapes and persimmons; nor of the pleasure which some palates find in the bitterish tang that goes with the familiar wild plums and cherries, al- though the only use to which most housewives con- sider these last fitted is the manufacture of jams and jellies. It is more to the purpose, therefore, in this chapter to touch upon some less known fruits of the hedge and heath—using the word fruit in its limited popular sense as based on succulency, rather than with botanical accuracy. Throughout the basin of the upper Missouri and from Saskatchewan to New Mexico, the Buffalo- 83 USEFUL WILD PLANTS berry (Shepherdia argentea, Nutt.) is at home. In the journals of travelers in the upper plains two or three generations ago, no bush is more often men- BUFFALO-BERBY (Shepherdia argentea) tioned than this. By the French voyageurs and en- gagés it was called gratsse de boeuf, that is, ‘‘beef fat,’’ which seems in harmony with the story I have read that the name Buffalo-berry is derived from the 84 LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS fact that it was a customary garnish to the monot- onous buffalo steaks and tongue of those early days. The plant is a somewhat spiny shrub or small tree with silvery, scurfy leaves, and forms at times ex- tensive and all but impenetrable thickets. The species is dicecious, and only the pistillate plant bears fruit; but that does it abundantly—tight clusters of small, scarlet berries, so sour as to find few takers until the frosts of October temper their acerbity. Then they are pleasant enough whether raw or cooked, though still with a touch of acid astringency that makes for sprightliness. Jelly made from them ranks especially high, and to this end they are gathered by white dwellers in the re- gions where they grow. In fact, the plant is not in- frequently found transferred to gardens. The ber- ries used to be one of the Indians’ dietary staples, lending a lively, fruity flavor to the unending stews and mushes of the red men. There is a related plant, the Silverberry (Elaeagnus argentea, Pursh), native to much the same region and often cultivated in gardens for the sake of the fragrant, silvery, funnel-form flowers and attractive foliage. Its white, scurfy berries, while in a sense edible, are too dry and mealy for most people, and are left to the prairie chickens. 85 USEFUL WILD PLANTS The Nightshade family, to which we owe the tomato, the potato and the egg-plant (as well as the tobacco and some very poisonous fruits), is rep- resented in our wild flora by a number of plants bearing edible fruit. Of these the red berries of two shrubs of the deserts and semi-deserts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah resemble tiny ' tomatoes and go among the Spanish-speaking popu- lation under the name of tomatillo, that is, ‘‘little tomato.’’ They may be eaten raw, if perfectly ripe, or boiled and consumed either as a separate dish or used to enliven stews and soups. Dried, they look like currants and may be stored away for winter use. Botanically the plants are Lycium pallidum, Miers, and L. Andersonu, Gray. They are more or less spiny shrubs, with small, pale, narrowish leaves, bunched in the axils of the branchlets, and bearing funnel-form greenish or whitish flowers—those of L. pallidum nearly an inch long; of L. Andersoni much smaller. To the Navajo Indians, the berries of the former have a sacred significance and Doctor Matthews states that in his day they were used in sacrificial offerings to a Navajo demi-god. Similarly among the Zuiis the plant is sacred to one of their priestly fraternities, and treated with reverence as an intercessor with the gods of the harvest. When 86 LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS the berries appear, certain individual plants are sprinkled with sacred meal and this business-like prayer proffered: ‘‘My father, I give you prayer meal; I want many peaches.’’ 1 To the same family belongs the genus Physalis,. some, perhaps most, species of which yield fruits that may be eaten. They are distinguished by a bladdery calyx which loosely envelops the small, tomato-like berry. These plants are known to Americans as Ground Cherries, and to the Spanish- speaking residents of our Southwest as tomates del campo, that is, ‘‘wild tomatoes.’’ Of the score or so of species indigenous to the United States, Physalis Viscosa, Pursh, is one of the best known—a hairy, sticky perennial, common in fields east of the Mis- sissippi from Ontario to the Gulf. The nodding, greenish-yellow flowers have a purplish-brown cen- ter; and the yellow fruit is reported on excellent au- thority to be the best. A species producing red fruit (P. longifolia, Nutt.), found wild from Nebraska to Texas and westward to Arizona, has been thought worthy of cultivation by the Zuii Indians, who used to grow it, and perhaps still do, in the women’s quaint little gardens on the slope of the river Zuii— 1 Stevenson. “Ethnobotany of the Zufii Indians.” 