Everybody say scuppernog!

Scuppernog scuppernog SCUPPERNOG!  It’s kind of a hilarious word, right?

A couple weeks back my husband and I went to visit his family in the South.  While visiting my fabulous sister-in-law’s family in Raleigh NC, we wandered at length along the bike/run/walk path near her home, which was heavily overhung with greenery.  A generous helping of the plants along the way were total unknowns to me, including the scuppernog, a close cousin to our usual grapes, and  variant of muscadines (Vitis rotundifolia), which are native to the American southeast.

Small clusters of unripe scuppernogs, Vitis rotundifolia.

The scuppernogs were under-ripe (when they’re ripe they’re larger and bronze-colored), but we found clusters of them growing on vines that were a dead ringer for normal grape vines here and there.  My husband and sister-in-law recognized them right away, and their identity was further confirmed by the large single seeds we found inside.

Scuppernogs are, I gather, favored for their jelly, rather than as a raw snack, and muscadine wine is a local treat.

 

Toxic and toothsome: a tale of two wild Asteraceae

Toxic Interloper:

Not long ago, I planted a bunch of coriander/cilantro seeds in my back yard.  When the seedlings emerged, I found not only cilantro, but also this:

Not cilantro as it should have been, but common groundsel. Don’t try to fool me with your toothed leaves–I can totally see you’re sending up flower buds already.

Senecio vulgaris, known as common groundsel to me, but also as Old-man-of-the-spring. It’s just about everywhere right now–I’m seeing it along roadsides, in gardens, at the park and clawing its way through sidewalk tiles.  It starts off with lobed leaves and an emerging crown of flower buds that’s visible really early, and ends up with nearly-closed yellow flowers, and fuzzy gray seed heads like tiny dandelions (whence the “Old man” name–it looks a bit like a tousled gray head of hair).

April showers bring fruitful foraging!

It’s been a while since I had a foraging-themed post, but a lovely trip through Redwood Regional Park in Oakland with JYL and TC two weekends ago yielded some good material.  JYL has a fantastic foodie blog (willblogforfood), and she’s posted a nice slideshow of all our various wild food sightings that you should check out, with some great pics from her macro lens.

To recap some highlights, we saw berry plants in abundance (thimbleberries, red-flowered currants, blackberries, and wild strawberries), but while the strawberries, blackberries and currants were in flower, nothing was yet in fruit.  So stay tuned for a follow-up post when we make a return foraging trip to collect those guys in June.

Bay trees were everywhere, some in flower.  We saw lots of mustard, and gathered some greens from that, and quite a few young fiddlehead ferns.  A few things that I was certain we would see, some of the guarantees of California wild food, were surprisingly absent: namely fennel, wild radishes, and oxalis/sorrel (even though we went to Redwood park specifically because I was sure we’d see redwood sorrel! We found it in a random yard instead).  Since I’ve posted about all those things before, no harm done.

The highlight of the foraging was probably miner’s lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata, also sometimes called winter purslane), which was rampant along the side of the trail.

Miner's lettuce, Calytonia perfoliata. The large, round, single leaves (bracts) with small white flowers in the center are unmistakeable. Photo courtesy of Jen Lee at willblogforfood.

I grew up eating its distinctive, spinach-like leaves (actually bracts, to the botanists) as a kid, but in San Diego and Riverside counties they were usually the size of a quarter.  After the bouts of late rain we’ve had this spring, the bracts at Redwood park (and also all around Stanford), are nearly the size of my palm.  They also have great texture–delicate and juicy just like young spinach, but with a milder flavor.  I gathered a large ziploc full of the stuff, and brought it home to try out on my husband, who turned out to be a big fan.

Miner's lettuce washed and ready to eat!

Miner’s lettuce is easy to recognize as a plant: the round, cuplike bracts emerge singly from the basal rosette on long stems up to 10″ long, and centered on the top of each bract is a small stem bearing a little cluster of white flowers (the true leaves are thin and triangular, and hide out in the basal rosette at the bottom of the plant).  The whole plant is edible, but under rare conditions they can accumulate toxic oxalates, so as with any wild plant, after positive identification you should eat small amounts first until you know how it will make you feel.  I’ve eaten lots of this stuff from several counties across California, and find it to be one of the most palatable and reliable raw wild greens.  It’s high in vitamin C–the gold rush miners for whom it’s named ate it to prevent scurvy.  Miner’s lettuce favors damp places with high to intermediate shade and poorly drained soil.  Roadsides in shady areas are a good bet, or in moist back yards.

