3 Weeds You're Probably Not Eating

three weeds you're probably not eating yes that's the topic of today's video how you doing I'm Adam Harrison I'm hanging out here in the woods in eastern North America right around the vernal equinox so early spring and this is the perfect time of year especially if you're hungry to start looking for some of these fresh green emerging growths because many of them are edible and many of them are medicinal however for some strange reason or another a lot of us overlook these plants and that's unfortunate because if we're interested in sourcing local sustainable and nutritious ingredients directly from our landscape then we'd be wise to pay more attention to these plants so what I want to do for you in this video is introduce you to some of these weeds that not only grow in areas like this but they might be growing in your backyard and even though I do refer to these plants as weeds in this video I honestly don't like to use that term too often I like to call plants by their names however because these plants are considered non native to North America invasive and quite aggressive a lot of people consider these plants to be weeds and so I'm just going to play that game in this video also just because I live in the eastern half of North America it doesn't mean these plants can't be found elsewhere so a few of these species can be found all over the continent I'm going to tell you which plants those are so without any further introduction of my part let me just say thank you so much for tuning into this video let's go find a few of these weeds that you're probably not but could be eating the first weed you're probably not eating is this little one right down here it's just one I'm holding right here so this is the narrow leaf bitter cress cardamon tea impatience so this is a Brassica vegetable kind of like garlic mustard that grows around here but it's also related to broccoli kale kohlrabi and Brussels sprouts those are all mustards or bhrastika vegetables and like the Brassica vegetables this one has those pungent mustard oils whatever you taste it whenever you crush the leaves and you smell it it smells like this plunge of mustard oils so this one isn't mentioned belong to that jeana's cardamon e worldwide they're about 150 species of card amity here in pennsylvania where I live is about 13 species some of them are native some of them are non-native they usually go by this common names crisis or to thwart now this one card Amity impatience is native to Europe and Asia here North America it's mainly found in northeastern North America though interestingly it's also been reported to grow in California its life cycles typically as an annual or biennial and when this plant is mature it can grow to be very tall and leafy they can grow to be about two feet tall now right now it looks very fern-like because it's very young so right now in the spring it lays very low as a basal rosette when you look at the leaves you see that they're pinnately compound leaves so each leaf has about 13 to 19 narrow sharply toothed leaflets and then once this plant grows taller you will see that these main leaves actually clasp the stem that's a key identifying characteristic I don't see any flowers right now because typically this plant flowers in May and you'll usually find this plant in moist soils not always in disturbed habitats and it can do well in partial shade as well now the narrowly bitter cress is very closely related to another bitter crest that maybe you're familiar with then we can consider that plant to be weed number 1.5 because I won't talk about too much but that's hairy bitter crest card a mini hare suta that one's native to Europe Western Asia also northern Africa introduced here in North America it's actually way more common in my opinion an abundant compared to the narrow leaf bitter crest this plants not all over eastern North America down south to the southern states and all up and down the west coast and this one commonly have its lawns and Gardens the leaves are rounded somewhat egg shape and the upper surfaces of the leaves are minutely hairy hence that species name hirsuta now as I mentioned before the narrowly bitter crest and also the hairy bitter crest they both have these pungent mustard oils so whenever you bite into them and you chew them kind of hot and they're kind of peppery they have this mustard oils and they taste very good I really like the pace of them I tend to treat them as a trail side nibble I don't really bring them home and cook with them though I will add them to other greens and bulk up with my greens with these wild vegetables right here but you can't cook at them you can do it every want with them I just tend to treat them as a charol side nibble when I eat them raw now beyond edibility both these have medicinal qualities and specifically in the case of the narrowly bitter crest this plant had been using traditional Western Asian medicine specifically to treat asthma and hay fever and whenever we look at the research like other Brassica vegetables these presses have these sulfur rich compounds known as glucosinolates these glucose in LA our enzymatically broken down in her bodies into compounds known as isothiocyanates these isothiocyanates have been involved in the