OOOOH! Have I posted about this before?

[conuly]

Nature tours - finding edible plants! I've got to go to one.

And they've got them through December! I think I may have found Jenn's next birthday present. If I don't give her free babysitting again, that is.

Isn't this the coolest thing ever? (I've had the site for a few months now, let's be honest, but I didn't realize they ran into the winter like that.)

Here's a question now, before I sign myself up for one of these and drag Elise with me (she needs something to do): Most people in the world around me seem to think that virtually everything out there will kill you.

But I'm thinking, munching on the oh-so-poisonous mulberries - is that true? I mean, we evolved on this planet. Is everything really poisonous, or is most of it harmless or at least only mildly toxic to us? I'm not about to start tasting everything to check, of course - it just is a question that has popped into my head.

And another question, which maybe somebody has an answer to. There's a tree I've only ever seen on Staten Island. It looks a lot like a Honey Locust, but the thorns are only on the trunk, in huge clumps that complete encircle it for a bit, then stop. So it's trunk, trunk, CIRCLE OF THORNS!!!!!, trunk, trunk. There are smaller clumps on the rest of the trunk (that show signs of growing into the aforementioned thorncircles), and a few clumpettes on the larger limbs - but they aren't evenly spread out on branches the way the thorns on Honey Locusts appear to be. Any ideas?

Comments

Sigh...

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Ignorant citybred yokels, that's all. They imagine, and teach their children to imagine, that anything not sealed up in plastic is dangerous.

As said so ably above, some "poisonous" plants just give you the bellyache or the green-apple quickstep. (Holly berries, though harmless to birds, are a potent emetic for humans.) Others are Not To Be Messed About With. (Look up water hemlock or dieffenbachia for some nasty, nasty effects.)

Euell Gibbons once wrote that the way these myths spread are usually through a mother being unfamiliar with a strange plant. Since she doesn't want her kids experimenting with it, she scares them away from it by telling them it's poisonous. Kids grow up and tell their own offspring the same (since mothers don't lie) and so we end up with people who honestly believe that huckleberries and sheep sorrel are "poisonous".

I wouldn't eat rose petals that were neither from wild roses (away from roads) nor from my own pampered plantings, though. People sometimes spray them with stuff against bugs and insecticide is not a healthy dietary supplement.

Re: Sigh...

[conuly]

Ick, I know. That's why I only munch on my own roses :)