30th Ann. Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethnology. 87 Tomato DEL CaMPo (Physalis longifolia) 88 LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS gardens familiar to every observant visitor at this famous old pueblo. A favorite method of using the berries, according to Stevenson,? was to boil them and crush them in a mortar with raw onions, chili and coriander seeds. Among the whites, the Ground Cherries, when used at all, are made into pre- serves. In the Rose sisterhood—a family that has given us a wealth of garden fruits—are a number of wild- ings of more or less food value. Next to the wild strawberries, raspberries and blackberries, none per- haps stands higher in popular favor than the Amelanchier, in popular parlance Service-berry, June-berry, Shad-bush or Sugar-pear.* It is found with specific variations in leaf and fruit on both our seaboards, as well as in the Middle West, a small tree or shrub with rather roundish, serrated leaves, and producing in late spring or early summer loose clusters of round or sometimes pea-shaped, crimson or dark-purple berries. These are juicy, with a pleasant taste not unlike huckleberries. To white settlers throughout the continent this berry has 2“Ethnobotany of the Zufii Indians.” 3 Service-berry, a name transferred from an English species of Pyrus, whose fruit was known as serb, serve or service; June- berry, because the fruit generally ripens in June; Shad-bush, be- cause blooming when the shad are running in Kastern ‘rivers, 89 i} Q re e PP oH oY omar, i (BY RO eR EWI A LQ FASS Nae CCG bat oO \ Ny Ratryh ws WS KJ os SS i SS: SERVICE-BERRY oe (Amelanchier Canadensis) 90 ° te of its desolate look, bears plants yielding food, soap , in spi A Southwestern desert hillside, which . textile fiber and drinking water. The man in the foreground is cutting mescal. LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS always been an abundant wild stand-by for fruit pies. Old time Indians used it not only fresh but dried for winter consumption. Lewis and Clarke’s journal mentions a berry that is undoubtedly this, which the Indians were observed preserving by pounding masses together into ‘‘loaves’’ of ten to fifteen pounds weight. These would keep sweet throughout the season and would be used as needed by breaking off pieces to be soaked in water and dropped into stews. Strong competitors with man for the berries are the birds and the bears. Another western berry that has appealed strongly to Indian tastes but not, so far as I know, to ours, is the fruit of a species of Buckthorn (Rhamnus crocea, Nutt.). Doubtless there is nutrition in the berries, but they possess, according to Dr. Edward Palmer, the peculiar faculty of temporarily tinge- ing red the body of one who consumes them in quantity. He tells a gruesome story of accompany- ing as surgeon a troop of United States soldiers in pursuit of a band of twenty-two Apache Indians in Arizona, who were eventually surprised in their camp and killed outright. The bodies of all were discovered to be beautifully reticulated in red from the juice of the Rhamnus berries on which the Indians had. been gorging, the color having been 91 USEFUL WILD PLANTS taken up by the blood and diffused through the smallest veins. Our American Hawthorns (botanically, Crataegus, a genus which some modern botanists have split up into a hopeless multitude of confused species) bear clusters of tiny, alluring apples in various colors— yellow, purple, scarlet, dull red, some almost black. Many of these are admirable for jelly making. Among the best are the large haws of Crataegus mollis (T. & G.) Scheele, about an inch in diameter and of a bright scarlet color. The species is fairly common throughout the eastern United States and Central West. The Summer Haw (Crataegus flava, Ait.), a small tree of the Southern States, bears somewhat pear-shaped, yellowish fruits, one-half to three-fourths of an inch in diameter, which are also esteemed for jellies, as are the shining blackish ber- ries of the Black Haw (Crataegus Douglasii, Lindl.), common in the Pacific Northwest, and sweet and juicy enough to be pleasant eating uncooked. In fact, when it comes to providing raw material for the jelly makers, almost any thicket in late summer will yield something, for even the hips of the Wild Rose have been turned advantageously to that use. The hips of certain species, that is; those being pre- ferred whose content is juiciest and fleshiest—as, for 92 LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS instance, the plump berries of the beautiful Nutka Rose of the Far Northwest. Frost is an essential fees \ nf rin pile AMERICAN HAWTHORN (Crataegus mollis) agent in arousing palatability in most sorts of rose fruits. 