elimination in the metabolism of xenobiotics from our bodies and also carcinogens and xenobiotics are foreign compounds like drugs and food additives and also environmental pollutants and research shows that diets high in cruciferous vegetables and rember these are cruciferous vegetables diets high in cruciferous vegetables have them linked to lower risk of various cancers including bladder breast colorectal gastric lung ovarian pancreatic prostate and renal cancer so I encourage you to get out and look for both of these plants see if you can find them this time of year see if you've been overlooking these plants all along and see if you can add these to your wild food meal plans the second weed you're probably not eating is this one right here you see some of the leaves down here last year's flowering stock these are some of the fresh leaves so this one is another mustard species and it should come as no surprise we're talking about another mustard because there are thousands worldwide about 3,400 species of mustard worldwide and a lot of them do grow wildly so this one is Dames rocket miss Paris matron Alice so that genus name is Paris comes from the greek word has sparrows which means evening star that's a suitable name because the flowers of this species seem to be more fragrant in the evening worldwide they're about two dozen species in the history enos here in North America it's really easy because we only have one miss Paris matron Ellis which is Dame's rocket and this one can be found all over the United States except in the most southern states so Danes rocket is native to eurasia that was introduced to North America as a garden plant centuries ago and it's also been a common component of wildflower seed mixes so no surprise is a very common plant in North America today and because of its beautiful wildflower many people actually think that this plant is native but it's not so Dame's rocket is commonly found in moist soils wet meadows and also floodplain areas though you'll usually see it in roadside ditches whenever you're driving up and down the roads this plant has a biennial life cycle sometimes it lives as a short-lived perennial and while it can grow 2 to 3 feet tall this time of year and early spring it lays very low to the soil with just some of these Tufts of leaves shooting out so that's what you're looking for this time of year you're looking for these Tufts of Leigh that are lanceolate meaning their landscape and their much longer than they are wide also another key feature of this plant is that the leaves are slightly hairy in slightly velvety also another way to positively identify Dame's rocket in the early spring even from a distance it's to look for these dried flowering stalks so all of these are dry flowering stalks from Dames rocket the few things you want to look for look for the alternately spaced branching up-and-down these stalks also you'll see a unique structure known as a salika this is the remnant from the so leek which were the seed pods you can see little holes in them and these are a few inches long now I don't see any flowers on here now because it's a little too early but this plant will flower mid spring through early summer the flowers like all cruciferous vegetables are for peddled and these particular ones are some shade of purple pink or white don't confuse this plant for a flocks of species phlox flowers are 5 petaled when you look at the branching arrangement along the stem you will see that phlox pieces have oppositely arranged branches remember Dame's rocket has 4 petal flowers and alternately spaced branching up and down the stem so how do we eat dames rocket well this time of year early spring just about the only thing that's available from this plant are these fresh greens down here so what you can do is harvest some of these young greens just pick some of them off and I like the harvest the smaller ones especially if I'm going to eat them raw first look and make sure that they're slightly hairy slightly velvety and then you could pop them in your mouth raw and because it is a wild mustard it kind of tastes like those presses that we found a little earlier so there's mustard oils really come out peppery kind of hot and I really like it now because there's some substance to these ones compared to some of those presses I like to harvest a bunch of these bring them home and I like to cook them up I like to put them on the pan with a little bit of fat cook them just for about a minute or two till they get brown and crispy and they're absolutely delicious now the greens aren't the only parts of the plane that you can harvest this time of year yes that's about the only part that you can harvest but once the flowers appear you can actually harvest the flowers eat those raw you can also eat the flower buds it's kind of like broccoli you can cook them up on the pan with a little bit of fat as well and they taste delicious you're interested in learning how to forge those flowers and cook them up I did film a video on that a couple months just scroll through some of the YouTube archives and you'll find that video now beyond edibility this plant does have medicinal qualities because it is a cruciferous vegetable it does have those glucosinolates which get enzymatically broken down into