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Wild things Grocery shopping when the world comes to an end

I have a fantasy that when the end of the world comes, my husband and I grab our dog, an axe, fishing rods, sleeping bags and a huge box of matches and head for the wilds — but not without Jim Pojar and Andy MacKinnon’s Plants of Coastal British Columbia . This of course presupposes that “the end” means the meltdown of human contrivances, not the entire planet.

I was lucky enough to grow up with parents and grandparents who knew it was not only possible but in some instances preferable to make your own way in the wilds. Fish for trout. Take down a squirrel, deer, or even a moose. Dig up some roots for roasting. Pick saskatoons, blueberries, young dandelion leaves. Raid birds’ nests for eggs.

Admittedly, it sounds a bit romantic and summer camp-ish. But the thing that sticks in the back of my mind is that it is possible. As aboriginal people who live around here will tell you, this corner of B.C. is a garden.

And as every person who knows how to forage in nature will tell you, know what you’re doing. Beyond grabbing Pojar/MacKinnon (which can be had at Armchair Books), remember that it takes time and experience to know wild edibles, so best to be patient and learn from an expert or three.

In a nutshell — is that an edible beaked hazelnut shell? — the biggest mistakes people make are:

1. Thinking the entire plant is edible. Usually only certain parts are edible, as in the case of the blue elderberry ( Sambucus cerulea ) , which grows near the coast and on Vancouver Island. The flowers and the ripe fruit are edible, but the rest of the plant is deadly poisonous with cyanide. This isn’t so weird. We only eat certain parts of domesticated plants like rhubarb, whose leaves are poisonous, and tomatoes, in which everything but the fruit is poisonous.

2. Not gathering the plant at the right stage. Case in point: Milkweed pods gathered before they go to seed are good to cook and eat. But gather them after the seeds mature, and look out.

3. Not preparing the plant properly. Eating wild things is not the time to get lazy or sloppy. If you’re advised to peel the root before using, peel it; if the book says to remove the seeds before eating, remove them. Sometimes all it takes is heating the plant part to the right temperature and/or leaching undesirable water-soluble substances out (don’t forget to toss the water) and you have a tasty wild snack where once there was none.

Not to put you off trying wild things.

“It’s a balance,” says Bob Brett, coordinator of the Whistler Biodiversity Project and a director with the Whistler Naturalists Society. “You don’t want people to be scared in the woods, but you don’t want them trying things they shouldn’t.”

The irony is that while most people are reasonably scared of trying wild mushrooms lest they dig into a bad experience, Bob points out that there are more poisonous wild plants than wild mushrooms.

“I try to experience plants with every sense. For my work I’ve had to ID plants for a long time, so I’m always touching, tasting, smelling them. The more senses you use, the more you incorporate the plants into you,” he says.

It’s experiencing an intimacy with nature that only ingesting part of it can allow. That means plants morph from being some kind of vague, green backdrop to life that you don’t even know the names of to a realm of wonder and appreciation.

So go get yourself a good guidebook, find a friend who knows what’s what, and/or sign up for one of the Whistler Naturalists’ hikes (no more this summer, but they will do them again next year). In the meantime here are a few wild things you can try around Whistler:

 

Berry delicious

Berries make a great entry point for wild foraging. Everybody loves a sweet berry and they are usually pretty foolproof to identify. “My kids are totally keen on picking blueberries,” says Bob.

Now here’s where you’ll need a good book or guide to set you straight. The local vernacular for “blue berries” varies. Some people, like Bob, call black huckleberries blueberries, while some, especially Europeans, call blueberries and huckleberries bilberries.

Whatever you call them, there are four blueberry species endemic to the area. Two are easier to spot and pick as the bushes are taller: the Alaskan blueberry (with widely spaced hairs on the underside of the leaf’s mid-vein), which some people like, but Bob thinks taste skunky, and the oval-leaved blueberry — better, but not as sweet and juicy as the black huckleberry. Then there’s the red huckleberry, a bit tart and not quite as flavourful, but I like them.

These are all members of the same genus — Vaccinium . In fact there are seven species of Vaccinium in our Coast Mountains, including two other blueberries (bog and dwarf) and the evergreen huckleberry, all good to eat.

Sure, you can just go to the store and buy a box of cultivated blueberries (you won’t find true huckleberries in a store, as they can’t be grown commercially), but that’s not the point. However, shops can expose you to the concept of eating wild plants. Nesters Market, for instance, has sea asparagus for sale. Bob, on the other hand, was picking it on Denman Island a while back and enjoying it au naturel .

 

An odd couple

Once you’ve gone for the blueberry, huckleberry or ubiquitous blackberries, salmonberries and thimbleberries, how about something off the beaten path?

“My friend in Mount Currie has got me liking cow parsnip,” says Bob. “You find a young stalk before flowering, peel it and eat it like a green vegetable.” It’s crunchy and refreshing, like celery or a peeled broccoli stem.

Break out of the berry box with bunchberry, which grows close to the ground. Looking like a mini-dogwood that later produces bright red berries, it’s called crackleberry in Mount Currie because of the way it crackles when you eat it.

Then there’s soopolallie, or soapberry (also bright red, but found on a tall shrub). It’s whisked into froth with water, sugar and sometimes other berries to make “Indian ice cream.” “No matter how much sugar I put in it, I still can’t get my kids to like it, but kids at Mount Currie and all First Nations’ kids seem to love it,” says Bob.

He’s also tried cattail stem (tender near the base) and horsehair lichen (a First Nations’ food, but it tasted “really awful”). One of my oddball favourites is the root-like rhizome of the licorice fern — sweet and delicious and, yes, it tastes just like licorice.

As for one of bears’ favourites, try skunk cabbage. It was traditionally considered a “famine food”, only eaten in early spring after steaming or roasting — but what a conversation stopper at your first spring dinner party.

 

Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning freelance writer with an axe.