93 USEFUL WILD PLANTS On the Pacific Slope one of the cherished berries for jelly making is the Manzanita (Arctostaphylos of several species), a remarkable evergreen shrub, or sometimes a small tree, whose shiny, chocolate- colored trunk and twisting branches, as hard as bone, are familiar to every traveler in the California mountains. The popular name is Spanish for ‘‘little apple,’’ and aptly describes the appearance of the fruit. This is borne very abundantly and is ripe in mid-summer. The mountain folk, describing the plant, will tell you there are two kinds, one with smooth berries and the other with sticky ones: but botanists are not so easily satisfied, and have described at least a dozen species. The one most often used for jelly is Arctostaphylos Manzanita, Parry, common in mountainous regions throughout the length of California, and also, I believe, in parts of Arizona and Utah. The berries are smooth skinned, with an agreeable acid flavor, and nutritious, but dry, mealy and seedy. Chewed as one travels, they are a capital thirst preventive, but the pulp should be very sparingly swallowed, as it is quite hard to digest. Indians, in former days, however, set great store by them as an article of diet, and in specific Manzanita tracts, just as in the oak-groves, there were recognized tribal or family 94 MANZANITA | (Arctostaphylos Manzanita) 95 USEFUL WILD PLANTS rights. The berries were consumed either dried and ground into pinole, or cooked as a mush, or in the fresh state. Death from intestinal stoppage is said to have sometimes resulted, however, from too free indulgence in the uncooked fruit. A favorite aboriginal use, too, was in the manufacture of cider, which will be described in the chapter on Beverage Plants. To white cooks the Manzanita is of negligible in- terest except, as already hinted, as a basis for a jelly, which is famously good. The following recipe I have from Mr. Edmund C. Jaeger of Riviera, California: Select berries, by preference of the smooth-skinned variety, which are more juicy than the others, picking them when full grown but still green, say about the first of June. Put them in a boiler with cold water to cover; and after bringing them to a boil, let them simmer until thoroughly cooked through: then pour into a cheese-cloth sack and press out the juice. This will have a cloudy look. Add sugar in the proportion of pound for pound, and boil till the liquid jells. The sugar clari- fies the juice, and the jelly is a beautiful, clear, amber red. Should the berries be too ripe, there will be 4Chesnut. “Plants Used by the Indians of Mendocino Co., Cali- fornia.” 96 LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS a failure to jell, but an excellent table syrup is the re- sult, instead. Wild currants, gooseberries, plums and cherries all play into the jelly maker’s hands; and so do the acid, scarlet berries of the eastern Barberry (Ber- beris Canadensis, Pursh), found in mountain woods Orrcon GRAPE (Berberis aquifolium) from Virginia to Georgia, as well as of the European Barberry (B. vulgaris, L.) which has become a wild plant in some sections. On the Pacific slope another Barberry is the familiar Oregon Grape (Berberis aquifolium, Pursh), a shrub two to six feet high, with evergreen pinnate leaves of seven to nine 97 USEFUL WILD PLANTS leathery, holly-like leaflets, abundant in rich woods among rocks, especially in northern California and Oregon, of which latter State it is the floral emblem. Erect clusters of small but conspicuous yellow OREGON GRAPE (Berberis aquifolium) flowers adorn the bushes in the spring, succeeded in autumn by blue berries of a pleasant flavor which are useful for jelly making and also as the basis of a refreshing drink. Cousin to the Barberry is the 98 LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS familiar May Apple, Wild Lemon or American Man- drake (Podophyllum peltatum, L.), a common herb, with umbrella-like leaves sheeting the ground in rich 1 OT May APPLE (Podophyllum peltatum) woodlands and shady meadows throughout the region east of the Mississippi from Canada to the Gulf. The pear-shaped fruit, about the size of a butternut, has claims to edibility. When green it exhales a 99 USEFUL WILD PLANTS rank, rather repulsive odor, but when fully matured, all that is changed into an agreeable fragrance, hard to define—a sort of composite of cantaloupe, summer apples and fox grapes. Brought indoors, two or three will soon perfume a whole room. As to palatability, tastes differ: some people loathe the flavor; others are fond of it. It ought not to be con- demned on the evidence of unripe specimens, but should be tested fully mature, at which stage the little ‘‘apples’’ are yellowish in color and drop into the hand at a touch. They may be eaten raw in moderation, the outer rind being first removed, or they may be converted into jelly. Care should be exercised with respect to the leaves and the root, which are drastic and poisonous. Occurring throughout the same range with the May Apple, but much less common east of the Alleghenies, is a small tree affecting stream borders and producing in early spring odd, solitary, purplish flowers pendulous from the leaf axils at the same time with the opening leaves. It is the North American Papaw (Asimina triloba, Dunal). In Sep- tember or October it bears sparse bunches of oblong, greenish, pulpy fruits each four or five inches in length and an inch or two in diameter, known as papaws, wild bananas, or, by old time French set- 100 LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS tlers, asimines—a Gallicized form of the Assiniboine Indian name of the fruits. They are unquestionably of some food value, though again tastes differ on the point of their palatability. ‘‘Edible for boys”’ is the classing they get from one good authority; but, on the other hand, the sweet, aromatic flavor is distinctly pleasant to some maturer palates. Perhaps, as I have heard it suggested, the divergence in views may be due in some degree to the fact of different natural varieties within the species. Our Papaw is a far- strayed member of the tropical family that includes the Anonas—the cherimoya, the sour-sop and the custard apples. Another plant tribe of the tropics that finds a small representation in the United States is the Passion Flower family, noted for its remarkable blossoms in which the devout have thought to see a perfect symbol of the Divine Pas- sion. There is one species, commonly called Maypop (Passiflora incarnata, L.), so frequent along fence rows and in cultivated fields of the Southern States as to be in the class of a weed. The fruit is a yel- low, egg-shaped berry, a couple of inches long, ac- counted edible, but more esteemed when made into jelly than when eaten raw. Nevertheless to some tastes the flavor is agreeable. I fancy it is to this plant that John Muir refers in his ‘‘Thousand Mile 101 USEFUL WILD PLANTS Walk to the Gulf,’’ quoting for it a local Georgia name, ‘‘ Apricot vine,’’ having a superb flower ‘‘and the most delicious fruit I have ever eaten.’’ The Heath family, which gives us the huckleberry, blueberry and cranberry (too well known to be treated here), as well as the manzanita already de- scribed, has two or three other members growing wild and bearing berries whose edibility is touched with a special grace of spiciness. One of these is the familiar Teaberry, Checkerberry or Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens, L.), an aromatic, creeping, evergreen vine usually of coniferous woods, from subarctic America southward through the eastern United States to Georgia. The crimson-coated ber- ries, about the size of peas, are pleasant morsels and make a welcome feature in a small way in the autumnal displays of fruit venders in Hastern cities. A Pacific Coast species of Gaultheria with black- purple berries (G. Shallon, Pursh) has become com- monly known by the name of Salal, a corrupted form of its Indian designation. It is a small shrub, one to three feet high, with sticky, hairy stems, frequent in the redwood forests of Northern California, and thence northward in shady woods as far as British Columbia. Lewis and Clarke’s journal contains several references to the Oregon Indians’ fondness 102 SaLaL (Gaultheria Shallon) 103 USEFUL WILD PLANTS for the berries, which, under the names of Shallon and Shewel, seem to have been a staple of diet with them. Though thick of skin they are well flavored. Paradoxical enough, it is the desert that grows some of our most important and most juicy wild fruits. Among these the plump pods of species of Yucca or Spanish Dagger, abundant throughout the arid regions of the Southwest, are of recognized worth. One of the most widely distributed is Yucca baccata, Torr., called by the Mexican population Palmilla ancha or Détil—the former name mean- ing ‘‘broad-leaved little date-palm,’’ and the latter, ‘‘the date fruit.’’ The fruit is succulent, plump, and in shape like a short banana, and is borne in large, upright clusters, seedy but nutritious. The taste is agreeably sweet when fully developed, which is in the autumn if birds and bugs spare the pods so long. Indians have always regarded the Datil asaluxury. As I write there comes visibly to mind a chilly, mid-August morning in the Arizona plateau country, when two Navajo shepherdesses left their straggling flock to share in the warmth of our camp fire and pass the time of day. As they squatted by the flame, I noticed that one slipped some objects from her blanket into the hot ashes, but with such deft 104 LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS secretiveness that my eyes failed to detect what they were. Later as the woman rose to go, she raked away the ashes with a stick and drew out several blackened Yucca pods, which had been roasting while we talked. I can testify to the entire palatability of this cooked fruit (the rind being first removed), finding it pleasantly suggestive of sweet potato. Those fruits that morning were still green when plucked. Dr. H. H. Rusby informs me that the sliced pulp of the nearly ripe pods makes a pie almost in- distinguishable from apple pie. The ripe fruit may be eaten raw, but the more usual custom among the Pueblo Indians, who would travel long miles in the pre-education days to gather the succulent, yellow pods and bring them home by the burro-load, was to cook them. Sometimes they were simply boiled, and on cooking the skin was removed, since it then sep- arates easily from the pulp; but there was a more complicated process, resulting in a sort of conserve, that was considered better. This was to bake the fruit, peel it and remove the fibre, and then boil down the pulp to a firm paste. This was rolled out in sheets of about an inch in thickness, and carefully dried. Afterwards these were cut up into con- venient sizes and laid away to be consumed either 105 USEFUL WILD PLANTS as a sweetmeat, or dissolved in water as a beverage, or employed like molasses on tortillas and bread.® The young flower buds of this and some other species of Yucca possess a considerable content of sugar and other nutritive principles, and by the aborigines are considered delicacies when cooked. Coville records a custom of the Panamint Indians who collected the swelling buds of the grotesque arborescent Yucca of the Mojave Desert known as the Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia, Engelm.) and roasted them over hot coals, eating them afterwards either hot or cold. The Yuccas have been useful to the desert people in other ways than as food, and we shall hear of them again in subsequent chapters. It is not re- markable, therefore, that the plant is imbued with sacred significance and enters in many ways into na- tive religious ceremonies. Among the Navajos, Yucca baccata is called hoskawn and allusions to it are of frequent occurrence in the folk lore of that interesting race. Its leaves are the material out of which the ceremonial masks employed in the relig- ious rites of these people are made. The Govern- ment has given particular distinction to this plant 5 Bandelier, quoted by Harrington in “Ethnobotany of the Tewa Indians,” Bull. 55, Bur. Amer. Ethnology. 106 LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS by bestowing its Spanish name on the ‘‘Datil Na- tional Forest’’ of New Mexico. The Cactus family, those especial plant children of the desert, yield some quite choice fruits, though they make us work to get them, hedged about as they are with vicious spines and bristles. Of several genera indigenous to the United States producing edible berries, the most widely distributed is Opuntia, embracing two quite different looking divi- sions, one with broad, flattened joints (the Platopun- tias) and one with cylindric, cane-like joints (the Cylindropuntias). The former division includes the well-known Prickly Pears or Indian Figs, of which two species (Opuntia vulgaris, Mill. and O. Rafi- mesquii, Engelm.) occur in sandy or sterile soil of the Atlantic seaboard. Their seedy, lean, insipid berries, each an inch or so long, are edible in a way, but they are not at all in the same class with the fat, juicy ‘‘pears’’ of many of the species growing wild in the Southwestern desert country, where the genus is best represented. Even there, there is great choice in the fruits of different species, those of the broad-jointed sort being much the best. Such plants are called nopal by the Spanish-speaking Southwesterners and the fruit tuna. Among these Opuntia laevis, Coult., and the varieties of O. Engel- 107 USEFUL WILD PLANTS manni and O. Lindheimeri (the last abundant in Southern California) are especially valued. Better than these, however, are certain species introduced a century or more ago by the Franciscan Mis- sionaries from Mexico, the motherland of the cacti. These are Opuntia Tuma, Mill., and O. Ficus-Indica, Mill., and they now grow wild in many parts of Cal- ifornia, especially about the old Mission towns, the fruit being annually harvested by the Mexican pop- ulation. (See illustration facing page 18.) The gatherer of tunas is faced by two difficulties —the rigid, needle-like spines that bristle on all sides of the plant, and the small tufts of tiny spicules that stud the fruit itself. The latter are really the more dangerous, because