We separated the bracts from the stems and washed them thoroughly, and used them in place of lettuce in a couple salads and also in chicken tacos.  There’s still a huge amount of miner’s lettuce growing around campus right now, so I plan to bring home more while it lasts.

Chicken tacos with cheese, homemade pico de gallo and miner's lettuce. Delicious!

Bon apetit!

A collection of sham-shamrocks

I spent a lot of my weekend looking at clusters of three heart-shaped leaves.  You may have done the same, possibly (just possibly) in the company of a Guiness or something similar.  And in the course of all that shamrock-ogling, I became slightly vexed that the shamrock’s  officially recognized botanical representative is Trifolium dubium, the common suckling clover.  Dubium, indeed.  Its leaves are dinky, and they’re not even consistently heart-shaped.  So for your consideration, I hereby nominate the various species of Oxalis (wood sorrel) that are overtaking my yard as shamrock alternatives.

White Oxalis purpurea (this guy was planted, the rest are wild). The leaves are perfect hearts, but kinda small.

Oxalis pes-capre, or Bermuda buttercup. You might remember these from "Roadside edibles on my run." They're really more notable for their fluorescent-yellow flowers.

Oxalis stricta, yellow-flowered oxalis, sometimes sports reddish leaves like these, bringing a little variety to all that green.

And finally, Oxalis oregana, redwood sorrel, whose leaves are the size of a silver dollar. Go ahead and tell me this isn't more like what comes to mind when you think "shamrock" than some dopey little clover.

Two book reviews: Edible and Useful Plants of California, and Nature’s Garden.

Last weekend I got two books about edible plants and foraging, and after having a chance to give them both a good perusal, I’m excited about each of them but for different reasons.  They’re actually nicely complementary: some of the weaknesses of one are strengths in the other.  This is a longish post, so here’s the take-home message for the impatient: I’m really glad I bought both, but if I had to recommend just one, I’d go for Nature’s Garden.

1) Edible and Useful Plants of California.  Charlotte Bringle Clarke, 1978.

The first thing worth noting about this book is that it’s older than I am, which means it’s been around for a long time and has been followed by a couple generations of foragers; in fact it’s one of the references for the second book I got.  Since all the same plants are available now as in the 70s, the publication year isn’t really an issue–it isn’t as if the content has gone out of date.

Solid field guide to local foodstuffs. Sadly, the photos on the cover are a sizable fraction of all the photos in this otherwise excellent book.

Positives:

-Regional specificity and completeness: All the plants are found wild in California, and there are many, many entries.  All the wild CA plants I’ve highlighted so far (manzanita, nettle, fennel, radish, etc) are in there, and I’ve been delighted to find that quite a few plants I recognize are in there that I never knew were edible.  Field trips galore!

-Organization: She’s broken the book down into sections by type of location (mountains, coastal, urban, etc.), which will be handy for foraging.

-Recipes!  For more than half of the plants mentioned, there’s a recipe given, and sometimes there are several.  I’m already looking forward to fennel seed cookies,  fancy nettles with bacon, oxalis lemonade, and a few dozen more for plants I’ve only ever eaten raw, or have never tried.

-Preparation and harvesting tips: It’s quite clear that she approaches plants with food in mind (as if the title and recipes weren’t a giveaway).  She’s conscientious about highlighting which part of the plant is edible and how to prepare it.

-Glossary and index: there’s a very good section about nomenclature for different parts of plants.  The index is sound, with entries for common name, Latin/binomial name, and use.

-Physical size: this is a little book: about 5×7″ and less than 200 pages long.  Easy to put in a pocket (well…maybe for guys) or bring on a backpacking trip.

Negatives:

-Pictures.  There are a handful of photographs on the front cover and a few pages of smallish photos in the center of the book, but otherwise all the plants are represented with line drawings (or in some cases, no picture at all).  This is insufficient for gathering unfamiliar plants: you have to be absolutely sure a wild plant is what you think it is before you eat it.  Between things like iPhones and Google images, this is not a crippling limitation: once you know what name to look for it’s easy to find lots of pictures.  But you couldn’t just take this book off into the woods and be able to tell whether you have wild carrot or poison hemlock.

