Another escapee from settler cultivation around here, comfrey is an historically renown and presently semi-controversial edible and medicinal plant. Around Haliburton, we have both common comfrey and the blue flowered wild sort (now andersonglossum boreale). The proper one of the title name has creamy yellow flowers. The pictured purple flowered I see more often and …
Here in Canada, cannabis is a legal (and hopefully decriminalized someday) edible, medicinal and industrial plant. In Haliburton, we even have our own pot shop Capturing Eden. It’s a December day as I post this, the 24th! Mary Christmas! When Haliburton Flora was compiled, there was one cannabis sativa noted on waste ground up in …
In Chippewa, jingwak’, white pine was the most towering of edible and medicinal plants here 200 yrs ago. Imagine forests of 200-ft tall, 4-ft wide powerful evergreen medicine. Like the now “trending” and controversial sage smudge, pine needles are said to clear negative energy when burned. “Smoke cleansing” is a more acceptable term for general …
In Chippewa, cingob’, white spruce is one of the first edible and medicinal plants I enjoy come spring. Its fresh green tips are a popular forage – a top tip! These next two edible and medicinal wild plants are very similar: white spruce and white pine. They’re named for the white crust that often coats …
In Chippewa, wi’gwass’tig, white birch is not only edible and medicinal, but is traditionally used in many other ways from making canoes to baskets to birch bark biting. I think of it as the craftiest tree! White birch is sometimes called paper birch or canoe birch after two of its many utilizations. Are you curious …
In Anishinaabemowin, mullein is sometimes called Waabooyaanibag (blanket leaf). Its uses are blanketly more medicinal than edible. But you can eat the delicate yellow flowers too! Mullein’s folk names include but are not limited to flannel leaf (leaves stuffed in shoes for warmth), tinder plant/torches/torch-wort, candlewick (dried stems used to be dipped in wax to …