those isothiocyanates also a study was published in 2010 in the journal BMC complementary and alternative medicine showing that an extract of dames rocket had potent so very strong antimicrobial activity against a gram-negative pathogenic bacteria Salmonella typhimurium so not only is this an edible plant it's a medicinal plant and encourage you to get out look for dames rocket look for these dried flowering stalks and look for these greens harvest some of these case some of these drop bringing them home cook them up and see what you think so for the third and final weed that you're probably not eating we're going to move away from the dicots into the monocots as we talk about this plant right here so this one has a bunch of common names field garlic crow garlic wild garlic wild onions I'm probably just going to call it wild garlic for this video and honestly you might be familiar with this plant a lot of people are familiar with this plant but they're not eating it for some reason and if you do like garlic be like cultivated garlic and I don't see why you wouldn't like this plant so this belongs to the Allium genus it's a large genus hundreds of species worldwide contains a lot of the species that we're familiar with eating and buying and growing like cultivated garlic onions chives and leeks here in Pennsylvania they're about six species of Allium in North America there are dozens of species of Ally and this particular one is a Liam Vinny Ally this one is native to great for in most of Europe northern Africa in the Middle East and this plant is very common in disturbed areas and also open woods all parts of this plant have a strong scent of garlic or onion when crushed so if you're just smelling it when it's not crushed you probably won't detect that aroma but crush this plant pull it up break it chew on it and it's going to have that strong smell and taste of garlic or onion so Ally and Vinny Ally is found in eastern North America but it's also found up along the west coast the entire plant with the flowering stock can be 1 to 3 feet tall but now in early spring about 8 to 12 inches tall so wild garlic has grass like leaves that are semi erect that they can bend in over key identifying features that each leaf is round in the cross-section also the bulbs have a papery outer coating that can pull right off as far as taste wild garlic taste like cultivated garlic now this one is much much much stronger and I don't really eat this as a trail side nibble I don't really snack on it Roz I'm walking through the woods just because I don't want that garlicky breath as I'm spending my time outside though affects you if you really like to have that breath as you're walking through the woods that's perfectly fine but I tend to do just take out my knife harvest some of the green portions pop them in a bag and bring them home you can also harvest them the bulb pick them up just remember to remove some of this membrane of skin this fiber skin before you eat it before you cook with it as far as meal preparation what I like to do once I bring it home I like to slice these real thin and add them at the end of a meal almost as a garnish and I also like to put them into stir-fried meals they taste really really good especially with cooked eggs now medicinally Allium species originally sulfur containing compounds which account for that pungent aroma of these plants specifically with ally and Vinnie alley we see that this plant is rich in many pharmacologically active compounds including allyl methyl disulfide and dye allele disulfide and as a whole these sulfur containing compounds down within this plant may have anti-parasitic properties antifungal antibacterial and antiviral properties so I encourage you to explore tor woods if you explore your backyard your garden beds for Ali and Vinny Ali and give it a shot you really like cultivated garlic I'll bet you'll like wild garlic just as much if not more and there we have it three weeds are probably not eating the hopefully after watching this video hopefully after positively identifying species yourself you'll be adding at least a few of these plants to your wild food meal plan this year and of course these aren't the only wild edible greens that could be forged in the early spring months they're just some of the plants that I've seen today some of the ones that I really enjoy eating myself thank you so much for watching this video as always I truly appreciate it feel free to subscribe to the YouTube channel head on over to learn your landcom sign up for the email newsletter so we can stay in touch with one another you know supply me on social media Instagram Facebook at thanks again for watching happy early spring before you

Channel: Learn Your Land

Views: 352,301

Keywords: Adam Haritan, Learn Your Land, Foraging, Wild Food, Wild Edibles, Mushrooms, Plants, Botany, Weeds, Edible Plants, Medicinal Plants, Gardening, Permaculture, Primitive Skills, Ancestral Skills, Arthur Haines, Sam Thayer, God, Universe, Nature, Outdoors, Outside, Backpacking, Mycology, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Trees, Forest, Woods, How To, Environmental Sciences, Environment, Biology, Chemistry

Id: 6GH4bU6OSZM

Length: 13min 24sec (804 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 19 2018