[Granville-Hough] 21 Sep 2009 - Wild Foods

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Wild Onions, Chives, Leeks, and Ramp.
We had a form of wild onion we sometimes encountered in the Sullivan’s 
Hollow woods. It were quite tasty and we would stop and eat it. I cannot 
say that it was a wild onion, or a garden onion where birds had spread 
seeds into the woods. Or it could have been a chive plant, or a leek 
plant. I am quite sure they were not ramp plants, which grow in hidden 
places in the old Cherokee domain of Eastern Tennessee, Georgia, and 
North Carolina. Ramp has a strong odor, and you eat the plant with 
braggadocio. Then for two or three days, everyone else who comes in 
twenty feet of your breath also knows you have eaten ramp. But our 
Sullivan’s Hollow plant, whatever it was, would fit into any onion use 
we know about.
I once read about Harry Truman, AFTER he was President, attending the 
Annual Ramp Festival in Eastern Tennessee. He had a few bites just for 
the photo op. (I suppose his family isolated him for a few days afterwards.)

Honey Locust.
I never found a way to harvest honey locust without including all the 
insects and worms, so I would just get a taste from some untouched 
portion of the pod. The honey locust pods were 8 or 9 inches long and 
over an inch across. When the seeds were ripening, there was a sweet 
pulpy portion which dried up as the seeds matured. Finally the dried 
seed pod popped opened at the end, sort of peeling back as the seeds 
fell out. I believe the seeds were also edible if properly cooked as 
dried beans. Reflecting back on it, I think one could cut the ripe pods 
and put them in a wash pot and boil them, mashing the pods until they 
were free of all their pulp. Then skim off the empty pods, insects, and 
debris, and cook the juice down to a syrup. Then you would have honey 
locust syrup. The hogs could have the cooked beans and hulls.

Paw-Paw.
Our native papaya was the paw-paw. I only knew of one plant on our farm, 
and I never got to a ripened fruit before the birds. I do know it 
smelled just like commercial papaya. The Paw-Paw grew up the Mississippi 
Valley into Illinois, and I believe there was once a song about "Way 
down yonder in the paw-paw patch..."

Mesquite.
We did not have any native mesquite, but I once suggested it in a 
student seminar at Mississippi State. I knew it had been a food source 
for the Southwest Indians, and could be eaten much like snap beans or 
later as dried seeds. It grew quite readily in Mississippi

Sheep Sorel aka Sheep Showers
I discussed this delightful salad food separately, but it should be 
included in any compilation of wild food.

Pokeweed Shoots.
This potherb was the new shoots from the roots of the Pokeberry plant. I 
have discussed it separately. Cathy Ballard tells me that this plant has 
spread to Indiana where it grows in any empty space. Birds spread the 
seeds. I wonder if they eat it there as a potherb.

Mushrooms.
We never touched them as we knew some were poison, and we did not know 
which were which. Mississippi had a natural climate for mushroom growth. 
If you got lost, you could live on mushrooms, but lost people frequently 
died from poison mushrooms. That is probably why we were so afraid of them.

Berries.
Naturally we had blackberries, dewberries, spring huckleberries 
(blueberries) and fall huckelberries. In December, my friend, Harold 
Hopkins has a discussion on fruits and berries, including the mayhaw 
berry. I do not recall ever eating a mayhaw berry, but they apparently 
grew along streams and ponds. Stock ponds became popular after WW II, 
and mayhaws may have grown at some of them.

Nuts.
We had hickory nuts of at least 10 kinds, wild pecans and black walnuts, 
chinquapins, and some pine nuts In former days, hogs fattened on the 
longleaf pine seeds, generally called pine mast

Acorns.
We had numerous kinds of acorns, but we never learned to process them 
for food. I am sure it could have been done.

Fruits
There were plums, crabapples, muscadines, wild grapes, scuppernongs, but 
our wild black cherries were poison. They contained hydrocyanic acid 
which was fatal to livestock

Sassafras.
We only used the roots for making sassafras tea, but it was a delightful 
winter drink I have mentioned it several times.

Tread Salve.
This plant was a disaster for bare feet, as it had prickles and tiny 
hairs which stung to the touch. However, it did produce small yellow 
berries which could be gathered, crushed, and made into tea. It was a 
medicinal plant for poor folks, used for whatever ailed you. If you felt 
poorly and had tread salve tea, you would then feel so much worse that 
your former state seemed pretty good. It may have had some medicinal 
quality, or it could have given a placebo effect. Some people 
recommended it highly.

Cassava.
I once was plowing on a hillside and unearthed a large fibrous white 
root which led to a plant which looked like a sweet potato. No one could 
tell me what is was. I think it could have been some relative of the 
Sweet Potato which had gotten a foothold on this particular hillside. 
Pictures of cassava look much like this plant root, but it was likely 
something else. Cassava requires special cooking techniques in order to 
remove the poison in the roots.