Creeping Bellflower – Campanula Rapunculoides: Edible & Medicinal Uses of a Long Lost Garden Vegetable

Creeping bellflower (Campanula rapunculoides) is an invasive nonnative. It’s the most common of a handful of nonnative bellflowers around Ontario. You’ll mostly spot it on banks and grassy roadsides. It was uncommon when Haliburton Flora was compiled, but is probably fairly common now. It was called ramps in English kitchen gardens, back in its heyday. …

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Mouse-ear Chickweeds – Cerastium SPP.: Edible & Medicinal Uses of the Furries of Wild Plants

Mouse-ear Chickweeds - Cerastium SPP.

In Chippewa,  wi’nibidja’bibaga’no meaning “toothplant”, refers to the European stellaria spp. But the one we’re talking about here is the cerastium spp., known as mouse-ear chickweeds. They’re almost as edible, furriness aside, but not as medicinal as the stellaria species. It’s important to note the hairless “common chickweed” (stellaria media) is a rare nonnative in the …

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Salsifies – Tragopogon SPP.: Edible & Medicinal Uses of the Oyster of Wild Plants

Salsifies - Tragopogon SPP.: Oyster of Edible & Medicinal Wild Plants

Salsifies are edible and medicinal plants that look like taller, fluffier versions of dandelion. Their giant seed balls resemble dandelions too. They’re a non-native plant in Ontario and part of the sunflower family. In the reference book Haliburton Flora you’ll only find goatsbeard (tragopogon dubius), better called yellow salsify (there are unrelated plants called goatsbeard). …

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Orange Day-Lily – Hemerocallis Fulva: Edible & Medicinal Uses of the Ditch Spud of Wild Plants

Orange day-lily – Hemerocallis fulva

Like many plants called “lily”, orange day-lily isn’t a true lily. The flowers are just lily-like. The “day” part comes from each bloom only lasting a day. It’s a non-native edible and medicinal plant you can just gobble up if you like. In Haliburton, we have both orange (hemerocallis fulva) and yellow (hemerocallis lilioasphodelus) day-lilies, …

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