2012 marks the fourth year we have taken tours with "Wildman" Steve Brill. He takes the trip into Connecticut a few times throughout the year, mostly to the western edges of the state in Redding or Danbury, to give his wild food tours. His daughter is just a bit older than Gillian, and they get along well. We are still learning new wild edibles, and Wildman enjoys showing us something new. The tour we took on Saturday, March 10 was at Tarrywile Park in Danbury, and it was also Wildman's birthday! The News Times of Danbury was there to do a story in the local paper, and the article included a photograph of Gillian sampling a day lily.
This was the earliest time of year that we have ever taken a tour. It has been a rather mild winter, and spring is creeping in early this season. Wildman has been putting up teasers on Facebook all week about what plants he had been finding in Central Park in New York City, like wood sorrel, hairy bittercress, and dandelions. It might be a bit colder over here in southeastern Connecticut, because the dandelions in our area are not up at all. So far, we have been tapping maple trees for sap and making syrup.
Day lily shoots
Day lily tubers
The first new edible he showed us was day lily (Hemerocallis fulva). We both knew that the shoots, tubers, and flowers of the day lily were edible, we just had not tried them yet. The shoots were up at Tarrywile, and He gave some to Gillian and me to taste. They were quite tender, and mild like green beans. Robert dug some tubers for us to eat at home. It appeared that the deer liked eating the shoots as well, as we saw many nibbled down to the ground.
Hairy bittercress
The second new edible we learned was hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta), a fantastic green plant for salads. I had seen the information about this plant on his app, but had never come across it out on my own. It was a lot smaller than I had pictured, but the taste is fantastically fresh and lightly peppery, very similar to a watercress. It was growing in a micro-climate created by a building insulating the soil and providing extra moisture in the form of rain run-off. We will look for this plant to make some salads, dressings, and add to soups.
Wildman Steve Brill
After the tour we were invited to a friend's house for Steve's birthday dinner. Joe and Kathy are wild food super-enthusiasts, and also members of two mushroom clubs, CVMS and COMA. The Indian-themed feast they prepared featured a Chicken Mushroom Masala, made with chicken mushrooms (Laetiporus sulphureus) and tofu, and a brilliant assortment of chutneys and dips for papadum crackers. We humbly contributed a plum jam, and ramps and roasted garlic jam to the dip lineup. The dinner was fantastic, and Gillian and Violet spent a couple hours cracking black walnuts on Joe's fancy nut crackers as snacks. It was the perfect end to a great day of playing for the two girls, and learning for all of us.
This is the recipe I use to make the Maple Pudding Cake. It might seem a bit odd while you are making it, but it all comes together into a fantastic, self-sauced, sweet cake in the end. We serve it warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Maple Pudding Cake makes 8-9 servings
1 1/2 c. flour
3/4 c. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 c. milk
1/2 c. chopped walnuts
1 1/2 c. maple syrup
3/4 c. water
2 Tbsp butter
1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF, or if you are using a glass pan 325ºF. Grease a 8" x 8" pan.
2. Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, milk, and chopped walnuts in a bowl. Pour the batter into the greased pan.
3. Combine the maple syrup, water and butter in a saucepan. Heat this mixture just until the butter melts. Pour it over the top of the cake batter in the pan, but DO NOT stir. It will look weird!
4. Bake for 45 minutes.
5. Allow the cake to cool for about an hour. The sauce at the bottom will continue to thicken as it cools, forming the pudding at the bottom.
As long as the nights are still freezing and the days are warming in mid-February through March, we are able to tap a few maple trees to gather the sap that flows befoore the tree produces buds. We walk through many wooded areas during the summer and autumn months, identifying the trees and plants we find. It is much easier to identify leafy deciduous trees in the summer than in the winter by bark alone. We keep track of the location of several maple trees and return to them in late winter/early spring to tap. Sugar maples produce sap with the highest sugar content, about 4% at peak collecting times, but you can also tap other maples, box elders or some species of birch.
Robert purchased taps from Holdridge's Garden Center in Ledyard Center several years ago. The trees we need to find must be at least 12" in diameter for one tap, and 22" in diameter to support two taps. He uses a power drill to drill a hole into the tree and then uses a mallet to pound the tap snugly into the hole. Creating a small hole in a tree like this will not kill the tree, the tree will recover and close the hole within the year. A collecting vessel is hung from a hook on the tap to collect the sap that flows. Depending on conditions, it can be a slow drip, or fill a half gallon bottle in a day. We can expect to collect 5-15 gallons of maple sap from each tap during the season.
