Showing posts with label Fish Poison. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fish Poison. Show all posts

Agave

Scientific Name(s): Agave spp.
Abundance: rare
What: flowers, stalks, leaves, body/root, sap
How: flowers are cooked; flower stalks are roasted; sap is fermented (woo hoo!); leaves are cooked; body/root is slow roasted.
Where: dry areas, landscaping
When: all year
Nutritional Value: Calories
Dangers: Raw agave juice can cause long-lasting burns to skin, eyes, and other sensitive tissues. Be careful when cutting this plant so as not to splatter this juice on you. These plants also contain large quantities of saponins (soap).

Medicinal Summary:
Leaf Pulp - antibacterial; anti-inflammatory; wound-healing (poultice)

Leaf Arrangement: Rosette formation, with leaves emerging from a central point at the plant’s base.

Leaf Shape: Lanceolate, thick, and fleshy, typically ranging from 2 to 6 feet in length.

Leaf Venation: Leaves display parallel venation, typical of monocots.

Leaf Margin: Margins are often armed with sharp spines or teeth.

Leaf Color: Varies from green to blue-green, sometimes with variegation or lighter markings.

Flower Structure: Produces a tall, branched inflorescence, with numerous small flowers on each branch; the flowering stalk can be up to 30 feet tall.

Flower Color: The flowers are usually yellow or white, depending on the species.

Fruit: The fruit is a capsule or occasionally a berry, containing black or brown seeds.

Seed: Seeds are flat, black, and oval, varying in size but generally small.

Stem: The stem is short and thick, primarily serving as the base for the leaf rosette; elongates significantly when flowering.

Hairs: Leaves are generally smooth, without significant hair presence.

Height: Leaf rosettes typically reach 2 to 5 feet in height, with flower stalks growing up to 30 feet during blooming.

Agave1

Agave1

Agave flower stalk.
Agave2

Texas Distribution, attributed to U. S. Department of Agriculture. The marked counties are guidelines only. Plants may appear in other counties, especially if used in landscaping.
AgaveTX

North American Distribution, attributed to U. S. Department of Agriculture.
Agave

Looking like a cross between a cactus and a squid, slow-growing agave plants are found wild the arid Southwest but also as a decorative landscaping plant all over Texas and the South. Mature agave can stretch up to 16’ across and send flower stalks 10’ or more into the sky.

Agave plants are a regular smorgasbord of food, though all parts of the plant except for the sap must be cooked in some manner to make them sweet and destroy their bitter-tasting saponins. Unlike most wild edible plants, when harvesting agave you want to find the biggest, oldest plants as these will have the most sugar. Traditionally the flowers and leaves were boiled or roasted. After removing the leaves the body & root should be slow roasted, often for two days, to release its sugars. The sweet flesh is chewed off the fibrous body/root. Flower stalks are also roasted, but for shorter time as they are smaller. Note that removing the flower stalk will kill the plant. After roasting the food can be dried and stored for later use.

If the top of the agave plant is removed but the root left in the ground sap will flow up for hours. Collect and ferment this sap to form a weak tequila. A sweet syrup can also be pressed from the roasted body & root of agave. This syrup forms the basis for mescal alcohol. The seeds can be toasted then ground into a flour.

Uncooked roots contain high levels of saponins, a soap-like compound which will lather in soft water and can be used for washing. This soap was also used by natives to kill fish by tossing pounded globs of root into small ponds. The soap screws up the functioning of fishes' gills, causing them suffocate and float to the surface.

Fibers in the leaves can be used for cordage. Pound the fleshy leaves between two logs to separate the fibers from pulp, then braid into rope.

Warning: The moist, fleshy interior of the leaves is somewhat acidic and can cause permanent eye damage.


Buy my book! Outdoor Adventure Guides Foraging covers 70 of North America's tastiest and easy to find wild edibles shown with the same big pictures as here on the Foraging Texas website.

Black Walnut

Scientific name: Juglans nigra
Abundance: common
What: nuts, sap
How: nuts raw, cooked, picked, or tinctured; sap boil to syrup
Where: forests, fields
When: fall
Nutritional Value: fats, protein, some minerals
Other uses: dye, fish poison
Dangers: shell juice stains objects and poisons fish

Black Walnut trees at a roadside rest area in east Texas.
Black Walnut

Almost ripe nuts. They are a little larger than golf balls when ripe.
Blackwalnut1

Blackwalnut

Green ones picked from the tree are better than brown ones from the ground.
Black Walnut Nut Harvest

The compound leaves of Black Walnut contain an even number of leaflets.
Black Walnut

Close-up of the leaves, front and back.
Black Walnut

Branch tips with new, young leaves.
Black Walnut

Craggy, grayish bark of a Black Walnut tree.
Black Walnut Trunk IGFB12

Texas distribution, attributed to U. S. Department of Agriculture. The marked counties are guidelines only. Plants may appear in other counties, especially if used in landscaping.
BlackWalnutTX

North American distribution, attributed to U. S. Department of Agriculture.
BlackWalnut

Standing up to 125’ tall with a rounded crown, black walnut trees cut an impressive figure across the fields of Texas. They prefer open, sunny locations but can also be found in forests. Black walnut leaves are compound with an even number of leaflets and being deciduous, drop off in the fall. The bark is grayish, dark and deeply furrowed/rough. The round nuts of this tree are contained in a thick, green cover which begins to splits open when ripe. The juice of this green coat smells like iodine and will stain skin and cotton fabric brown. Black walnut tree leaves, bark, and nut husks contain a poison which kills most other non-grass plants so do not add these materials to compost piles. The wood of black walnut trees is treasured by woodworkers and commands a premium price. This has led to many incidents of “tree rustling” where huge, old trees are cut down and stolen.

