Edible Plants native to Austin and Central Texas

 This is a excellent article about edible plants that are native to Austin and Central Texas.  Most of these plants can be found in the Hill Country also.  These are also pictures and the scientic names.

Edible plants native to Austin, TX

A few more which I didn't see mentioned in that article:  Canada Onion is our favorite onion for taste, although it is only available during cool parts of the year and goes completely dormant and disappears from view in the Summer.  The immature pods of Devil's Claw are edible, but need to be picked quite young before they get tough.  They're a little like a slightly bitter okra.  Cedar Elm produces huge quantities of seeds which can be cooked and eaten as a green vegetable.  They're also edible when mature but I haven't tried them that way yet.  Buffalo Gourd produces seeds which are delicious roasted, like pumpkin seeds.  The flesh of the gourd is very bitter though so you have to be careful to clean the seeds well.  Sotol has an edible stem that needs to be cooked for a long time.  

Devil's Claw taking over my garden:

Do you have thistle?  I think it grows all over Texas.  I just find out that it is edible.  I am trying to learn all about edible plants in case I get hungry enough to try eating them.

http://www.ediblewildfood.com/search-results.aspx?s1=thistle

I'm not sure if the article mentioned stinging nettle, we have it here.

I have a couple of stories about Buffalo Gourds.  I have allows called them sticky melons.

We built a deck where the steps ended about where a sticky melon had been growing.  Right where you step down the ground would always have an indention that we keep filling in with dirt.  Then the indention got a lot bigger and DH wondered what was going on.  I told him that the sticky melon root was decomposing.

I bought a gas range that was supposed to be new as it was only used about a month by a young couple that had broken up.  It looked new.  When we took the top off it was full of sticky melons, not a few but as many as could be crammed into that space.  They had all dried out and the only thing that was left was the rind and seeds.  I can only guess that the young man was mad and filled the stove as a joke due to the smell of the melons.

We mostly have non-native Thistles and we've sometimes eaten the leaf ribs as a cooked vegetable.  

I've tried to get Stinging Nettle to grow in my garden but so far no luck!  

The big root of Buffalo Gourd is supposed to contain edible starch, but I think the trouble of digging it up would not be worth the starch in it..

I've been cleaning loads of Cattail out of my little garden frog pond where I stupidly planted them.  They took over completely!  We've eaten them occasionally but I don't think they're particularly tasty and are somewhat fussy to prepare.  But they do have the advantage of growing easily if you have any kind of pond or tub of water.

These are quotes from the link I posted:

Some of our local native plants also have edible flowers. Any red Salvia flower is good to eat and we have four red ones native to the Austin area: Autumn Sage (Salvia greggii), Scarlet Sage (Salvia coccinea), Cedar Sage (Salvia roemeriana), and Big Red Sage (Salvia penstemonoides). Autumn Sage is a common landscaping plant so it should be easy to find, but be sure and choose plants with red, pink, or orange flowers. Autumn Sage comes in many varieties, but only those with flowers in the warm color range will be sweet. Salvia leaves can also be dried and used like culinary sage. A Salvia species native south and west of Austin, Blue Shrub Sage or Mejorana (Salvia ballotiflora), has long been used in this way.

here is another fruit that is delicious but that I hesitate to mention because of its spines: Prickly Pear. There are two main local species: Plains Prickly Pear (Opuntia macrorhiza) and Cactus Apple (Opuntia engelmannii). The late summer fruits can be delicious, tasting kind of like watermelon, but the spines are dangerous. You must not only remove the large, visible spines, but also the almost invisible ones called glochids. This is best done by singeing the surface of the fruit over a flame and then peeling all the skin off. Prickly Pear fruits were prized by indigenous people. The pads are edible and nutritious, too, known as nopales and nopalitos and often sold in Latin American markets, but they must be handled with extreme caution when preparing your own.