We are collecting the sap mostly to drink as sap. The sap is slightly thicker than water and very refreshing to drink. It contains small amounts of sucrose, glucose and fructose, all natural sugars. The fresh sap also contains small amounts of malic acid, zinc, maganese, potassium and calcium. We filter it through a coffee filter to get out any bits of wood or debris and chill the sap. In Korea there is an establised culture of drinking lots of sap in the spring as a cleanse.
To make syrup from the maple sap, you need 40 parts of sap to make 1 part of syrup. That means you need 40 gallons of sap to make just 1 gallon of syrup! There is a reason why real maple syrup is so expensive. We did try to boil our own syrup last year with limited success.We boiled down about a gallon of sap to make just about a quarter cup of dark syrup. It was mostly an experiment to see if it could be done, and we were happy with the results.
So far this season, we have put out three taps on maple trees in the area. The sap production was slow at first, supplying us with just enough fresh, cool sap to drink every day. As the season has progressed, the output is greater. Even with the recent cold snap, we are getting about five gallons of sap every three or four days, far too much to drink. We steamed up the kitchen and boiled about ten gallons of the sap in batches to end up with about a quart, or 4 cups, of our own maple syrup. While I am not an expert at grading the maple syrup based on color, we boiled it down enough to make a rather dark syrup, since we like the more caramel-y flavor of a darker syrup. With that much maple syrup in the house, I made a Maple Pudding Cake using the recipe we picked up a few years ago at the Hebron Maple Festival. The festival is this weekend, March 10-11, in the center of Hebron.
Plants on Hawaii have many different origins, some indigenous, others alien. Endemic plants are those species that evolved in isolation on the Hawaiian islands and are found nowhere else. Indigenous plants are those that colonized the island before the arrival of humans, such as those that arrive on the winds or over the ocean. Plants introduced by the first travelers to Hawaii, the Polynesians, are regarded as native. Most of these plants have important uses for food, fiber, medicine, and spiritual significance. Alien species are the plants introduced after the late 1700s since contact with European explorers. Some plants were brought purposely, many were accidental weed introductions. Many alien species are escaped cultivated plants and fruit trees, and many are causing damage to the native and less hardy Hawaiian plants. Here we discuss the coconut, the most easily recognized wild edible in Hawaii.
Coconuts are thought to have been brought by the Polynesians to the Hawaiian Islands. It is the world's best known palm, and has many uses as food and as fiber, thatching, and as building material. Coconut palms thrive in sandy soil and are salt tolerant. They prefer areas of abundant sunlight, regular rainfall, high humidity, and temperatures above 55º F all year to produce mature fruit. The coconut palm has a distinct grey, slender, unbranched trunk with a slightly bulbous base. They tend to lean a bit due to the constant tropical breezes. The fronds of the palm grow from the top and drop away with age, elongating the trunk. The leaves are alternate and pinnate, growing along a tough central stalk. The leaflets are leathery, bright green on top and dull green on their undersides. Coconut palms produce flowers and fruit all year around, often flowering and fruiting at the same time. The flowers are on long sheaths that emerge from the base of the palm leaves at the trunk. The coconut palm will produce many mature coconuts in a year under optimal conditions, although many will not survive to maturity due to weather, mold, or harvest.
The coconut is not technically a nut, but a layered drupe. When you purchase a coconut at the grocery store, the outermost, fibrous layer is already removed and it is usually mature, with the hard shell and white flesh inside, and often very little liquid. When we are in tropical areas, we seek out young, green coconuts that have fallen from the tree prematurely. Inside an immature coconut, there may not be any white flesh at all, just coconut water or a thin layer of coconut jelly. Immature coconuts are opened by slicing off one end, through the not-completely-hard outer fibrous layer and the thin shell. We love to drink the fresh coconut water of green coconuts. The water contains sugar, proteins, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, and provides an isotonic electrolyte balanced drink. It is now becoming a popular commercial product, often sold at health food stores. The jelly occurs when the coconut is a bit older than the immature green coconuts as the water (the liquid endosperm) is converted into the white meat of the coconut, but has not fully matured. The jelly is usually a thin layer, slightly sweet, and soft and gelatinous. The mature coconut has the white, dense meat inside a hard sell surrounded by the fibrous husk.
Sprouted coconuts, with and without the fibrous husk
Matt Kirk also showed us how to find and eat sprouted coconut, a little known delicacy. Once the coconut has matured and fallen to the ground, the endosperm has solidified into the white "meat" of the coconut. This meat nourishes the developing plant embryo, providing energy for the plant to sprout. The consistency of the meat then becomes fluffy and spongy, almost like angel food cake, as it fills the cavity of the seed. The coconut produces a green shoot from one of the eyes on the shell, and a few roots to anchor to the ground. Once we peeled off the fibrous husk, Robert and Matt cracked open the hard shell so we could sample the fluff inside. The taste was a bit sour, almost sightly fermented, but also quite good. This was a wonderful, unique experience that we are happy to have tried.
