I read the post on eating pine bark with interest and wondered if you could eat palm leaves in a survival situation. Ccouldn't I take an entire leaf and cut it up with scissors and fry it up like potato chips? I'm going to try this with a Sabal palmetto leave or a Saw palmetto (Serenoa Repens) which grow here like weeds.

I know you can pull the leave out and eat the end of the stalk like a heart of palm.

Thoughts?

I don't think you'd get much of any nutrition from leaves cooked this way. You are better off going for their hearts, like you mentioned. Their hearts are loaded with carbohydrates.

If you had a pressure cooker and some sulfuric acid you might be able to break the leaves' cellulose down down into human-accessible sugars. This is "magic step" in non-starch based ethanol creation using things like switchgrass or other plant waste material. Here is a patent that describes the process.

Sidenote: you'll need a pressure vessel resistant to sulfuric acid.

-Blast

Just a suggestion ... and it may be totally redundant.

I suggest that you proceed with the essential allergic-reaction checks - before actually consuming the leaves in any quantity. In other words ... cut some of the palm leaf and rub the damp areas on sensitive skin (e.g. outside parts of lips, underneath skin of forearms or wrist), then next try chewing a small amount of leaf and spitting it back out (but not swallowing). Do these 2 steps first to check for any possible bad reactions to the plant.

I don't know your background ... so I'm sorry if this stuff is plainly obvious or common knowledge to you. It's always a good idea to guard against a bad allergic reaction. I just had a body rash a couple of weeks ago that came from a personal reaction to a plant sap ... bad reactions are no fun!

Offhand, I can't think of any reasons at all why palm leaves would be a problem. But better safe than sorry. By the way - seems like these leaves would be much more effective in a survival diet if you used them to wrap some other kind of food (e.g. meat or bananas), and cooked the whole wrapped item.

the other Pete

What Izzy said.

You'll find enough grubs, that you won't have to eat more than the hearts. You can use the fronds to weave a hat;-)

Please keep in mind that all parts of the Sago Palm (Cycas revoluta) are toxic.

Sue

Blast,

Id be curious what types of Ferns or other plants in Florida you would suggest for survival. I believe Florida and Houston have many of the same plants. I would also like to see a writeup on what you would do if stranded in the wild without food... kind of a step by step of what you would look for first. Your blog is great btw.

To my knowledge there are no edible ferns down here in the south. Bracken and ostrich ferns only grow in the north. :-(

Thanks for the compliments on my blog, a lot of work has gone into them.

As for a step-by-step plan...that'll have to wait until I have another long vacation. However, if there are saw palmettos around they would be my first choice of food.

-Blast