-Look a-likes (or lack thereof): many of the plants that are listed look similar to other, less palatable or even poisonous plants, and there’s very little attention given to what an edible plant could be mistaken for, and how to discriminate between possibilities.  There’s also little attention given to the pitfalls of particular plants: elderberry is delicious to some people, but can cause bad stomach aches in others, and should be sampled cautiously.  Cow parsnip is huge and can feed an army…unless you’re allergic to it and break out in blisters if you handle it.

-Organization: apart from breaking the plants down into regions where they grow, the entries seem pretty haphazard.  This is not such a problem because the index is good.

Neutral/Other:

-Historical info.  There’s quite a lot of discussion about which Native American tribes used the plant and for what.  Because I’m mostly interested in the book as a food guide, this isn’t so much a plus for me, but it may be for others.

-Other uses: if you want plants to make into cloth or bowls or boats, you can use this book for that, too.  Uses for plants other than edibility are given in many cases.

2) Nature’s Garden: A guide to identifying, harvesting and preparing edible wild plants.  Samuel Thayer.  2010.

The cover has a fair sampling of the breadth of content: Blueberries, walnuts, prickly pears, oxalis...so many delicious things described with lots of pictures, careful thoroughness and a handful of funny stories.

Samuel Thayer has two books: Nature’s Garden is the sequel to Forager’s Harvest.  Based on how awesome Nature’s Garden is, I’m eager to get Forager’s Harvest as well.  (I just can’t help giving a word of caution, though: if you mix these two titles up in your head like I did and go looking for Natural Harvest, that will lead you to a very different book.  Eww.)

Positives:

-Pictures!! There are many large photographs for almost all of the plants described.  In most cases he’s been careful to include pictures of several different parts of the plant, so you’ll have a clear image of the root, stem, leaf, flower, and fruit.

-Thorough harvesting tips. There are over 20 pages on acorns alone:  which species taste best, how to choose fresh acorns from old, how to spot weevil holes, several methods for how to crack them, grind them, leach them, dry them…it’s very complete.  If I wanted to get into eating acorns, I could confidently use this book to get me from tree to bread.  For all the plants in this book, he’s pretty conscientious about detailing which part to use, when it’s best to harvest, what differentiates a tasty example of the plant from a less-tasty one, and what tools to use to collect the best parts.

-Look a-likes: this is stellar.  For plants with dangerous look a-likes, he’s put in a ton of side-by-side pictures of each part of the plant, and binary guides for telling which is which.  I think anyone could confidently tell wild carrot from poison hemlock with this book.  Amazingly, I found out that something I’ve been avoiding my entire life, thinking it was deadly nightshade, is actually edible black nightshade.  Even for non-hazardous look a-likes there are helpful rules given for telling them apart: for example there’s a multi-part guide to telling apart all the edible members of the asteraceae family (dandelions, wild lettuce, chicory, salsify, etc).

-Glossary and index: like Clarke’s book, this book also has a very good guide (with pictures) to the names of plant parts, a glossary of all terms, and a good, cross-referenced index.

-Narrative style: It’s also a really fun read, with a chatty tone and plenty of anecdotes.  I literally laughed out loud at some of the foraging myths–like the wilderness traveler who patiently explained to his native guides that eating wild food was dangerous, and how they interpreted this as him being like “We can’t eat these bananas!  They are probably deadly false bananas!  Doesn’t this wilderness have any labels?”

Negatives:

-Limited content.  The trade-off for covering each plant in such awesome detail is that there just isn’t room to cover that many plants. I think there are about 40-50 edible plants mentioned, while I know there are actually many more than that in California alone, thanks to Clarke’s book.

-No geographical partitioning.  Samuel grew up in the Midwest, and all the plants he introduces can be found there, but only 75% can be found in CA.  Apart from giving this overall percentage of how many of these plants are found in each state, and general environmental preferences for each plant, he doesn’t usually really clarify which plants can be found where.

-No recipes.  Lots of detail on which part of the plant to pick and what kinds of food it’s good for (flour, cooked greens, seasoning…), but no real recipes.

-Physical size: it’s a bit bigger, maybe 7X9″–so it would totally fit in a backpack but not a pocket.

Whew!  Ok. That was a lot of words, but I hope you find them useful.  If anyone wants to get together for a foraging trip and try these books out I am totally game!