A common native plant often used in gardens is Turkscap (Malvaviscus arboreus). One of its Spanish names is Manzanilla, because it has an edible, thumbnail-sized fruit that is red and tastes sort of like apples, appearing in late summer. You’ll see these growing wild all over town.

This is growing all over our yard right now. (January)
It taste pretty good.

Yes!  We have it also, it seems to love the recent weather.  It had no trouble surviving the hard freeze.

We don't have any henbit.  About the only thing growing now that I knowis edible is plantain, though I have not tried it.

http://www.foragingtexas.com/2008/08/plantin.html

Anne Miller wrote:We don't have any henbit.  About the only thing growing now that I knowis edible is plantain, though I have not tried it.

http://www.foragingtexas.com/2008/08/plantin.html

I like to eat the plantain seed sprout things. They are tasty.

Here are some of the plants mentioned in the article, for identification purposes:

These are Winter Grapes - Vitis cinerea var. helleri




Chile Pequin - Capsicum annuum var. glabriusculum




River Plum - Prunus rivularis

I tried poke weed for the time a while back. It was very good cooked with bacon.
https://youtu.be/hypNtMayaCQ

Our goats and I enjoy bastard cabbage

https://youtu.be/IQWUFD3lG6M

I am aware of four cucurbits that grow wild in southeast Texas close to Austin: Cucurbita pepo ssp. texana (Texas wild squash), Cucurbita foetidissima (Buffalo gourd), Cucumis melo var. agrestis (wild muskmelon), and Citrullus lanatus var. citroides (Citron melon/ wild watermelon). The wild squash (Cucurbita spp.) may be bitter and soapy when fully ripe. I have heard that it is possible to leach out the bitter cucurbitacins from the seeds of wild squash by seeping them in an alkaline solution to make them safe to eat, but I have never tried this. The wild melons, however, should be a safer bet when ripe. I have never found any wild melons before though. I have read that citron melon is much firmer than regular watermelon. It is often pickled to make preserves or juiced as a source of water. The seeds of citron melon can also be roasted like pumpkin seeds. Below are some images in descending order of the wild cucurbits from Wikimedia Commons: Cucurbita pepo ssp. texana, Cucurbita foetidissima, Citrullus lanatus var. citroides, and Cucumis melo ssp. agrestis. bonap.org also has the ranges of these four cucurbits listed.

Thistle Lemonade
In blender,  Thistle leaves,  lemon,  sweetener. Strain through cloth! Yummy and green.

By now it should be watermelon season in Texas. I wouldn't be surprised if anyone down there has found any ripe citron melons (Citrullus lanatus var. citroides) as well. Here is an article on foraging citron melons in Florida by Greene Deane. It also has a recipe for citron melon preserves. It seems cows have a role in dispersing the seeds in pasture land since wild citron seeds often sprout from cow manure spread on the garden. Try looking in cow pastures and rangeland for the wild citron melons. You might just find some buffalo gourds or wild muskmelons there as well:

http://www.eattheweeds.com/citron-melons-abandoned-preserves-2/

Ryan, thanks for posting this info on these citron melons.  I really doubt that I have any on my property though I might keep an eye out when we are out and about as I would love to find them.

According to the article, it appears that some are bitter and some are not.  I am assuming they can be used like citron for cooking.  Also that article had some recipes for preserves.

Here are some pictures I found:

I was just reading up on a tree, more so found in the hill country, Naked Indian/Texas Madrone/Arbutus xalapensis.

Supposedly the berries taste good according to my short google search, but I don't believe them until I try it!
The leaves and bark are also medicinal!

Mesquite beans are edible. Here's a random recipe.

Chili petins & pecans are easily available at Blanco Shoals. Many more chilis are available just inside the southern entrance of Purgatory Nature Preserve & about half way up Dante's trail. Near the cliff.

The chilis at Blanco Shoals are by the big concrete blocks at the entrance & all the big trees just beyond are pecans. Small pecans, not the huge paper shell pecans. Be aware of wild pigs.

Also prickly pear & nopalitas. Those are everywhere in Centex.