Cattails are pretty amazing. They are probably the most food per the amount of effort needed to procure and prepare (fine raw) them. The roots/bulbs are very filling, quite paletable and not to mention the tops of the really big ones make great hand drill spindles! Yep I'm still struggling with hand drills. I refuse to give up! <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

One of the few guides I have found so fa...l four seasons.

Burncycle,

I am pretty bad at plants too, so I picked up one of those decks of cards where each card details a plant that you can eat. Very useful. You can get a deck from Campmor or a number of other places, and they aren't too expensive. Now I know at least 52 edible plants... Only a few thousand to go.

Greg

Ive seen those at Campmor and been wondering about them for quite some time. Good to get an opinion from someone that doesnt benefit from their sale. Thanks.

I went through the posts and decided to do just one post myself...

Remember that EVERYTHING you have available in the grocery came from the wild at some point. Carrots are from Queen Anne's Lace, for example.

Dandelions are great! The leaves eaten raw, until the milk/sap comes in is actually very close to ARUGALA, a cousin to the dandelion. After the sap starts coming in, I suggest cooking the greens. The roots can be eaten, but are also stringy. The flowers can be eaten raw, but my favorite way is to make wine out of it - and it only takes 2 weeks!

Lemongrass is actually a member of the onion family and is closer to scalions than grass. Lemongrass can be grown in USA gardens. There are many onions/alums that have stayd very wild. What is called Onion Grass is usually a chive that has been mown to release the onion/garlic smell. Find it, grow it and let it flower to get little burst in your mouth onion/garlic nodules.

Go to any Whole Paycheck Foods and you will find Wheat Grass in various forms. The juice is full of good minerals and can actually kill most bad breath, just like parsley.

Acorns can be roasted lightly and eaten warm, rosted darkly then ground and added to coffee. The leaves obviously have lots of tannin in them, but can be used to wrap fish or small game in a firepit cooking situation.

Almonds and Peaches are in the same familly, and you will find that peach flowers have a slight almond smell to them. One problem is that many peaches, even some 'freestone' varieties, do not have edible pits. Peach pits used to be a botanical source of strichnine - Bitter Almond.

Whatever you try to gather, be careful if it is in a populated place, I have known people poisoned becuse they picked things that had been sprayed with herbacides.

I do have a website that has a 'finding food' section, if people are interested. It is a hobby site, but there are some good tidbits of information spread thruout the self agrandizing propoganda.

Rena
SurvivalGene.com

As someone who shops there often and doesnt make a whole lot of money, I find that to be completely hillarious! I'm surprised I have never heard that before. Rest assured I'm stealing that one and will be using it often! <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

A general rule of thumb - I think this was a tip from Mors Kochanski - is "dry or green, not in between". I'm not sure if it applies only to certain plants or in general but I'm pretty sure it applied to clover and dandelions.

While I've become very familiar with quite a bit of which weeds are edible in the U.S., I've become curious about what's good foraging in the Carribean, and haven't had much luck with a web search, anybody got any suggestions of info sources? Thanks ahead of time.

Troy