Relishing Radishes

Yesterday we took our dog to his favorite place, the Point Isabelle dog park, where the wild mustard and radishes are in full flower and the ground is currently soft enough to gather roots.  The radishes were so appealingly enormous that we hauled up a handful of them, and brought them home to sample. Since the bay area is liberally strewn with radishes right now, you might want to do the same!

Radish (R. sativus, foreground, large white flowers) and mustard (background, small clustered yellow flowers), growing wild at Point Isabelle. The ripe pointed silique (seed pod) of the radish is visible in the center of the picture.

Radish flowers can be purple, white, pink, or yellow. They grow singly or in small clusters, which is one way to tell yellow radish flowers from the more heavily-clustered flowers of mustard. Another difference is the siliques, which are young and thin on this radish, but still much larger than those of mustard.

Harvesting tips:

-Don’t eat the ones that have started to flower.  The roots will be tough and fibrous.  The root should snap with a nice crunch when you chop or break it.

-look for radishes with one whorl of large leaves (not a whole clump, which signifies an older plant), and take a look at the root underneath before you dig it up.  It should be smooth and white or pink–not woody and dry, although some good roots look dry on top, so peek down under soil level. We found some very nice large radishes with appealing leaves and roots growing under the protection of fennel plants, so that might be a place to start.

Radish greens that are good for eating, from a plant with a nice big healthy taproot.

-wash and scrub them extremely thoroughly when you get them home.  I even peeled them with a carrot peeler.

-break off the long tendril-y root tip.  It’s too fibrous to enjoy.

-If you plan on eating the greens (which are good if you like bitter greens; similar to beet greens), choose evenly-colored leaves, make sure you wash each leaf thoroughly, look for and remove any bad spots, and remove the stems.

The best (and biggest) of the radish greens and roots we collected.

I followed this recipe from food and wine magazine for roasted radishes and greens.  The roots were very good cooked this way–it cut the spicy isothiocyanate flavor, and gave them a nice crisp-tender texture.  The greens were good too, but a whole bowlful of bitter greens turns out to be a bit much for me.  Definitely good side-dish material.

The finished product: roasted radishes and radish greens. Very tasty!

Getting Nettled

One of the most prolifically adaptable plants around has got to be the stinging nettle, which is at home in Europe, Asia, North America and northern Africa.  It’s also one of the most prolifically named: Urtica dioica goes by several other species names that appear to be in a state of constant revision. (Maybe I can get a little help from the taxonomists on this one–is this a case of many plant morphologies with a single genome that people have confused for unique species, or is it a case of many people having something they call “stinging nettle” near them, that’s actually a range of species within the Urtica genus?)

By any alias, the stinging nettle is an interesting mix of benevolent and malicious–an intensely nutritious food plant chock full of iron, calcium, and vitamins A and K (see recipe below)…but guarding its benefits behind an armor of fine stinging spines.

Bays by the Bay

Anyone for soup?

No need to go to the store for bay leaves, California residents; we have our own more potent variety right here!

Like Laurus nobilis, the Mediterranean bay leaf we more commonly eat, the California bay is in the Lauraceae (Laurel) family, but bears the rather delightful Latin name Umbellularia californica.  It came out way ahead of the California poppy in nomenclature.  It’s the only member of the genus Umbellularia, which seems like kind of a shame.

Leaves of the California bay, Umbellularia californica. The bottom leaf is creased where I bent it to take a whiff.

California bay trees (aka California bay laurels, or California laurels) grow in the coastal woods around the bay here, but are more abundant further north where it’s more moist, and also in Oregon (where they’re called “Oregon myrtles” which seems a bit like cheating.  It’s U. californica after all, Oregon).  They’re also sometimes used as ornamentals, so I’m not sure whether the ones we’ve got growing at Stanford (where it’s drier) are wild or planted.

Some of the foliage sprouting from the base of a bay tree near the hospital Emergency parking lot.

In my opinion California bays don’t have a hugely distinctive morphology–the trees are tallish, the leaves are 2-4″ long, glossy, slim and pointed like other bay leaves.  The wood is supposed to be very fine as a tonewood for making guitars, but that’s not necessarily obvious as you saunter by the tree.  In the spring when they’re in flower they’re more obvious: the flowers are yellow-green and small, and grow right where the leaves meet the stems.  Later the fruit grows as a walnut-sized green oval (Wikipedia describes it as like a tiny avocado and that seems very apt).  But if you’re in doubt, just crinkle a leaf and smell it–the fragrance is unmistakable.

