Foraging: Why “know local edibles” & “learn 5–10 safe, local edible plants and fungi” is a Darwin Award Lottery Ticket.

Getting Foraging Wrong Can Be Lethal

Because people get stuff wrong. Other foraging books/videos might not adequately differentiate between plants or give warnings; in fact, some social media foraging groups are run by people who laugh at foragers’ wariness about the Apiaceae family, also called Umbelliferae, a family of mostly aromatic flowering plants named after the type genus Apium, and commonly known as the celery, carrot, or parsley family, or as umbellifers. Including a significant number of phototoxic species, such as giant hogweed and parsnip, alongside a smaller number of deadly toxic paralytic species, such as poison hemlock, water hemlock, spotted cowbane, fool’s parsley, and various species of water dropwort.

“Know Local Edibles”

Which are toxic and which are edible?

“Learn 5–10 safe, local edible plants and fungi that grow in your region across the seasons.” XRreadiness: You either know how to forage and can exclude fungi, or you don’t, but half-doing it is how mistakes happen, especially if you are hungry. To be honest, rather than trying to forage in a severely depleted environment, grow some in your survival famine garden because many of these plants will happily grow in your garden

Foraging in an Ecological crisis isn’t ethical. Learn what each plant is called and its uses: food, fibre, tinder, and tool handles. Before we take from nature, we need to put back. The Famine garden, however, is a garden and local environment planted for a world where agriculture is in collapse.

The next question is this:

If storing food isn’t helpful, why is it the oldest human activity after procuring food?

What will you eat in fallow periods between harvest and spring?

I suspect this hadn’t been thought through before the comment was made. “The impact is obvious: someone who trains ten people may contribute more than someone who stores ten months of food.” Rainbow Prepping: False Equivalence is a failure to understand that agency requires calories, and the 2 activities of storing food and teaching skills are not equivalent. Humans have always stored a surplus, such as dried meat or smoked fish, when we were hunter-gatherers. When we started farming, we stored grain. Suggesting that storage is not helpful is a failure to understand a society without freezers, abundant power, and forward thinking.

Gardening in the climate emergency will require storing at least 2000 litres of harvested rainwater. I currently store over 2000 litres.

Type	Plant				Uses, warnings, ID skills
Staple	Good King Henry				Vegetable & Seeds
Staple	Fat Hen				Vegetable
Staple	Martock beans heritage seed				Legume
Staple	Mallow				Thickener
Staple	Aztec, Hopi Corn				Planted deep in the soil
Staple	Carlin peas				Legume
Staple	Blite, Amaranth family				Amaranth grain
Staple	Skirrets				Root starch
Staple	Typha latifolia				Rhizomes containing starch, edible flowers and pollen.
Staple	Duck Potato				Aquatic
Staple	Grass Pea, Lathyrus sativus, also known as peagrass, cicerchia, blue sweet pea, chickling pea, chickling vetch, Indian pea, white pea, and white vetch, is a member of the family Fabaceae, commonly grown in Asia and East Africa for human consumption and as livestock feed. It is a particularly important crop in areas prone to drought and famine and is considered an ‘insurance crop’ because it produces reliable yields when all other crops fail. The seeds contain a neurotoxin that causes lathyrism, a neurodegenerative disease, if eaten as a primary protein source for a prolonged period.				Legume; caution: overconsumption is harmful
Staple all year Salad	Valeriana locusta, lamb’s lettuce. Commonly called mâche, cornsalad, or lamb’s lettuce, it is a small, herbaceous, annual flowering plant in the honeysuckle family. Frost-hardy down to -10C				Salad
Staple all-year salad	Rocket				peppery Salad
Staple all year Salad	WINTER PURSLANE / MINERS LETTUCE-CLAYTONIA				Salad
root vegetable	Purple & Yellow Carrot				Vegetable
Pot Herb	Smallage, Wild Celery Cutting Celery				pungent strong flavour
Leaf veg	Orach				Vegetable
	Ground Elder				Gout remedy; pungent, strong-flavoured herb
Vegetable	bottle gourd				Vegetable
Leaf veg	Garlic Mustard				Collect the seed & Leaves
Salad	Purslane				Vegetable
root vegetable	Wild Carrot				Vegetable
Spice	Ditander, pepperwort				seasoning
Leaf veg	Coal wort				Vegetable
Leaf veg	Collards				Vegetable
Leaf veg	Chibols, Welsh onions				Vegetable
Leaf veg	Leaf Beat				Chards
Herb	lovage				herb
salad root	Pignut				Can be grown in a shady bed
root vegetable	Rampion				old vegetable
rare salad /spice	Rock Samphire				Grow on a wall.
Vegetable	Hops				Young shoots or add flowers to beer
Leaf veg	patience Doc				Rumex patientia Vegetable
Early spring salad leaf	Sweet violet				Vegetable Salad
Leaf veg	Common Hogweed, Vegetable; must be cooked; expert identification skills. Sap is phototoxic; wear gloves. Can be Lacto-fermented like Sourcrout				Caution: wear gloves to pick and handle
Leaf veg	Cardoons				Vegetable
Spring Broccoli	Nine Star Perennial broccoli				Lasts 7-10 years
Vegetable	Asparagus				Loves seaweed
Vegetable	New Zealand Spinach				Perpetual
Leaf veg	Perpetual Spinach				Perpetual
Leaf veg	Spinach Beet				Perpetual
Leaf veg	Stinging Nettles				Collect seeds, new shoots and fibre

Apiaceae, Umbelliferae, The Most Problematic Plant Group to Identify

DO NOT POISON YOURSELF—you will die smiling sardonically.

Apiaceae (/ˌeɪpiˈeɪsi.iː, -ˌaɪ/), also called Umbelliferae, is a family of mostly aromatic flowering plants named after the type genus Apium, and commonly known as the celery, carrot, or parsley family, or as umbellifers. It is the 16th-largest family of flowering plants, with more than 3,800 species in about 446 genera, including such well-known and economically important plants as ajwain, angelica, anise, asafoetida, caraway, carrot, celery, chervil, coriander, cumin, dill, fennel, lovage, cow parsley, parsley, parsnip and sea holly, as well as silphium, a plant whose exact identity is unclear and which may be extinct. Wikipedia

Some of these plants are (DEADLY) toxic, so when amateurs say “know local edibles” or “Learn 5–10 safe, local edible plants” without also saying “learn to identify the plants that can kill you,” their content is an advanced Darwin Award Lottery Ticket.