Coconuts are one of our favorite wild edibles of Hawaii. The palms surrounding your hotel or at shopping centers often have the coconuts removed for safety reasons, and you can often find the harvested coconuts for sale by roadside vendors who will use a machete to chop off the top so you can drink the water inside. Many coconut products like candies and sweets are produced from the white, slightly sweet flesh of the mature coconut, and we shouldn't forget the coconut milk and coconut cream that is made from the processed meat for your pina coladas!
Plants on Hawaii have many different origins, some indigenous, others alien. Endemic plants are those species that evolved in isolation on the Hawaiian islands and are found nowhere else. Indigenous plants are those that colonized the island before the arrival of humans, such as those that arrive on the winds or over the ocean. Plants introduced by the first travelers to Hawaii, the Polynesians, are regarded as native. Most of these plants have important uses for food, fiber, medicine, and spiritual significance. Alien species are the plants introduced after the late 1700s since contact with European explorers. Some plants were brought purposely, many were accidental weed introductions. Many alien species are escaped cultivated plants and fruit trees, and many are causing damage to the native and less hardy Hawaiian plants.
Tropical almond seedlings and kernels on the beach
Tropical almond (Terminalia catappa) is a tree we have encountered before in the Caribbean on several islands. It is likely native to coastal areas along the Indian Ocean, and widespread along Indian, African, southeast Asian and Australian coasts. It was introduced to Hawaii before 1800, and is now considered naturalized along the beaches. It can grow in sandy soil and is mildly salt tolerant. It grows as a large tree with simple, broadly ovate leaves that are bright green turning to red before falling. The trees in Hawaii will flower and fruit all year long, often at the same time. The flower is a spike with many small, white flowers that will develop into a small cluster of fruits. The fruit ripens from green to red, and has very little pulp but a very large seed kernel. It is the seed kernel that is often found littering the ground beneath a tropical almond tree. The kernel is oval shaped with pointed ends, light, corky and fibrous, allowing it to float in sea currents for dispersal, and protecting a small edible seed. The tree grows very fast, and beneath each tree among its many shallow roots, hundreds of seedlings will be found. It can start producing fruit and nuts within 3-5 years. It is a somewhat messy tree with the leaves, fruit, and kernels littering the ground beneath the tree.
Tropical almonds, from green to opened nut
This kernel is a bit of a pain to open without smashing the elongated, small seed inside, but it can be managed. Matt Kirk showed us one method of selecting the largest and driest of the scattered nut kernels along the beach to open with a machete. Robert attempted a few more ideas on opening the kernels by leveling off one pointed end of the kernel and striking it in the right place along a naturally occurring seam to get the kernel to open cleanly in two halves with the nut intact. He and Robert then opened several handfuls of the nuts to let Gillian sample the nutmeat. The taste is a blend of coconut and almond, very delicious. It might seem like the effort for such a small amount of food is not worth it, but with the wonderful tropical sunshine and on being vacation with no schedule, it is almost fun. Matt told us about a Euell Gibbons book titled Beachcombers Handbook that describes his experiences with tropical almonds and his three years of living off the land in Hawaii. It is currently out of print, but I think we'll try to get a copy of it for its stories and lore. With this little bit of knowledge and experience, we look forward to opening and eating more on our next vacation.
Our vacation in Hawaii took us through several different habitats: beach, open fields, alpine environments, lava fields, wet forests, and dry forests. After many roadside stops and a few off-trail hikes, we were surprised that we did not encounter more mushrooms. So many of the places we explored were wet and filled with decaying plant matter, we expected to find many mushrooms. Perhaps we were too dazzled by the myriad of fruits to spend a lot of time looking for mushrooms.
I did read that most of the mushrooms in Hawaii are wood decayers and recent introductions with building materials and imported plants. I also stumbled on plenty of information about hunting for "magic" hallucinogenic mushrooms on cow pies in the fields on Maui. There is one book dedicated to the mushrooms of Hawaii, but it would be a pricey addition to our library. Robert did photograph a few mushrooms, and I suppose we have an incentive to return to the islands to search for more fungi.
These clusters of mushrooms were found at a higher elevation in a wet forest on Maui, in Poli Poli Springs Park. They were growing in disturbed dirt under casuarina pines (Casuarina equestifolia). They made a spore print on the tops of some of the mushrooms, and it was a very dark, olive green. The flesh did not bruise at all when cut, gills were decurrent, no ring or volva present.
