By Kate Martignier
Tens of thousands of years before we began to domesticate the plants found in supermarkets today, our wise and resourceful fore-mothers were using wild edibles -weeds – for food and medicine.
We’ve developed domesticated plants for sweetness, volume, and storing ability, and in the process we’ve bred all the vigour and tenacity out of them. Wild edibles, in contrast, are a rich, complex source of real nutrition – vitamins, minerals, and healing compounds that our bodies can easily absorb. Wild edibles help us build deep health and resilience over time.
Walking over chickweed and plantain in your lawn or dodging around cobblers pegs on your way to the grocery store and pharmacy means passing up on a depth and spectrum of nutrition that no supermarket shelf or bottle of pills can ever provide – and weeds are free!
This article lists some weeds that you’re likely very familiar with, and some of their uses as food and medicine. It’s intended as a prompt to get to know the weeds around you, but not as advice or instruction. Please take full responsibility for being certain about the identity and uses of any plant you forage.
Look at images of weeds on the internet (check the scientific name – the long name usually in brackets and italics), read herbal books, find guides who can teach you in person, and help yourself to the wild abundance that is all around us when we know how to recognise it.
When you harvest, remember to pause for a moment and silently or out loud give thanks to the wild plants and to the land, air, and water that nourishes them so that they in turn can nourish you.
Dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) have probably been used by humans for food and medicine since before humans were a thing (fossil records indicate that they’re around 30 million years old!). In recorded history, dandelions are known to have been used by ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, in traditional Chinese medicine, and by Native Americans. Every part of the dandelion plant is edible and safely medicinal, incredibly rich in a wide range of minerals, vitamins, and health supporting constituents.
Eat young dandelion leaves and flowers in salads; add older leaves to any cooked dish that calls for leafy greens. They’re less bitter before the plant flowers. Prepare the roots like any root vegetable.
Cover a handful of dandelion flowers with boiling water, add honey (optional) and enjoy. Regular use may help with headaches, menstrual cramps, backaches, stomach aches, and feelings of depression.
On your way home from work, collect a handful of dandelion leaves. Chop and cover them with your choice of wine or boiling water. Drink before your evening meal, for digestion and liver support and lots of other health benefits.
Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) is native to Australasia, North Africa, the Middle East, India, and has now spread around the world. Early Australian settlers learned from the First Australians to use the juicy leaves of purslane, which some called “munyeroo,” in salads and as a cooked green. The seeds are also edible.
Purslane is high in Vitamins A and C, iron, calcium, potassium, and magnesium. It’s also high in omega-3s, important essential fatty acids that are relatively lacking in modern diets.
Plantains (many species, but the most commonly used are broad leafed plantain – Plantago major and narrow leafed plantain – Plantago lanceoloata) are a common weed of lawns, driveways, parks, and playgrounds around the world. Eat the leaves in salads, steamed, in dips, soups, quiche, or pesto. The immature flower stalks are also edible, either raw or steamed, and so are the small seeds.
Fresh plantain leaves can be crushed and applied to wounds, sores, insect bites, stings, eczema, and sunburn to stop bleeding and relieve pain or itching. To make a fresh plantain spit poultice: pick a leaf, chew it well and apply as needed. Softening the leaves in boiling water works too, but is much less convenient.
Chickweed (Stellaria media) has been used by people as an edible and medicinal plant since at least the Middle Ages. You can eat the leaves, stems, and flowers of chickweed, but not the roots. It makes lovely salads — just harvest, chop, and add salad dressing.
Chickweed is high in chlorophyll, calcium, magnesium, manganese, zinc, iron, phosphorus, potassium, vitamins C and A, folic acid, riboflavin, niacin, and thiamine. It stimulates digestion and metabolism and has a strengthening, anti-inflammatory, diuretic, and detoxifying effect.
Chickweed also contains something called saponins, which increase the permeability of cell membranes – meaning that it can increase our ability to absorb nutrients, especially minerals, from whatever we’re eating.
Cobbler’s pegs (Bindens pilosa) — a pain in the butt, right, to have to pick them out of your clothes? Perhaps the more a plant persists in following us around, the more likely it has something to offer us. The leaves of cobblers pegs are edible — eat them raw in small quantities, add them freely to cooked dishes, dry them and make tea. They’re a good source of chlorophyll, vitamin C, calcium, iron, potassium, and magnesium. They’re also high in tannins, which may be helpful for digestive and respiratory upsets.
Research has turned up a long list of ailments that cobbler’s pegs can help us with, including toothache, allergies, fevers, food poisoning, and many others.
Amaranths (Genus: Amaranthus; the scientific name will be “Amaranthus something or Amaranthum something”) are native to tropical regions, but because their abundant seeds can survive cold winters and sprout in the spring they have spread to many other parts of world. Amaranths are common weeds in gardens, along roadsides, and in gateways. You may have decorative ones growing in your garden. Search the internet for images of amaranth to see the great variety there are. All are edible, but watch out for the spiky ones!
Young amaranth seedlings may come up thickly enough to harvest by the handful — chop and then lightly steam or stir-fry. Add leaves from bigger plants to any cooked dish calling for leafy greens. Chop the tender tops of stems and the flower clusters and use as vegetables. Do cook your amaranth — it’s high in oxalic acid which you don’t want to be ingesting lots of; cooking reduces it substantially.
The amaranth “grain” – it’s actually a seed – in fancy packets in the health food store comes from these same plants. Amaranth seeds are very small, very nutritious, but easy to harvest – shake the dry seed head over something to catch the seeds. They can be cooked whole, but you’ll digest them better if you either crush, pop, soak, or sprout them first.
Sources
Tips and suggestions in this article were largely sourced from Healing Wise – Wise Woman Herbal by Wise Woman Herbalist Susun Weed, How Can I Be Prepared With Self-Sufficiency And Survival Foods? by Queensland Herbalist Isabell Shipard, and from European-turned-Australian Wild Food Forager Diego Bonetto.
