What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.-Ralph Waldo Emerson
WATER LILY
All parts of the White Water Lily are edible to humans. The young, unfurling leaves can be eaten raw. The leaves can also be chopped and added to soups or stews. The rhizomes' tubers may be boiled, roasted, prepared like potatoes or dried and pounded in to flour to make unleavened patties or pancakes.
Buck Bean
Buck Bean is a wildflower that grows in bogs. Its star-like, white flowers appear in late spring. This plant is also called Bogbean. The common name refers to its small, bean-like seeds. Pacific North Coast Natives are recorded as cutting the nicotine in tobacco by using Buck Bean leaves.
In England and France, the leaves were used as a substitute for hops in brewing beer and were also recorded as boiled in honey to make mead. The Tsimshian, an Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast and the Inuit used Buck Bean roots by drying and turning into flour as a bread additive.
Lotus
The American lotus is native to eastern and central North America, from Maine to Wisconsin and southward from Florida to Texas. It is also known as yellow lotus, water-chinquapin, and volée. The American lotus is a flowering plant with yellow flowers. The leaves are blue-green, circular, and can be up to 2 feet wide
The seeds from a lotus seed head can be eaten when they are green and they have a sweet flavor, you can eat them like peas. Once the seeds turn brown, they have a nuttier taste. The seeds can be made into a paste, popped like corn and also ground & dried into flour.
Cattail
Catails, an incredible plant which I have featured in rhizomes and tubors because of they are a wonderful carbohydrate. You can also harvest the base of the stems (look like leeks) & can be eaten raw, sliced, sauted or used as a flavoring for water, tastes like cucumber and I think it's very refreshing!
In late spring to summer, immature flower spikes are ready for harvest. Peel the outer sheaf back to reveal the spike, which looks like baby corn. This can be steamed, boiled or sautéed and has a pleasant flavor like artichoke. The beautifully fine pollen has been used as corn & also a talcum powder substitute.
Pickerel Weed
Found in sandy or muddy areas of ponds and slow-moving streams. This plant has thick, dark green, heart- or arrowhead-shaped leaves emerging from the top of each stem and can reach a height of about 4 feet. The flowers turn into a heavy spike of fruits with a loose outer skin covering a solid startchy seed.
Seeds, unfurled leaves & stalks can be eaten. Seeds parched, boiled or roasted, best collected when they fall into your hand off the plant. Seeds make a good flour. For an easy trail snack, lightly roast and pop in a paper bag with seasoning of your choice. The Malecite & Micmac used pickerelweed as a contraceptive.
Wild Rice
Wildrice, or “manoomin” in Anishinaabe language, provides an important food source. It is traditionally harvested by canoe, with one person poling the boat through the rice beds, the other harvester sits, holding two sticks, gathering with one and tapping grains into the canoe with the other.
Wild Rice does not like a stagnant water. It grows best with some water flow, an inlet or an outlet or springs coming into the pond. If the pond is larger than 3 acres of surface water, usually there is enough wind action to keep the rice growing. Suggested planting rate is 25 to 40 pounds per acre.
Sweet Flag
Often called the Foragers Spice" The Lakota & Osage consume all parts of the plant, the leaves, stalks, and roots as food, You can eat the raw, partially grown flower stems and stalks in Spring and the roots are edible too with a sort of gingery, spicy, bitter, sweetness to them.
Candied roots: Scrape & wash. Parboil them, changing the water a few times if you want to reduce the fieriness of the taste. Then simmer them, just covered in syrup (2 parts of sugar to 1 part of water) until most of the syrup is absorbed. Drain them and dry them on waxed paper. When dry roll them in sugar and store.
Panicled Bullrush
This special native food has sweet edible roots, rhizomes, and stems, as well as protein rich pollen and nutty-tasting seeds! Rivaling Cattail in it's usefulness and edibility, Panicled Bulrush is high in sugar and starch, and all parts can be eaten raw or cooked.
Wild Watercress
Found in shallow streams and lake edges, this is a wonderfully robust growing green to forage, It grows all year round with just the leaves getting smaller in the winter cold. I've dug through snow to get to spots. The whole plant is a viable food source.