We strongly recommend foraging with someone experienced, or looking at pictures and descriptions from several online or printed resources to be sure of identification before harvesting and eating. Bluebird Forest Garden and the author of this content assume no liability for improper identification of wild foods.
Seeds:
Amaranth, wild Amaranth is native to North America. Wild amaranth, also known as pigweed, or red-root amaranth, can be found across Idaho. The stem above and below the soil line is bright pink or red. The leaves are usually pretty small, ribbed, and opposite each other on the stems. The plants may have a single vertical stem, or be branched like a tumble weed depending on the amount of growing space they have. The leaves are edible, best steamed, and the seeds, which grow in tan colored clusters at the leaf crotches and at the top of the stem, are also edible.
Arrowleaf Balsamroot This is another native edible plant, which I have seen growing on a dry, rocky hillside, but not in the abundance that would encourage me to harvest it. It has large grey-green, slightly fuzzy, wavy leaves that bend upward on either side of the leaf stalk. They have a yellow bloom with a brown center, and the seeds are edible, although the ones that I saw had all the blooms eaten off by the deer!
Blue Flax This native flax has a beautiful blue flower, is very drought hardy and grows in the open sage brush country and dry hills. I’ve seen it near Palouse Falls, WA, growing wild in abundance, and have also planted it in my garden and collect seed from it for the Snake River Seed Cooperative. The seeds are small, brown, and housed in round pods with the 6 or so seeds arranged in a circle in each pod. The leaves are also edible, best cooked.
Chickweed This is a naturalized annual that grows in moist, partly sunny areas. It has a mild flavor and can be eaten raw or cooked. The leaves, stems and seeds are all edible. The leaves grow in pairs along succulent stems with a single row of ‘hairs’ along the stem.
Clover This family of native plants has many edible uses, from tap roots to seeds. The leaves and roots are best cooked. The blossoms are also edible, and may be white, crimson or yellow, depending on the type of clover. The leaves are best cooked and grow in a leaflet of three leaves held horizontally on a stem.
Dandelion The seeds of this naturalized plant can be separated from the white fluff and eaten. The yellow blossoms are edible as well, as are the roots and leaves.
Grass All grass seeds are edible, so if you need some protein while in the wilderness and you’ve found something you’re sure is grass, the seeds are good to eat. It’s just a matter of if they are large enough, and easy enough to harvest and separate from the chaff, to make them worthwhile. Some grass seeds like cheat grass have chaff that is very sharp and should not be eaten. Without the chaff removed, these sharp seeds can actually travel by means of tiny scales, making them almost impossible to spit out, and they can embed themselves in the soft tissues of the throat. So just be sure to rub all the chaff off before eating.
Lamb’s Quarters This is very common, naturalized member of the Goosefoot Family, so named because the leaves resemble the shape of a goosefoot. Its growth is similar to wild amaranth or orach. The leaves are a light blueish green, much lighter in color on the underside. The leaves are edible raw or cooked. I prefer them cooked. The seeds are also edible, and like amaranth, they grow in clusters in the leaf crotches and at the tops of the stems.
Mountain Hollyhock This is another native that’s edible from the root up. The seeds are in round burrs that have sharp little spines and there’s usually about 8 seeds in each burr. Gloves are advisable for harvesting. I run the burrs through a hand grinder that was designed for cracking corn to break them up and loosen the seeds.
Plantain This is a naturalized medicinal plant that is very edible, also. I eat the young leaves raw as well as cooked. We have two kinds of plantain here, broad leaf, and narrow leaf. The broad leaf has almost round leaves, blooming stalks that look just like pipe cleaners, the narrow leaf has a smooth blooming stalk with just a clump of blossoms at the top. Both have very inconspicuous flowers and tiny seeds that are edible. The leaf veins are elastic and often become exposed when a leaf is broken off; then you can pull on the leaf vein to make the leaf curl.
Queen Anne’s Lace Also known as wild carrot, this naturalized biennial has edible roots and foliage in its first year, and edible blooms and seed in the second year. Caution should be exercised, however as the seeds have some medicinal properties and have been used as a birth control in days gone by. Many wild plants have similar umble-like blossoms, but Queen Anne’s Lace has typical carrot-like lacy foliage.
