Indian tobacco (lobelia inflata) has yet to be renamed, but I imagine it will be decolonized in the future. Another less common name for it is “wild tobacco”. I was going to cover cardinal flower this month, a showier, bright-red close relation. But usage-wise our title plant is stronger. It’s considered toxic yet has medicinal …
In Chippewa, odjici’gomin refers to Canada wild lettuce (lactuca canadensis), one of many edible and medicinal wild lettuces (lactuca spp.) you’ll find in Ontario. They are often confused with chicory, dandelion or sow thistles, but fortunately these tall wild lettuces have no poisonous lookalikes. Although, at a glance rattlesnake roots have a similar look and height. …
Wintercress is a nonnative garden vegetable that has escaped into the wild in Ontario. The subtitle was a toss up between broccoli and arugula of edible wild plants. Which would you have picked? Winter cress (barbarea vulgaris) is common here along moist roadsides and in fields among flowers and grasses. Its bright yellow flower clusters …
Hop clovers (like trifolium aureum) round out our few featured clover plants. We’ve covered red, then white and their hybrid alsike. The yellow clover is edible like its relations. Large hop clover (trifolium aureum) is barely mentioned in my herbal library. Red and white clover are the popular clovers. Perhaps one reason is that the …
Bittercresses are in the mustard family and include toothworts. The Latin name “kardamine” means water or pepper grass. The folk name “pepper root” tells what this edible wild plant tastes like. Bittercresses (cardamine SPP.) like the twoleaf toothwort in our pictures here (cardamine diphylla syn. dentaria diphylla) are related to mustard. Dentaria diphylla is the outdated …
Sow thistle (sonchus spp.) is not a true thistle and also non-native here. Sometimes mistakenly called milk thistle, sow thistles are another edible and medicinal plant to gobble up or feed to the pigs. Sow thistles in these parts include field sow-thistle (sonchus arvensis), spiny-leaved sow thistle (sonchus asper), common sow-thistle (sonchus oleraceus), and sow-thistle …