Submitted by Felix Lufkin. Yucca is a perennial herb of the agave family. It is native to the American Southwest and Central America. It can tolerate low temperatures and prefers well drained, sunny, sandy sites. Because it was a staple edible and of its utility, yucca was a very important plant to the human societies who shared its range. For those of us who live in the northeast, it could play a more important role in our lives, if we only got to know it a little better. Yucca has a number of lily-like bladed, fibrous leaves, and a central flower stalk which can grow to 6′ or more. Its flowers are white, sweet smelling, and fruit to green, 3-sectioned pods full of small disk shaped, crinkly and flat black seeds. The fruits dry to a papery brown husk. All of its body parts are exceptionally useful to humans. Yucca root Its taproot, which looks like burdock, but fatter — is brown and smooth. In its native range it grows to a large size and is a prized starchy root veggie. Here in the north, where it grows more slowly, we probably shouldn’t eat its root unless we have a lot of it. The root is rich like a potato, good boiled, fried, or both. The root’s saponins (broken down by slow cooking) can be made into soap or anti-dandruff shampoo. Its leaves can be made into very strong rope. Some varieties, like ‘Adam’s needle’, have a sharp tip which can be peeled down the leaf, yielding a needle with a string already attached. Cut the leaves close to their base with a knife (just try to rip them!). Pound them between non-abrasive smooth rocks or rolling pins, until the green leafy part breaks away showing the paler fibers inside. Rinse this out periodically until you just have the fibers. Now twist as you would milkweed or anything else. You can also weave the split leaves into mats. Here’s a video on how to make cordage out of agave. fire-starting hand drill kit The stalks are one of the best materials for friction fires. Ever wanted to start a fire by rubbing sticks together? It is totally do-able, empowering, and straightforward! Yucca will be the easiest plant to try with. The stalks are green and flexible. When they dry to a brownish grey, cut or crack them off at the bottom. Cut as long of a straight piece as you can, and cut the lower, thicker end straight across. Cut off any side twigs that are sticking off and try to smoothen it up a bit as you’ll be rubbing this between your hands. This stalk can be used for a hand drill – try to get one as least as long as you arm. Shorter, hotdog sized stalks are good for bow-drill spindles, and once those get short, you can use the plugs for pump drills. Since yucca coals ignite at ~400 degrees lower than other woods they are much more generous for friction fires!Here’s a video about how to do this. The flower is an edible vegetable, though bitter to some. It can be blended into soapy water for cleaning or shampoo. The fruits can be peeled and baked for a vegetable. The seeds, gathered from the fruits, were once soaked, sprouted, and cooked as protein rich gruel by natives. We can do this too. Yucca is a great perennial, multi-function nectary addition to a garden, and is commonly planted in parks, graveyards and lawns. It slowly spreads. Because of its deep root, yucca can be hard to transplant unless you get deep under it with a spade. Keep your eyes peeled for it, and see if you can get to know it better by trying these skills. References: Plants for a Future database Wikipedia.com: Yucca angustifolium Felix Lufkin teaches nature class and wild edibles at K-12 schools, and is working to plant orchards and gardens in public places in the Pioneer Valley. He also offers an on-site butchering service and instruction in central New England. Submitted by Felix Lufkin Milkweed in flower Milkweed (Asclepias spp.) is a great wildflower to make friends with – offering a number of delightful, tasty and nutritious foods at many times of the year. She is a well-kept secret and it’s time more people got to know her better. An early succession plant, milkweed seeds sail with the wind to new areas where landslides, fires, beavers, humans, or insects have recently killed an area of late succession forest. They provide habitat and food for many insects like bees, butterflies and spiders, as well as their predators. Many pollinators enjoy milkweed’s sweet nectar, and her leaves are the sole source of food for Monarch butterfly children (who make their own poison, not by concentrating milkweed’s sap, which is not poisonous on its own). Milkweed stalks Milkweed is a perennial herb growing 4-6 feet high. Each year her stalks poke out of the ground in the spring – smooth skinned with opposite, simple, ovoid leaves with smooth edges and reddish veins. Her sap is bright white, containing sticky latex, recognizable in spring from the wound of a gently torn leaf. Flower buds appear in May as clusters of small pale green buds, maturing to large, plum sized clusters, pink to purple in color, each the size of a wild blueberry and looking like a small origami package. They open into firm and neat, white and pink, 5-petaled flowers resembling gummy starfish slightly smaller than M&Ms with a delightful, sweet jasmine fragrance. Harvested buds Once pollinated the flowers become tiny, pale green, gherkin-like fruits, growing in size to fat okra pods in August. Spiny and soft, they are filled with soft white unripe seeds, like spaghetti squash. The pods ripen later in the fall, getting tougher and when open reveal a multitude of fruits folded together – each a small tuft of silk with a brown and black seed attached looking like a flattened tick. As the pods die, the seeds drift out and can be blown great distances by the wind. After settling, the seeds drops off the silk, spending winter under the dead grass and hatching in the spring. Thus, the plant’s body spreads across the Earth. By November the above ground portion dies, drying to a pale black with grey and white streaks, bare of leaves, and stands as a skeleton stalk for a while before falling down to the earth again. Mature milkweed pods Most field guides warn about milkweed’s bitter taste and poisonous constituents. Sam Thayer, in ‘A Forager’s Harvest’ , clarifies this as a case of mistaken identity where foraging hero Euell Gibbons gathered a ‘mess’ of dogbane, and even after many changes of boiling water, pronounced it unpalatable. Since then, other authors have perpetuated this misconception. Thanks to Thayer, folks are rediscovering milkweed as a delicious vegetable as tender and tasty as spinach – requiring no special processing or boiling to remove bitterness (of which there is none), or toxicity (of which there is none). Comparing milkweed to its toxic cousin dogbane is easy. Dogbane’s central stalk branches into several sub stalks, where milkweed’s is single and straight. Dogbane’s stalks are thinner like pencils and are green to reddish brown – while milkweed’s are thicker, like magic markers with green skin in summer and black in the winter. Dogbane’s compound flowers are more dispersed, empty and whitish yellow, while milkweed’s are pink and purple and fairly compact. Dogbane’s fruit is thin and long like vanilla beans, milkweed’s are thick and fat like okra. Dogbane’s leaves are thin, short and bitter where milkweed’s are wide, long, and pleasant tasting. Milkweed flowers Dogbane flowers Milkweed is food – delicious cooked or raw, and safe to eat without any processing.
Milkweed, Part 2: String & Rope will be posted next week… Felix Lufkin teaches nature class and wild edibles at K-12 schools, and is working to plant orchards and gardens in public places in the Pioneer Valley. He also offers an on-site butchering service and instruction in central New England. |
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