BY ERIN KENNY
One of the first signs of spring in the Northwest is a certain sweetly intoxicating scent that permeates those first warm days. It took me years to figure out its source: the sticky resin covering the newly formed leaf and flower buds of the cottonwood or poplar trees.
These resinous buds are made into a variety of medicinal preparations, including the well-known anti-inflammatory massage oil called Balm of Gilead, a remedy that has been documented as early as the second century A.D. The balm is a wonderful addition to your medicine chest for relaxing sore muscles and for soothing the pain of arthritis. Since it is an anti-infectant, it can be applied to cuts and scrapes. Bees actually collect the cottonwood resin to seal their hives and ward off bacteria and fungi.
The first wild salad greens of spring are ready for harvest, including one of my favorites — sweet cicely. The leaves are reminiscent of carrot greens with a slight anise flavor.
Other wild-foraged salad choices this time of year include western bittercress, a spicy little member of the mustard family; wall lettuce, a naturalized ancestor of commercial hybridized lettuce; sour sorrel, a tangy vitamin C-packed culinary weed; miner’s lettuce, one of the only Northwest plants taken back to Europe and grown commercially, marketed as winter purslane, and chickweed, a well-known cooling herb often prescribed for infections and topical inflammations.
Nettles are just beginning to push forth their deep purple-green, fuzzy young leaves, and the next few weeks will be the perfect time to enjoy them fresh and to collect your year’s supply. Although not native to the Northwest, nettles are considered a naturalized plant since they arrived on this continent with some of the earliest West Coast explorers more than 500 years ago.
The nettle plant was transported around the globe by every culture that had access to it, since it was widely used as food, medicine, fiber and dye. Nettles owe their sting to hollow hairs filled with formic acid, the same chemical that causes a red ant bite to be so painful. The burn and inflammation caused by a nettle sting responds well to a topical application of cooling dock leaf or dock leaf ointment.
The fresh young nettle plant is a delicious edible and, when lightly steamed, loses all evidence of its sting. Nettles are loaded with vitamins A and C and calcium, iron and magnesium. For a dark leafy green treat, you can eat young nettles raw by rolling and crushing them carefully, since the tops of the leaves do not have the stinging hairs. Most people, however, collect their fresh nettles with gloves and make them into a fabulous pesto, a nutritious cup of tea or a mineral-rich soup. You can also enjoy the health benefits of both nettles and chickweed by juicing them and drinking the tonic straight, or diluted with water.
There are lesser known edibles this time of year as well, such as the alder’s protein-rich catkins, the juicy douglas fir buds and early Oregon grape flowers (from confused plants). Our little Island is about to explode with a cornucopia of edible buds, leaves, flowers, seeds and roots. Learning how to safely forage for wild foods is exciting and empowering; it is not just something the Native Americans once did, it is something you can do today.
— Erin Kenny, a naturalist, writer and teacher, runs Cedarsong Nature School.