Sheep Sorrel This is a very tasty naturalized edible that’s good raw or cooked and adds a lot of (sour!) flavor to salads and stir fries. The plant can look completely different depending on where it grows: in shade it has large green leaves that have a unique shape with ‘ears’ near the the base of the leaves, and occasional reddish yellow seed heads. In full sun the leaves are usually inconspicuous and the red seed heads are all you really notice. It grows from an aggressively creeping rhizome that is often only an inch or so under the soil surface. The rhizomes (horizontal, creeping roots), leaves and seeds are all edible!
Sunflower, wild This native flower is easily recognized if you know what the domesticated sunflowers look like. It was a staple food of several Native American tribes. The flower heads and seeds are smaller than the domestic varieties and the wild sunflowers may be branched with several flower heads per plant. Because the seeds are smaller, they are often boiled or ground without removing the seed shells, which is very time consuming.
Walnuts I’ve seen the native black walnuts and the European variety here in Clearwater County. Black walnuts are encased in a soft green coating at time of harvest. This will rot to black as the nut ages. I usually store them whole in buckets until spring at which time the black is ready to wash off the nut, and I crack them on a rock with a hammer. It’s a lot of work, but that green and black stuff keeps the squirrels from wanting to eat them all before I harvest them. Walnut leaves are long, and pinnately compound and that helps in identifing the tree. All walnut trees may also be tapped for their sap in early spring, and black walnut trees have several medicinal uses.
Blossoms:
Arnica Native. Not edible! The blossoms of arnica are used topically (not internally) for healing sore muscles. They can be very abundant in this part of Idaho, and the blossoms can be dried and then soaked when needed before applying on the skin wherever the muscles are sore.
Clover, native, see above
Dandelion, naturalized, see above
Queen Anne’s Lace, naturalized, see above
Rose petals, native and naturalized varieties. Rose petals from a domestic rosebush were one of the first foraged foods I was introduced to. They have a beautiful, delicate floral flavor. I tend to leave the petals alone and go for the hips later on, but for flavor the petals are definitely worth tasting!
St. John’s Wart This is another blossom that is not used for eating, but may be used as a medicine. It is taken internally for depression and other ailments. It’s a naturalized plant that grows in open, sunny areas with poor soil. The blossoms are yellow, with four petals each and the blooming head is branched and flat to domed in shape.
Pollen:
Alder, hazel, birch catkins These are the male reproductive organs of these native trees. They are up to two inches long, rusty red to brown to yellow in color and hang down from the ends of the twigs. In the late winter or early spring they elongate and release their pollen. The catkins can be eaten raw or cooked, and when they are full of pollen, are quite high in protein. They are one of the highest sources of vegetable protein available in the late winter. Our chickens would even eat the (somewhat smaller) catkins that fall from the fir trees in the spring.
Cattail This common native plant has been called the supermarket of the swamp, because it has a variety of edible uses, from the tubers to the new growing shoots in the spring to the pollen later on in the summer. The ‘blossoms’ (which look an awful lot like a brown corn dog) can be eaten when immature with the pollen still forming inside, or you can wait a little until the pollen is releasing and knock it out into a bowl. Cattails grow in swamps, shallow ponds and still water. The leaves are flat; the blooming stalks are round and hollow, and both can grow between four and six feet tall.
Ponderosa Pine This is one of my favorite trees. It’s usually the first tree you come to when leaving a desert valley in Idaho and heading up into the forest. I’ve never gathered the pollen yet, but some people report collecting enough to make bread. It would require gloves for handling the spiny needles and rough bark and a bowl to knock the pollen out into. The pollen releases in mid spring from purplish clusters of small catkins at the ends of the branches that are about 20 feet down from the top of the tree. So to get pollen from a tree taller than, say, 30 feet, you will probably need to climb the tree and then somehow get out to the ends of the branches. That’s one of the reasons I haven’t gathered it yet. Where I live the trees are usually pretty tall before they become sexually mature, but in hotter climates within Idaho they probably mature at a shorter height.
