cassie's wild edible adventures (please help me ID)

So I have just very recently gotten into the whole wild edible game. I am reading sergei's book, Wild Edibles and I'm having a blast. The pictures I'm about to post are ALL from my back and front yard. I moved to this place about a year ago, and it's a rental, so don't judge me too harshly on the craziness of it.

So I am going to post ones that I know what they are, the ones that I think I might know what they are, and the ones I have no idea what are. I'm going to number them so people can help tell me what they are!! I'm really excited about this.


(I harvested this bowl this morning) there is: mallow, wild lettuce, dock, dandelion, and what I think is miner's lettuce, and sow thistle.

1)

I believe this is wild lettuce. I forgot to take a picture of the underneath of the leaves but it's poky just like wild lettuce. It looks kinda sketch because I cut a bunch of it off this morning.

2) I'm fairly positive this is sow thistle. None of the flowers were open yet but the leaves look VERY sow thistle.

3) Dandelion. No questions 'bout it.

4) Tons of Common Mallow. No doubt.





are those orange dots normal? i forgot to take a picture of the little cheese-wheel looking buds, but they're there.

5) Dock.




classic curly leaves:



classic barefoot.

6) Some kind of apple from the neighbors tree that hangs over into my yard. Muahaha.

7) Alright, now we get into the ones I don't know. This first looked like yarrow to me but I don't know if yarrow gets this big and then when I looked at it really close, it didn't look like yarrow.

8 ) No idea what this one is, but it's really fricking beautiful.

7. Potentially a hemlock and poisonous! Pictures don't show well on my tiny screen.

Does #7 have dark/purple splotches on stems? Deadly hemlock ! it will kill you, just by touch! And it just turned up in my garden a couple of years ago, after being here for 35 yrs... must not be poisonous to the birds who 'planted' it ;)

Great game! I love your backyard!! (I dream of having weeds like that again).

I think you got all the first lot right. You can test the wild lettuce by tasting a very small piece (half the size of your little fingernail), keep it at the front of your mouth while chewing, don't swallow, spit out if any acridity at the back of your mouth. If it's wild lettuce it will be very bitter. Milky on breaking too.

The orange spots on the mallow is common (a fungus I think). The dock you can ID to species via the seed (I'd guess Rumex Crispus).

7. is definitely not yarrow, it's an umbelliferae. Possibly hemlock but the leaves in the third picture don't look right to me. Are you sure that picture is the same plant as the first two? I've seen hemlock and wild carrot growing together and it can be easy to confuse two different umbelliferae like that (but no you won't get poisoned by touching it unless you have a touch allergy to that plant. Some umbelliferae are intense though, so do a bit of research). As mentioned the dark splotches on the stem, and an unpleasant smell when crushing the stems will help ID it if it's hemlock. If it doesn't have those, you can look at keys like smell, hairs or absence of hairs, what the root is like etc. Umbelliferae is a big family though.

8. I'm not familiar with that one, but the flowers look like viper's bugloss flowers so you could start with that family.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echium_vulgare

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echium

1) There are two different plants that I've heard called wild lettuce. This looks more like Lactuca Serriola, aka prickly lettuce.

4) Common mallow has one of my favorite latin names, Malva Neglecta


Happy foraging!

nancy sutton wrote:Does #7 have dark/purple splotches on stems? Deadly hemlock ! it will kill you, just by touch! And it just turned up in my garden a couple of years ago, after being here for 35 yrs... must not be poisonous to the birds who 'planted' it ;)

Not sure about the purple splotches, but I definitely touched it, not knowing it might be dangerous, and I haven't died yet.. soo i am thinking it's not that. lol

Rose Pinder wrote:

7. is definitely not yarrow, it's an umbelliferae. Possibly hemlock but the leaves in the third picture don't look right to me. Are you sure that picture is the same plant as the first two? I've seen hemlock and wild carrot growing together and it can be easy to confuse two different umbelliferae like that (but no you won't get poisoned by touching it unless you have a touch allergy to that plant. Some umbelliferae are intense though, so do a bit of research). As mentioned the dark splotches on the stem, and an unpleasant smell when crushing the stems will help ID it if it's hemlock. If it doesn't have those, you can look at keys like smell, hairs or absence of hairs, what the root is like etc. Umbelliferae is a big family though.

I'm pretty darn sure they were the same plant. I will go out and look again tomorrow though, to make sure. I'll also look for dark spots and unpleasant smells.

I'll also look into the viper's gloss business. thanks so much for your help!

The one that looks like hemlock might be hogweed. Not pigweed. Hogweed. Sometimes considered noxious/dangerous.

#7 definitely doesn't look like yarrow to me either. If pressed, I'd call it parsley.

It totally is hemlock! It has the purple splotches and gnarley smell. Thanks for the heads up everyone. I mean I definitely touched it, but is it just poisonous to eat? or what?

Folks have gotten very sick if they get a lot of topical exposure. I've only heard of kids actually dying from topical exposure. (Played hide and seek in a big patch of it for hrs)

I'd never pull out or chop a large area casually. How much topical exposure it takes to be sick varies on the person's constitution some what. Better safe than sorry I guess.


But yes, ingestion is the primary concern. I think this is poison hemlock. As you can see it resembles parsley somewhat and also has a taproot similar to wild carrot.

Things like kids making blowdarts or flutes or other toys from the stems is dangerous too if kids are putting them in their mouth even without eating/swallowing.

The Giant Hogweed mentioned above is the same family and is toxic to touch (causes blisters).

#8 looks a lot like Echium plantagineum to me!

And yes, those orange spots on the mallow are totally normal - it's Hollyhock rust, a fungal disease common to plants in the mallow family.

Way to go Cassie! You're a wild edibles super hero now. Definitely don't eat the "yarrow' though cause I agree with everyone else that it looks like hemlock.

Yeah sorry I haven't been super active on this thread. My landlord came over right after I posted this and mowed all my precious weeds! But before she did, I IDed the poison hemlock, because it indeed had the purple splotches.

Anywhoo, my other wild edibles are growing back. And in the meantime, I made boat loads of applesauce from the fallen apples from my neighbors tree that is seriously the tallest apple tree i've ever seen. It's too tall for me to reach the apples to harvest so i just have to wait til they fall.