The nuts become ripe in the fall. Peeling the green husk is staining so wear gloves and avoid letting the peels come in contact with anything you don’t want turned brown. The thick shell of the walnut is very hard and most standard nut crackers can’t crack them. Waiting a few weeks after removing the husk allows the nuts to dry some, making shelling them slightly easier. The usual method of shelling black walnuts is to run over the nuts with a car followed by picking apart the shell with a nutpick. If you only have a few nuts they can be broken open with a hammer. If you have a lot of nuts it may be worthwhile to invest in a manual cracker specifically designed for black walnuts. Black walnuts have a stronger flavor than English walnuts so most people reduce the amount of nut meat used by one half in recipes.

The crushed green husks were used by Native Americans as a fish poison. Several large, woven bags of these husks were placed in a still pond or weir and the chemical juglones would seep out and stun the fish, causing them to float to the surface.

When the nuts are still green and soft enough to cut in half with a knife they can be pickled and then blended not a ketchup-substitute. As they get bigger the still-unripe notes can be soaked in vodka with a bit of lemon peel, cinnamon, star anise, and sugar syrup to create the Italian liquor "Nocino". Black walnut trees grow farther south than maples and though they produce only about 1/4 as much sap as maples, the resulting syrup made by boiling the sap down is quite delicious.

Never plants a Black Walnut near a garden as the roots, twigs, and leaves all produce a toxin which kills many other plants. Native grasses seem to resist this poison better than domesticated, decorative or food plants. My mom still nags me about the black walnut seedling I planted at the edge of her garden which eventually grew tall and wiped out a quarter of her crops even though this happens 30 years ago.


Buy my book! Outdoor Adventure Guides Foraging covers 70 of North America's tastiest and easy to find wild edibles shown with the same big pictures as here on the Foraging Texas website.

Yucca/Spanish Dagger

Scientific name: Yucca spp.
Abundance: common
What: young flowers; flower stalks on both thick and thin-leaf yuccas before flowers appear; edible fruit of thick-leaf yucca (Yucca treculeana).
How: New flowers raw or cooked, flower stalks raw or cooked, fruit baked or roasted, stems raw or cooked
Where: Sunny areas
When: Flowers just after bloom, flower stalks before flowers appear, fruits when ripe, March through end of summer.
Nutritional Value: carbohydrates, minerals
Other uses: Soap from stem and root, fibers/cordage from leaves, laxative properties, fish poison (saponins) from root.
Dangers: Only flowers, flower stalk, and fruit are edible, the rest of the plant is very poisonous.

Yuccu plant
yucca2.jpg

Yucca flowers. They are best within the first few days or opening but after that they can turn nasty. Taste one before harvesting a lot.
Yucca

Closeup of yucca flowers and flower pods.
Yucca

Yucca fruit.
YuccaFruit1

YuccaFruit2

Yucca just before flowering.
YuccaFlowerStalk

Close-up of unopened flower stalk.
YuccaFlowerStalk2

Close-up of flowers just beginning to open. The individual flower buds taste like cauliflower.
YuccaYoungFlowers

Texas distribution, attributed to U. S. Department of Agriculture. The marked counties are guidelines only. Plants may appear in other counties, especially if used in landscaping.
YuccaTX

North American distribution, attributed to U. S. Department of Agriculture.
Yucca

The flower stalk is sweet-tasting before it produces flower pods/flowers. Roast or pickle it before the pods appear. As the flower pods mature the stalk becomes tasteless and tough. After the flowers have past the ripe fruit of the thick-leaf yucca (Yucca treculeana) can be roasted and eaten like eggplant. Thick-leaf yucca is identified by the leaf base being four inches across where it attaches to the yucca's trunk.

The fibers of the yucca leaf are very strong and have been twisted into cordage for thousands of years. It is best to soak the leaves in water for a week or more to rot (aka retting) away the non-fibrous portion of the leaf which would otherwise weaken the cordage.

Yucca root contains a very high concentration of chemicals called "saponins" which are a natural soap. Native Americans used to put mashed yucca root in a woven bag, which was then dropped into a small pond or stream which had been dammed. The saponins enter into the bloodstream of the fish through their gills, stupefying them. They float to the surface where than can be easily caught. If quickly placed in clean, un-poisoned water the fish may revive and not suffer permanent damage.


Buy my book! Outdoor Adventure Guides Foraging covers 70 of North America's tastiest and easy to find wild edibles shown with the same big pictures as here on the Foraging Texas website.

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