a touch transfers them from the tuna to the picker’s flesh, there to stick and prick wickedly. If they happen to get into the mouth or upon the tongue, the pain is persistent and agonizing. With care, however, nothing of that sort need happen. Armed with a fork and a sharp knife, you spear your tuna firmly with the fork, give it a wrench and complete the parting from the stem by a slash of the knife. The next step is to peel the ‘‘pear,’’ which is made up of a pulpy, seedy heart enveloped in an inedible rind. This may be readily got rid of in the following way: Handling the tuna with a 108 Gathering tunas, fruit of the nopal cactus, California. LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS Slove or speared upon a fork, lay it upon a clean board, and holding it down slice off each end; then make a longitudinal cut through the rind from end to end; lay open both flaps of the rind, which may then be pressed back, separating along natural lines from the pulp. If the gathered fruit is first placed in water and stirred well, the spicules are to a con- siderable extent washed off. (See illustration, page 174.) Eaten raw, tunas of the better sort are refresh- ing and agreeable to most people, though the bony seeds are an annoyance unless one swallows them whole, after the Mexican fashion. The taste differs somewhat with the species, those that I have eaten possessing a flavor suggesting watermelon. The sugar content is considerable, and a very good syrup may be obtained by boiling the peeled fruits until soft enough to strain out the seeds; after which the juice may be boiled down further. No sugar need be added, unless a very sweet syrup is needed. Care should be exercised to select fruit that is really ripe; in some sorts maturity is slow to follow coloration. After all, though, it is Mexico where tuna raising and consumption have become an art, and the tuna market is an interesting feature in many Mexican towns. During the time of the harvest whole 109 USEFUL WILD PLANTS families go to the hills and camp out in the Nopaleros (the areas where the cactus grows) and live prac- tically upon tunas alone. Mr. David Griffiths, in his monograph ‘‘The Tuna as a Food for Man,’’® states that at such times about two hundred tunas a day constitute the ration of one individual. Large quantities are dried for future use and several pro- ducts are also manufactured from the fresh fruit. One of these, called queso de tuna (that is, ‘‘tuna cheese’’), is an article of sale in the Mexican quarters of our Southwestern towns. It is made by reducing the seeded tuna pulps to an evaporated paste, and is sent to market in the shape of small cheeses, dark red or almost black. Another member of the Cactus family that is an important food source in the Southwest is the Sahuaro (Cereus giganteus, Engelm.). It is Arizona’s floral emblem, and abounds throughout the southwestern part of that State and across the frontier into northern Mexico, forming at times in the desert strange, thin forests casting attenuated shafts of shade. It is one of the world’s botanical marvels, a leafless tree with fluted, columnar trunk and scanty, vertical branches, rising sometimes to 6 Bull. 116 Bur. Plant Industry, U. S. Dept. Agriculture. 110 LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS the height of sixty feet and tipped in spring with numerous creamy, pink flowers. The fruit com- monly goes by its Mexican name, pitahaya. It ripens in June and July, and somewhat resembles the tuna in form, with a juicy, seedy, crimson pulp. To civilized tastes, the fresh fruit is rather mawkish, less sweet than that of the related pitahaya dulce, which is common on the Mexican side of the border and is borne by Cereus Thurberi, Engelm. Never- theless the Arizona pitahaya is of considerable food value and highly relished by the Indians of the region, particularly the older generation of Papagos, who make a festival of the opening of the pitahaya harvest, dating their new year from that event, and used to intoxicate themselves as a religious duty upon a sort of wine that they made for the occasion from the fermented first fruits. The pitahayas are gathered with a twenty-foot pole, made of the rod-like ribs of some dead sahuaro lashed together and having a hook affixed to the tip, with which the fruit is dislodged. Such part of the crop as is not consumed raw is boiled down, as in the case of the tuna, the seeds removed, and then boiled again until the mass is reduced to a syrup. This is of a clear, light brown color, and pleasantly sweet, 111 USEFUL WILD PLANTS making a fair substitute for molasses and corre- spondingly good on bread or corn cakes. It is set away for winter consumption.? The inner part of the pitahaya may also be sun-dried, and will then keep for a long time. Sahuaro seeds