Credit: Scott Webb via Pexels. Botanists divide these chemicals into two general categories: Primary and secondary compounds. Primary compounds make up the essential structures of the plant. We lack the enzymes. Oddly enough, no vertebrate can digest cellulose, or at least, not alone. Ruminants like cows keep at least one of their stomachs stocked with friendly bacteria that break down the cellulose in their grass-heavy diet for them.
Even termites rely on symbiotes to help them digest wood. Credit: Kelly Lacy via Pexels. They produce these chemicals to communicate, to repel things that might eat them—things like us.
Or else they make substances that attract pollinators or seed dispersers: Again, sometimes, things like us. Credit: Brett Sayles via Pexels. Many of these compounds are toxic in certain doses. Some of those same compounds are toxic in one dose and medicinal in another. Either way, poisonous plants tend to warn would-be herbivores away with bitter flavors, Glenn explains. Because they ate poison. Green Deane is a professional forager who runs the startlingly comprehensive wild foods website Eat the Weeds.
Each species has to be taken on its own values. Societies that depend on the immediate environment for survival develop this expertise, which encompasses the vast fields of folk medicine and dietary specialization. In short, Kennedy is trying to change the culture. Glenn has studied herbal medicine in communities from Amazonian Peru to the Dakotas. Through her work with international nonprofit Sacred Seeds , she has helped to preserve life-saving plants from around the world.
People are constantly innovating. But not all people innovate in the same ways. In the U. As a result of decades of this approach, the storehouse of traditional knowledge, of local diet and folk medicine, has been depleted in mainstream U.
Credit: Buenosia Carol via Pexels. Monoculture leads to vulnerability ; vulnerability leads to pesticides and chemical fertilizers, which lead to dependence and a brittle food supply. Meanwhile, a narrower diet limits the range of nutrients we consume. Try growing chaya or red toon or whatever feels at home in your climate. Eat your sweet potato leaves. We would love to hear from you! Please fill in your details and we will stay in touch. It's that simple! A few species with especially high protein content are given in Table A below.
Judging from leaves in general, however, it can be said that sulfur-containing amino acids are the most common limiting amino acids. Leaves usually contain sufficient lysine. A few especially good sources of leaves merit mention here.
Cassava, normally grown for its starchy tuber, produces an immense quantity of protein in its leaves. Crude protein of the leaves on a dry weight basis varies from 20 to 30 percent. Protein content is highest in young leaves. Methionine is the limiting amino acid. In most parts of the tropics cassava is widespread but the leaves are not used. Occasional harvest of the younger leaves has little or no influence on the tuber yield.
Cassava leaves should always be cooked before they are eaten. Chaya, Cnidoscolus chayamansa, is an extremely vigorous plant from Mexico. Propagated from cuttings, a few plants of this species are sufficient to furnish a twice-a-week green spinach dish for a family. As in the case of cassava, the leaves must be boiled to eliminate hydrocyanic acid. Another excellent leaf is that of Sauropus and rogynus, an Indonesian plant.
The young shoots are eaten raw and are extremely rich in protein. The p1ant, established as a hedge, is easy to maintain. Per acre yields of this plant has surpassed all other tropical greens in Sarawak.
The common spinaches of the tropics vary greatly in their nutrition content. One of the best of these is sometimes called Chinese spinach, the edible amaranth. As a plant that grows very rapidly from seed, it is one of the easiest greens to produce at the household level. You can also cut the bark into strips and boil like noodles to add to soups and stews or simply eat it raw. The linden or basswood is often a well-shaped tall tree, with grey fissured bark.
The young leaves in spring are pleasant to eat raw or lightly cooked. The flowers are often made into a soothing, tasty tea. The sugar maple, A. It provides us with some of the best and intense autumn foliage color, ranging from brilliant orange to yellow to bright reds.
Sugar maples have distinctive, slightly notched, three-lobed leaves, whereas those of the black maple, A. The bark of the black maple is almost black in color. The five-lobed leaves of the silver maple, A. The undersides of its leaves are notably silvery-white in color. Consider supporting American Forests to help us continue our work to restore, and grow healthy and resilient forests and city canopies all over the country! And you get an award-winning magazine. The sugar maple is famous for the deliciously sweet syrup you can make from its sap.
But, few are aware that many other species of the larger maple trees can also be tapped for an edible sap. Among these include: the black maple, whose sap tastes almost identical to that of the sugar maple; and the silver maple, also providing an equally sweet-flavored sap.
The syrup you can make from other maples varies considerably in flavor and quality, but feel free to experiment. Native peoples and pioneers drank the fresh sap from maples in spring, as a refreshing drink. The inner bark of maples can be eaten raw or cooked — another survival food source!
Even the seeds and young leaves are edible. Native peoples hulled the larger seeds and then boiled them.
The mulberry, M. The twigs, when tender in spring, are somewhat sweet, edible either raw or boiled. All Juglans species can be tapped for sweet-tasting syrup, particularly black walnut and butternut. The oaks are mentioned here, for it is not that well known that the acorns are edible.
All acorns are good to eat, though some are less sweet than others. Some, like red oak, Q. The bur oak, Q. The Populus genus includes aspens and poplars. Their somewhat sweet, starchy inner bark is edible both raw and cooked. You can also cut this into strips and grind into flour as a carbohydrate source. Quaking aspen, P. The green buds and leaves of a sassafras Sassafras albidum.
Credit: Matt Jones via Flickr. Sassafras tea mainly from the young roots is well known, and its pleasantly fragrant aroma is unmistakeable. The young, green-barked, mucilaginous twigs of this small- to medium-sized tree, when chewed, are delicious to many. The green buds and young leaves are also delicious.
Try them in salads! Soups and stews can be thickened and flavored with the dried leaves but, remove the veins and hard portions first. This medium-sized tree is well known for its many herbal medicine uses. The thick and fragrant inner bark is extremely sticky, but provides nourishment, either raw or boiled.
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