I guess you would have to ask them???

I do not eat random plants. And sometimes, misidentification might lead to less than pleasant circumstances.

Elizabeth Andersson, I am asking. On those plant id threads it would be off-topic and irrelevant to the subject. That is why I am asking here.

I just helped a seventh grader with a project about the domestication of the carrot plant, which was once a plant on the side of the road, so to speak.

Many plants that grow wild have edible parts. I've in the last couple years added autumn olives to our yearly foraging list. I first started eating lambsquarters that grew as weeds. But since collecting the seed, I always have enough to sew in the vegetable garden. Once in a while, I will use wild garlic in a tomato-y dish. I really enjoy wild violets in an iceberg lettuce salad. Often at the same time of year a will sprinkle dandelion petals into the same salad. Yellow wood-sorrel flowers are nice in that salad, too. I only eat the dandelion greens in a sweet & sour wilted salad, preferably with some bacon crumbles. Harbingers of spring obviously come early and I've eaten their roots, too. But they are a lot of work to get at.

I can get pounds and pounds of purslane and have learned several ways to use it, including finely minced into a green curry sauce. Some people really like wild American persimmons, while I prefer wild plums and have brought those, too, into my garden. I do have a place where I can dig burdock root, but the soil is very hard and rocky, so I gave it up, even though it is the same burdock that I can buy at the import grocery store, sweet as a carrot and just as crunchy. It makes a superb fermented pickle too.

Sometime it goes the other way in that domesticated plants get back out into the wild. That's why I can find asparagus on fence rows.

You can find posts from me on GW about trying corn sallet and henbit. I hope to try more "weeds" this year. It is like a magical blessing that they are there, just quietly, patiently waiting for me to become enlightened about them. Sometimes when I see a new plant, I really do think, "Mmm, that looks delicious." Perhaps I just like to eat; perhaps curiosity drives me to wonder what more is good to eat; perhaps it was because I grew up with a grandparent who foraged elderberries, dandelions, mustard greens, blackberries, persimmons, sassafras root, daylily, poke sallet etc.

I don't remember any threads asking for a plant ID and then asking can I eat this? I have seen threads about mushrooms that ask the question. But I myself am interested in learning more about edible and medicinal plants, and I've taken a local walking tour that helped identify some. Some common weeds can actually be very healthy.

Oh, Emory - I've seen the questions. And know why Hoovb is asking, I've often wondered myself. My first thought when unable to ID a plant no matter how pretty or interesting has never been whether or not I could eat it. I suppose I've never been that hungry. Or just not that curious.

There are the old standbys here that I'm familiar with and have eaten usually in small amounts since I was a child. We ate the spring shoots of salmon berry (mostly because we could, not that it was especially good) and called it bear candy. Also the sour leaves of oxalis. And I have no issue with sugaring and using wild violets to decorate a cake today. I've eaten a few dandelion salads. I pick our native blackberries but no longer the huckleberries -DH prefers the blue and our local huckleberry is red, not as flavorful. The only mushroom I know I can identify without fail is chanterelle, and we do harvest those ;0)

I pale a bit at the ones that start out, "What is this plant? I ate one of the berries and they tasted...." Sorry, I cannot provide you with an good answer to your question, hoovb.

I don't eat random plants. I don't eat a lot of things that I can identify....and not just wild things.

The only way I would do that would be if I was on the TV show "Survivor" or "Naked & Alone" and was starving.

I've seen a TV show where people have weird eating addictions. Like toilet paper, pillow foam & such. Not me. I'm a meat & potato guy here.

I've seen such questions frequently here in the forums, more so lately. I believe that the trend has to do with the big interest in fresh greens. Common lawn and garden weeds are now known as very healthy and delicious salad options! I'm actually going to grow purslane on purpose this year. Look for dandelion, amaranth, plantain, sorrel, clover, and more in the produce aisle!

I'd avoid collecting anything from the roadside, regardless of its culinary status, due to pollutants. But if I can collect leaves, berries, flowers, or seeds from positively identified plants from a location that I know to be totally pesticide free, I'm very happy to add them to our supper.

However, when someone eats first and asks for an identification afterward, as gyr_falcon mentioned, I will scold him or her for taking such a risk.

Yes, lol. If I have to contend with a weed, if I have to pull it I at least want to be able to eat it or feed it (to chickens for example). Or maybe not worry about it as much if I know it is useful in some way. Lawns in our area are being taken over my dandelion and plantain, I think earth is trying to tell us to heal ourselves ;)

I wonder about those survival type shows. Wouldn't they need to pre-screen anything that was eaten for liability reasons?

There used to be a guy who picked "magic mushrooms" in my pasture but told me he was back in my woods photographing birds. He staggered out one eve and confessed to me what he was really doing. I told him I didn't care but wait until he got home to consume them. They usually make a drink out of them but he couldn't resist sampling a few as he collected them. And no....I never tried them myself. He moved here from Arizona for the mushrooms. That is the heighth of ambition!

I like Scotts answer....NO. :0)

I was digging up gazanias growing under a bridge one day when someone stopped and asked if I was going to eat them. Uh...no. I was transplanting them into my flower garden. :0)

Don't you wonder about the first people to try and see if something is edible. We have them to thank for trying it or how to make it edible. Maybe they saw animals eating it and thought why not. Somebody wanted to eat cactus pads pretty badly in the days of stone and bone tools. Prickly pear fruit is delicious but I remember getting a fine spine in my tongue the first time I tried one in the wild.

We have a plant here called (I think) inkberry. It's very pretty, but poisonous, so parents have us pull it in yards with small children. My boss read up on it, and read that some early culture determined that it wasn't poisonous if you boil it three times. Now, how do you think they determined that, and what happened to the first two guys? :)

I used to sample plants in the yard, as a kid. I'm happy to be alive to tell that tale. Particularly remember Eugenia berries. They're not too bad. I wouldn't do it now of course.

Nope, never have. I don't even eat the edible flowers on fancy food. Last summer a friend of mine who is a great forager told me that the weeds in our lawn is edible.....purslane.

In this day and age, there really is no reason to eat something from the wild that you haven't investigated. I always mean to look for books on what is edible, but haven't.

Growing up, we ate poke salat, dewberries, blackberries, elderberries, hickory nuts, walnuts and probably other things I can't think of right now. I've been told that sassafras makes a drink like root beer when you harvest the roots at a certain time of year. We picked wild honeysuckle flowers and sucked the nectar out. I've seen passionfruit and pawpaws, but didn't know what they were. Mullin is supposed to make a great tea that helps you sleep and you can use it for toilet paper. Wild onions come up in the spring, but we didn't eat them. I've had 'lemonade' made from sumac berries. It was nothing special.

I might need to explain, I don't just eat things willy nilly LOL! I research first. But it does not trouble me to eat wild things if I like them. Such as lambs quarters, which are quite tastey cooked as a sub for spinach. Love them cooked in phyllo with dill and feta, for example.

Dances.