A stately bay tree towers above the path near the Stanford mausoleum. There are a few more tucked in behind the mausoleum, too.

And you can eat it!

You can use California bay leaves as a flavoring, but I can vouch that they’re much stronger than store-bought bay leaves, so experiment with caution–use half a leaf to start where you would normally use 1 or 2.  The fruit is also edible, but I haven’t tried it personally.

Extra nitty-gritty: a note of caution to migraineurs or other headache sufferers

Unfortunately, the fragrance of the California bay isn’t universally loved, and for some people it’s downright noxious, leading to the nickname “headache tree.”  The compound responsible for this effect is a monoterpene ketone called Umbellulone.

Umbellulone: shortcut to a headache

In a recent paper, Italian neurobiologists investigated the basis for headaches caused by Umbellulone, and found that its inhalation triggered pain in rats by stimulating trigeminal ganglion neurons via the pain receptor ankyrin 1/TRP1A.  A similar response was evoked from other headache triggers like cigarette smoke, chlorine, and formaldehyde.  So if you’re headache-prone, take a cautious whiff before you stick some in your food.  Speaking as a migraineur myself, I’ve never found bay to be a trigger, but scents aren’t generally triggers for me and I’d hate to have any of you guys knocked into an attack by incautious bay-huffing.

Want more details? Here’s the reference:

Nassini R, Materazzi S, Vriens J, Prenen J, Benemei S, De Siena G, la Marca G, Andrè E, Preti D, Avonto C, Sadofsky L, Di Marzo V, De Petrocellis L, Dussor G, Porreca F, Taglialatela-Scafati O, Appendino G, Nilius B, & Geppetti P (2011). The ‘headache tree’ via umbellulone and TRPA1 activates the trigeminovascular system. Brain : a journal of neurology PMID: 22036959

Poppies part deux: taxonomical embarrassment

Botanical illustrators go crazy for poppies, so when I was looking for pictures to put in Monday’s post, there was one particular botanical illustration of Papaver somniferum I was looking for–one I’ve seen in maybe a dozen places, so I thought it must be the iconic, quintessential opium poppy illustration.  And I spent like half an hour on Google images, digging through variations on “Papaver somniferum red,” Papaver somniferum botanical,” Papaver somniferum painting…drawing…red…poppy…opium poppy red…opium poppy drawing….aaaarrggghhh!  Couldn’t find it anywhere.

But! I knew I had it in one of my botanical books at home.  So once I got back, I pulled out my copy of Wilfrid Blunt’s “The Illustrated Herbal,” found “poppy” in the index, turned the page, and cried out to JMG: “Ha!  See!  It’s right here, by Rinio!  Why was this not findable in Google?? Everybody loves this painting, it’s like the perfect painting of an…oh.  OOOOOhhhh.  It’s a corn poppy.  Well, dammit.”

Rinio's "Papaver rhoeas," the corn poppy. Not an opium poppy, it turns out.

Corn poppies are the ones from the poem “Flander’s fields” (the WWI poem you may have been forced to memorize in high school).  They grow wild in much of Europe.  And while the deep evolutionary conservation of alkaloid biosynthesis machinery in the Papaveraceae means they probably make a bit of the opiates their sibling species is known for, it doesn’t count as an opium poppy.  Hrmph.

In my defense, they look awfully darn similar.  As far as I can tell the main differences are the anther distribution and color in the center of the flower, and the size and roundedness of the seed capsule.  The foliage looks more feathery in the corn poppy too, but I think this varies among subtypes of the two species.

Why I am not a taxonomist: Opium poppies, Papaver somniferum, var "cherry glow" for purchase from Capital Gardens in the UK.

Roadside edibles on my run

Apart from botanical pursuits, another hobby of mine is running, and on Sunday mornings I can generally be found toiling along the San Francisco Bay trail somewhere between the Emeryville marina and Point Isabelle.  It’s flat and paved and pretty, and it’s also just about drowning in edible CA wild plants.  Granted, a fennel, sorrel, and mustard green salad isn’t generally what I’m craving on a long run, but it’s still nice to know that if one of my legs spontaneously dropped off (which sometimes feels possible, in the later miles) I wouldn’t starve.  This Sunday I was feeling sluggish, so I took the opportunity to take a few breaks and snap some plant pics.

Pretty nice view, right? If you squint you can see the Golden Gate bridge along the left.

