Galinsoga (Galinsoga ciliata): Hidden in Plain Sight

I remember seeing this plant as a b0y. It grew as a weed in my mother's garden. It was one of those plants that I just never got around to keying out because, frankly, it looked boring. No big seed pods, no funky growth patterns, no sexy fruits or seeds. I often thought that I'd get around to keying that one out someday. Then I'd go do something important.

Our foraging friend, Arena, (a familiar name, no doubt, to foraging family readers) gave us some greens last year that she called galinsoga. We'd never heard of it and were having such a good time eating some of the exotic mushrooms that she'd gotten us that we forgot about it until it had wilted beyond recognition and any hope of culinary redemption. The other day, Arena gifted Ooga with some more.

Meanwhile, a good look at this plant while foraging for purslane in my mother's garden had reminded me of my oft-procrastinated resolution to key it out--a resolution that I promptly procrastinated because the purslane was so mouth-wateringly distracting.

So today when I found this patch of it growing in our very own meadow, I finally went in to get my dog-eared copy of Newcomb's Wildflower Guide (affectionately called The Duke after Duke Nukem from G. I. Joe). Well wouldn't you know it. Galinsoga. I ran back in to the refrigerator and looked in the goody bag from Arena. Sure enough. There it was.

Tonight we submerged it in boiling water for about five minutes, drained, and served as a side to a chicken dinner. It tasted very much like spinach or lamb's-quarters. We loved it.

Galinsoga might grow in your garden too. It has a cluster of composite flowers which means that each flower head contians a disc of lots of little individual reproductive bodies. The disc is yellow and is surrounded by five, widely spaced white petal that have three distinct lobes. These suckers are small so look carefully.
The leaves are opposite and coarsely toothed and the stems are hairy.

The can be easily distinguished from some asters that bloom at a similar time by their size and their distinctive three-lobed petals.

I know that in addition to being a great new edible for us, galinsoga will be a reminder that even the most plain-looking plants have worthwhile secrets for the enterprising naturalist.

Mint, Sheep Sorrel, and Jewelweed

Tonight's menu:

Appetizer--sheep sorrel salad

Main course--Bean and cheese wraps filled with boiled jewel weed greens

Dessert--Strawberries with mint infused birch syrup

The lowdown:

Sheep sorrel is a lemony flavored green which can be eaten throughout its growing season. It is sour and delicious. Our salad was half garden salad greens and half sheep sorrel greens. We have eaten wood sorrel on many occasions and the two plants contain the same chemical (oxalic acid) that gives them their characteristic sour lemony flavor.

Jewelweed greens are as slippery to eat as they feel when you gather them. I (Thag) like the texture. Ooga was not as fond, though we both agreed that they are a solid 3 on our rating scale. The field guides direct us to pick shoots that are shorter than six inches and boil in two changes of water (for 15 minutes total). Ooga efficiently has the next bath boiling in the kettle when the first one is drained away. I remember eating this green in high school as one of my first wild edible experiments. Some hard earned wisdom: Cut the stems in the field rather than uprooting and cutting off the roots later. It makes the plants much easier to process and to clean.

The wild mint was gathered with Arena last weekend, we used it to flavor our birch syrup from this spring. The flavors were delightful over strawberries, and the mint was the perfect compliment to the sweet and slightly astringent birch. All we did to infuse was to boil the mint in the syrup with just enough water to keep the syrup from turning to sugar.

Early Greens--A Foraging Family Easter

Thag:

Holy cow! I have been sick as a dog for over a week now. This weekend's unseasonably warm weather found me lethargic, and our plans for an Easter weekend of foraging in sunny Connecticut got pared down. Instead of picking greens, I found myself reading Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager in the hammock in my mother's garden. Langdon Clark, the author, is a Northwest Coast forager who really goes to town on the fish and shellfish of the Puget Sound area. He has re-inspired me to think about fishing as a foraging activity despite the fact that most local freshwater fish will start a Geiger counter ticking out the time to Flight of the Bumblebee. (Okay, that's unearned hyperbole. Their full of heavy metals not radiation.) Check out Langdon Clark's blog at <fat-of-the-land.blogspot.com/>.

As the weekend wore on, my viral-induced fog began to clear. Laura would drive the windy suburban road of Southington, CT, the town where we grew up, and I would botanize the weeds growing on the roadside at 30 mph. I didn't have enough energy to go pick skunk cabbage in the ravine, but we gathered enough wild onions (Allium spp.) and day lily (Hemerocallis fulva) greens to add some variety to the salad with Easter dinner and as seasoning for the Cornish game hen we cooked up.