This small mushroom (less than 1" high) was found in a wet forest on Maui, growing from the moss and trail under many strawberry guavas (Psidium cattleianum) and blue gums (Eucalyptus globulus). The stem is very thin, brittle and hollow and has a very small ring. The cap is covered in dark scales.
These were also found in a wet forest on Maui growing from mossy mud. The gills appear to be very slightly decurrent, no ring visible. There appears to be a white, fuzzy "foot" or mycelial down at the base of the stem.
This white, fleshy mushroom was growing in a wet forest in dirt under eucalyptus trees. Gills were attached, and the stipe was shaggy but I don't believe a ring was present. The base of the stem was bulbous with mycelial strands. This was a sturdy mushroom, about 3" tall.
These last three were all growing on wood. One is a jelly, one appears similar to a gilled oyster, and the third is a polypore shelf. Any identification suggestions are welcome!
Plants on Hawaii have many different origins, some indigenous, others alien. Endemic plants are those species that evolved in isolation on the Hawaiian islands and are found nowhere else. Indigenous plants are those that colonized the island before the arrival of humans, such as those that arrive on the winds or over the ocean. Plants introduced by the first travelers to Hawaii, the Polynesians, are regarded as native. Most of these plants have important uses for food, fiber, medicine, and spiritual significance. Alien species are the plants introduced after the late 1700s since contact with European explorers. Some plants were brought purposely, many were accidental weed introductions. Many alien species are escaped cultivated plants and fruit trees, and many are causing damage to the native and less hardy Hawaiian plants.
Mango (Mangifera indica) is a fruit tree native to India and introduced in Hawaii in about 1824. It is mostly grown in gardens and yards for its delicious fruit, but there are trees out in the wet valleys and forests that are likely left over from an old garden, or have grown from a discarded pit. Mango trees are very attractive, tall with a rounded crown of evergreen foliage. The leaves are dark green and oblong, 6"-12" long and pointed. The mangoes grow in clusters and ripen in summer, from June through September, depending on the variety. The flesh is wonderfully sweet but sometimes fibrous, and there is a single, flat seed in the center. We saw many trees full of green fruit, but no ripe mangoes. Some people may have an allergic reaction to mangoes, they contain the same chemical that causes poison ivy sensitivity, urushiol.
There are over 200 varieties of avocados (Persea americana) grown on Hawaii. Native to Mexico and Central America, avocadoes grow very well in orchards, but also wild in low elevation wet forests. It was likely introduced in the early 1800s. The tree has large, evergreen, alternate pointed oval leaves, and is easily recognized when bearing fruit. The avocados can be pear-shaped or round, mostly dark green, with smooth or pebbly skin. The ripe fruit is bright green and not sweet, more of a buttery, nutty, and smooth flesh. There is one large, oval seed in the middle of the fruit. We saw many trees in the forests of Kauai, but the best place to find some fantastic avocadoes is at the Sunshine Markets around the island of Kauai. There were several different varieties to sample and buy for $1.00-$3.00 each, incredibly cheap for local, truly ripe fruit.
Blackberries (Rubus species) on Hawaii are non-native alien pests, and in several places they are considered highly invasive and need to be controlled. We came across some enormous, ripe berries in Poli Poli Springs on Maui. They tasted great, but the blackberry canes were very large, and very spiny. On Kauai, people were hiking at Kokee State Park and covered in scratches from the blackberry canes. Hikers are encouraged to report the blackberry infestations to the park employees for removal and control. Blackberries are spread by birds and by underground growth of the roots. While they make a great trailside edible, they do not belong in Hawaii and we can see how they could easily take over whole areas. Blackberries like to grow in disturbed areas like trails and open fields.
Ohelo 'ai flowers
Ohelo 'ai berry
A true endemic edible plant to Hawaii is ohelo 'ai, or the Nene berry (Vaccinium reticulatum). Ohelo 'ai is a shrub with alternate, oval, leathery and often toothed leaves that grow in the lava fields at higher, alpine elevations. It bears many tubular, waxy flowers in clusters that vary in color from pink to red or even yellow-green. The berries have a 5-petaled crown at the bottom, and ripen to red or dark purple. There are many small seeds inside the berry, and the taste is a bit tart. Flowers and fruit is often present at the same time, while most of the fruit ripens in late autumn. Ohelo 'ai is an important food source for the Hawaiian goose, the Nene, and we saw a pair of the geese out foraging for berries on Haleakala in the late morning. This berry might look similar to wild blueberries, as it is botanically related.