Bermuda buttercup, Oxalis pes-caprae (aka buttercup oxalis, yellow oxalis, or yellow sorrel)

Buttercup oxalis. Light and lemony.

Without the flowers, oxalis looks very like oversized clover, with shamrock-shaped leaves.  There are several varieties of oxalis/wood sorrel that grow in CA (we have some red sorrel in my backyard), but this is the most ubiquitous, and sun-loving. The leaves and silky flowers have a nice lemony taste.  The long stems under the flowers are more sour and fleshy, as kids my brother and I used to chew on them.  Buttercup oxalis generally flowers in early spring around here, but it’s been eerily dry and mild this winter, so they’re coming out precociously.  The flowers are also strongly phototropic, so I kept getting in my own light trying to take pictures.

Two brassicates:

Wild mustard (Hirschfeldia incana, formerly Brassica geniculata)

Wild mustard. The flowers are a bit sparse at this time of year, but the plants are everywhere.

Not actually native to California, mustard was probably introduced from Europe in the missions era, and now it’s widespread, verging on invasive.  The young leaves have a peppery flavor (a bit like arugula) that’s nice in salads, although the older leaves are a little too tough to enjoy.  They’re also good cooked, like you would for beet greens or spinach.

Wild  radish (Raphanus raphanistrum and R. sativus hybrids)

Wild radish

These greens are also edible (at least when cooked), but I’ve never tried them so I can’t advocate for their palatability.  The plants (especially without flowers) look very similar to those of mustard, but a bit more bushy, and the flowers (which can be yellow, white, pink or purple) are larger, and come up on sturdier stems than the long wispy ones of mustard.  I think the roots are edible (if the plants are young and the roots haven’t gotten too fibrous)–they’re the same genus and sativus is the same species as store-bought radishes–but I’m not totally sure on that so unless you’re feeling adventurous and forgiving don’t go digging up a whole bunch of them for lunch.

Fennel (Anise) (Foeniculum vulgare)

One of a few thousand fennel plants I passed on my run. These big ones are too woody for eating, except for the youngest leaves.

Newly sprouted fennel leaves are the tastiest!

This is the same stuff you would buy in the store; it was introduced to California from southern Europe at least 120 years ago and now is an invasive weed (in some places, like Catalina Island, it has spread rampantly and outcompeted most of the local flora).  Despite its ecological bad rep, the feathery young leaves are delicious IMO, with a sweet, slightly licorice flavor.  I nibble on them a lot when I’m outside.  The bulbs from younger plants can be cooked just like store-bought fennel (old plants will be too tough and woody).  The seeds have a very strong licorice flavor, and are nice to chew on if that’s a taste you like.

Manzanita (Arctostaphylos sps.)

Honey-flavored manzanita flowers

A closer look at manzanita flowers.

These particular bushes are almost certainly planted, but manzanita grows wild in mountain and chaparral regions of CA.  The clustered bell-shaped flowers are pink or white and have a sweet honey-like flavor.

Rosemary

I know I know; not wild, but rosemary likes our warm dry weather, and flourishes around here.  The bushes along the trail have an orangey-yellowish tinge (maybe from all the salty bayfront wind?) that contrasts prettily with the light purple flowers.  I sometimes steal a few sprigs for cooking at home.

Enough rosemary to flavor a farmful of chickens!

Blackberry (Rubus armeniacus, see David’s comment below…)

A lonely blackberry flower in January (also kinda hard to see. I'll have to get better at this plant photography business)

This proliferates all over northern California (although I will own up and say that I’m not totally clear on my blackberry/marionberry/loganberry/ollalieberry subtypes, so I’m very open to clarification or correction about which type grows wild in Berkeley/Oakland…anybody know for sure?).  There are a couple of thick tangles near the Berkeley marina.  It’s not at its best in winter, with the canes all died back and bare, but I found an anachronistic flower.  I’ve made pies and crisps from these over the years—when they have plenty of sun and water the berries are lush and sweet, but on under-developed plants they can be small and kind of flavorless, with the seeds being too noticeable to really enjoy.

Here’s an approximate map of where I found today’s collection.  I left out oxalis, fennel, mustard and radish, because they’re basically everywhere.  Cesar Chavez park is full of all of them.

An approximate guide to roadside edibles (minus the ones that grow everywhere).

Anybody found any other notable edible plants out along the trail, or near the parks?  I’d love to be introduced to new ones!