are quite oily, and I am told by Mr. HE. H. Davis that the Papagos dry them and grind them into an oleaginous paste, which they spread like butter on their tortillas. The ribs of this most useful plant are also employed by these same Indians as the basis of their stick-and- mud houses—a practice doubtless inherited from the ancients, as in many old cliff dwellings sahuaro ribs are found reinforcing adobe. A word about one more desert fruit, Baal this chapter closes. On the Colorado Desert of South- eastern California, there is indigenous a stately palm known as the California Fan Palm (Washingtonia filifera, Wendl., var. robusta), which has been widely introduced into cultivation in the Southwest. In the cafions of the San Jacinto Mountains opening to the desert and in the desert foothills of the San Bernar- dino Mountains, as well as here and there in certain alkaline oases of thedesert itself, extensive groves of this noble palm flourish—the remnant, it is 7 For an interesting and detailed account of the Arizona Sahuaro harvest and ‘uses, see Mr. Carl Lumholtz’s “New Trails in Mexico.” 112 *royinq pue dnifs ‘s[elio}ew SuIpjing pue ‘QUIM IO} Posn St jey} JNIZ e a]t}xe} ‘pooy soaystuing yoy suronpoid—oienyes—snapuvsis $nada9 “(emojuysem) weg ueq ems0js ed LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS believed, of far greater forests that probably existed in that region in primeval times. The mature fruit of the Washingtonia is berry-like and black, resem- bling a small grape or cherry, and is borne in huge compound clusters, which hang below the leafy crown of the tree in autumn and early winter. The relatively large seed is embedded in a thin pulp of sweetish flavor, which is edible, though it requires industry and a long pole to reach the fruit. These requisites were possessed by the old-time desert Indians, who used to make of the palm-berries an important feature in their diet, not only consuming the pulp both fresh and dried, but also grinding the seeds into a meal, which Dr. Edward Palmer thought as good as cocoanut. 113 CHAPTER VI WILD PLANTS WITH EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES I often gathered wholesome herbs, which I boiled, or eat as salads with my bread. Gulliver’s Travels, HAT would you say to a dish of ferns on toast? It is quite feasible in the spring, if the Common Bracken (Pteris aquilina, L.) grows in your neighborhood—that coarse, weedy-look- ing fern with long, cord-like creeping root-stocks and great, triangular fronds topping stalks one to two feet high or more, frequent in dry, open woods and in old fields throughout the United States—the most abundant of ferns. The part to be used for this purpose is the upper portion of the young shoot, cut at the period when the fern shoot has recently put up and is beginning to uncurl. The lower part of the shoot, which is woody, and the leafy tip, which is unpleasantly hairy, are rejected. It is the inter- mediate portion that is chosen, and though this is 114 Fe EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES loosely invested with hairs, these are easily brushed off. Then the cutting, which resembles an at- tenuated asparagus stalk, is ready for the pot. Divided into short lengths and cooked in salted, boil- ing water until quite tender—a process that usually requires a half to three quarters of an hour—the fern may be served like asparagus, as a straight vegeta- ble, or on toast with drawn butter, or as a salad with French dressing. The cooked fern has a taste quite its own, with a sugges- tion of almond. Its SRE ee ss food value, according to some experiments ‘ BrackEN SHOOTS (Pteris aquilina) made a few years ago by the Washington State Uni- versity, is reckoned as about that of cabbage, and rather more than either asparagus or tomatoes. Furthermore, the rootstocks of this fern are edible, according to Indian standards, and are doubtless of some nutritive worth as they are starchy, but the USEFUL WILD PLANTS flavor does not readily commend itself to cultivated palates. Dietitians who insist on the value of salads as part of a rightly balanced ration have a strong backer in Mother Nature, if we may take as a hint the large number of wild plants which everywhere freely offer themselves to us as ‘‘greens’’—all wholesomely edible and many of decided palatability. Especially in the spring, when the human system is starving for green things and succulent, the earth teems with these tender wilding shoots that our ancestors set more or less store by, but which in these days of cheap and abundant garden lettuce and spinach we leave to the rabbits. To know such plants in the first stages of their growth, when neither flower nor fruitage is present to assist in identification—the stage at which most of them must be picked to serve as salads