How much wild food is growing in your yard? That garden you’re weedin’ could be a garden of eatin’! Put down your hori hori and encourage a little ethnobotany at home. Meet purslane, plantain, dandelion and chickweed, a few nutrient-dense denizens in Northwest yards.
From salads to salves, discover the surprising benefits these humble weeds freely give. Try them in tasty summer salads, teas or DIY natural remedies.
Taraxacum officinalis
With leaves reminiscent of lions’ teeth, the entirely edible dent de lion, or dandelion, is a frustratingly effortless perennial. It was brought on the Mayflower, likely for its medicinal uses and high vitamin C content.
Entirely Edible
Leaves, or “dandelion greens,” are similar in taste to endive or radicchio and contain six times the beta carotene of carrots. Roast roots for a coffee-esque hot drink. Boil flowers and leaves for a traditional tonic.
Historic Uses
This diuretic plant is said to relieve symptoms of gout, lower blood sugar, and stimulate the gall bladder and pancreas. Dandelion tea is an ancient hangover-blasting brew, as it’s detoxifying to the liver and renal system.
Plantago major, Plantago lanceolata
Entirely Edible
Young, tender leaves may be eaten raw in salads, while older (and bitterer) leaves are best in soups or sautéed like collard, kale & mustard greens. High-fiber flour can be made of dried, ground seeds.
Historic Uses
Plantain is antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory. Topically, it’s been used for soothing poultices. Internally, a plantain-root decoction is said to balance the gut, relieving diarrhea, dysentery and sour stomachs.
Portulaca oleracea
Entirely Edible
Leaves are the most commonly eaten portion of plant and taste peppery and tart. Used in Middle Eastern foods for millennia, this veg can be used to thicken soups or added to salads for a crunchy bite of flavor.
Historic Uses
Eating purslane may help with coughs, sore throats, tummy troubles and headaches. Externally, a purslane poultice may be used on bites, stings and more.
Trifolium repens, Trifolium pratense
Red and white clovers are in the legume family. Like its beany brethren, this pea without a pod does what most plants can’t: Breathe. Clover is a nitrogen-fixing plant, meaning it pulls nitrogen from the air and puts it into the soil, where its stored in bacteria nodules, called rhizomes.
Entirely Edible
With pleasant-tasting leaves, it may be eaten raw or cooked. Clover flowers, however, contain most of this plant’s magic. Fresh or dried, flowers and leaves are used for a host of ailments.
Historic Uses
Clover flowers were prized for their pain-relieving, antiseptic and blood-thinning properties. Colds, coughs, fevers, gout, aches and eye maladies often were treated with clover-flower tea.
Stellaria media
You don’t have to have feathers to appreciate this garden green. Growing low in luscious mats, chickweed has small, white flowers with five deeply split petals. Grab a handful for the chickens, too—they love the stuff.
Entirely Edible
Chickweed is comparative in flavor to iceberg lettuce or young corn. Use this mild-tasting plant raw, as you would sprouts, or cooked, as you would spinach. Pick between May and July.
Historic Uses
A cooling, anti-inflammatory plant, a poultice of boiled chickweed often was applied to draw out infections in abscesses, boils and carbuncles. When eaten, it’s a gentle laxative. .
Rumex acetosella
Along with culinary species French and garden sorrel, sheep’s sorrel is part of the buckwheat family. Thriving in acidic soil, this hardy perennial’s leggy stalks are peppered with deep, crimson blooms spring through fall.
Entirely Edible
Leaves of this detoxifying herb add a strong, lemony flavor to salads. Its sweet-sour berries are brown, glossy and very small, and can be eaten raw. Cook in soups or sauces to add a zippy tang.
Historic Uses
A tea of sheep’s sorrel leaves is a kidney-cleansing diuretic and reduces fevers and inflammation. A tea from its roots is said to treat menstrual cramps and constipation. Boiled leaves make a sort of sour sorrel-ade.