Getting sick eating wild plants has never been easier!
I think I may have crossed that line finally last night, of getting too “cocky” with my obsession to eat wild plants.
Though there’s actually no telling what caused this massive stomach ache, really. Because in general it was a huge meal, with dessert, wine, coffee and a big salad of every kind of edible weed and wild flower I could muster up from the garden on short notice.
I’ve been eating salads like this for about three weeks now on a semi-regular basis, plus constant nibbling in the garden. During all that time, no problem.
Last night though, I think I may have jumped the shark by trying to include too much of too many different things without processing them down enough.
Too many tough leaves, too many bits and pieces of flowers, too many hard little stems. It was something like:
- Tufted vetch
- Perennial sow-thistle
- Spinach
- Two kinds of lettuce
- Chives (with flower)
- Dandelion
- Agastache
- Lemon balm
- Oregano
- Thyme (with flowers)
- White clover flowers
- Daisy petals and leaves
- Pineappleweed (chew these flowers good, my friends)
- Tiny bit of yarrow leaves
- Second year leaves of kale going to flower
- Wild radish flowers
Now, individually, these plants are all technically (I guess it depends on who you ask) “edible.” And with oil and vinegar or a vinaigrette of some kind can taste “damn good.”
But just because something is “edible” doesn’t always mean you’re going to be able to easily digest it. Especially if it includes tough, fibrous plant material, bits of stems, or just way more green than you’re used to.
I also suspect there is something to be said for building up a tolerance in your digestive system to wild plants in all their various forms and formats. (Microflora inoculation?) Like if one day, from nothing, you eat a shit-ton of wild plant parts after normally eating a shit-ton of processed food that was never alive to begin with… well, you’re probably going to at least clear out the pipes if nothing else.
My experience with the above “crazy salad” (without being gross) was at least neither vomiting nor diarrhea. So I hadn’t poisoned myself, as far as I could tell. It was much more like a rigorous hard stomach churning, almost like when you ask your computer to do way too large of a task and it gets stuck “crunching the numbers” and you have to restart the machine. And some farting, but that’s neither here nor there — since having mixed so many different foodstuffs together, there’s no telling who caused what.
I don’t want to tell you any “rules” you should follow about eating wild plants, though. Others with more experience have done that better. I won’t pretend to know what will play in your digestive tract. I can only offer you this small warning from mine.
If nothing else:
Eat smart and don’t get cocky.