or pot herbs—presupposes an all-round acquaintance with them, so that the collector must needs be a bit of an expert in his line, or have a friend who is. S There is one, however, that is familiar to ‘every- body—the ubiquitous Dandelion, whose young plants are utilized as pot-herbs particularly by immigrants from over sea as yet too little Americanized to have lost their thrifty Old World ways. It is a pleasant 116 EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES sight of spring days to see these new-fledged Ameri- cans dotting the fields and waste lots near our big cities, armed with knives, snipping and transferring to sack or basket the tender new leaves of the well- beloved plant, which, like themselves, is a translated European. The leaves are best when boiled in two waters to remove the bitterness resident in them; and then, served like spinach or beet-tops, they are good enough for any table. Old Peter Kalm, who has ever an eye watchful for the uses to which people put the wild plants, tells us the French Canadians in his day did not use the leaves of the Dandelion, but the roots, digging these in the spring, cutting them and preparing them as a bitter salad. Then there is Chicory, which has run wild in settled parts of the eastern United States and to some extent on the Pacific coast, adorning the road- sides in summer with its charming blue flowers of half a day. Its young leaves, if prepared in the same way as those of the Dandelion, are relished by some. Preferably, though, the leaves are blanched and eaten raw as a salad. The blanching may be done in several ways. The outer leaves may be drawn up and tied so as to protect the inner foliage from the light and thus whiten it, or flower-pots may be capped over the plants. Another method is this: 117 ~ USEFUL WILD PLANTS CHICORY (Cichorium Intybus) Dig up the roots in the autumn, cut back the tops to within an inch of the root-crown and bury the roots to within an inch of the top in a bed of loose mellow earth in a warm cellar. In a month or two, 118 EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES new leaves should appear, crisp and white and ready for the salad bowl. | Another old-fashioned pot-herb that may be gathered freely in the spring is the early growth of that familiar weed of gardens and waste places throughout the land, the homely Pigweed (Cheno- podium album, L.), or Lamb’s quarters. This latter queer name, by the way, like the plant itself, is a waif from England, and according to Prior! is a corruption of ‘‘Lammas quarter,’’ an ancient festival in the English calendar with which a kindred plant (Atriplex patula), of identical popular name and usage, had some association. Of equal or per- haps greater vogue are the young spring shoots of the Pokeweed. (Phytolacca decandra, L.) boiled in two waters (and in the second with a bit of fat pork) and served with a dash of vinegar. So, too, the first, tender sprouts of the common eastern Milk- weed (Asclepias Syriaca, L.) have garnished country tables in the spring as a cooked vegetable, but the older stems are too acrid and milky for use. Mr. J. M. Bates, writing in ‘‘The American Botanist,’’ speaks of this and of the closely related species, A. speciosa, Torr., of the region west of the Mississippi, as the best of all wild greens, provided they are 1“On the Popular Names of British Plants,” R. C. A. Prior, M. D. 119 MILKWEED a) 8yr (Asclepias EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES picked while young enough, that is, like asparagus sprouts and while the stems will still snap when bent. Young leaves and all are good in that stage of growth. The Buckwheat family, which has yielded to civili- zation not only the grain that bears the family name but also the succulent vegetable Rhubarb, has some wild members with modest pretensions to useful- ness. That common weed, naturalized from Europe, the Curled Dock (Rumez crispus, L.), for instance, is of this tribe; and its spring suit of radical leaves stands well with bucolic connoisseurs in greens. An- other Rumex (R. hymenosepalus, Torr.), common on the dry plains and deserts of the Southwest and be- coming very showy when its ample panicles of dull crimson flowers and seed-vessels are set, is famous there as a satisfactory substitute for rhubarb, which, indeed, the plant somewhat resembles. The large leaves, nearly a foot long, are narrowed to a thick, fleshy footstalk, which is crisp, juicy and _ tart. These stalks, stripped off before the toughness of age has come upon them, and cooked like rhubarb, are hardly distinguishable from it. Westerners know it as Wild Rhubarb, Wild Pie Plant, and Cafiaigre. Under the last name it has some celebrity as tanning material, the tuberous roots being rich 121 ame) rh Nas LESS oe 5» ek SD _, yo ae 2 i> ye ae (