Invasive Bamboo Identified

I like to keep a current list of the invasive plants of Connecticut on hand, and on the copy I printed out, I highlight the edible ones. Just doing our part to reduce the invasive plants by eating them! We eat garlic mustard, Japanese knotweed, Rugosa roses, autumn olives, wineberry, sheep sorrel, dandelions, black locust blossoms, and now we found a few local sources for yellow groove bamboo.

Older stalks and some of the still-sheathed stalks from this year

Observe the yellow groove on the stalk

Yellow groove bamboo (Phyllostachys aureosulcata) is a grass that is often sold as an ornamental, promoted as good for privacy hedges. While not on the invasive list, it is a plant that is monitored by the CT Invasive Plants Council, and homeowners who plant it are subject to rules about letting it escape property boundaries and fines for not containing their bamboo groves. Yellow groove bamboo is very aggressive and spreads easily through underground rhizomes, and we have seen it growing up through the pavement. Yellow grove bamboo is a cold hearty variety, living through the winters here in Connecticut just fine. I see it listed as invasive in neighboring New York, as well as into the southern states where it grows in temperate to sub-tropical climates. As another invasive plant, we would never recommend planting yellow groove bamboo on your own property, or spreading it in any wild areas due to its destructive nature.

Bamboo shoots are mostly water, and are a low-calorie, high-fiber vegetable popular in Asia. They are eaten raw, boiled, pickled, canned, roasted and grilled. Not all species of bamboo are edible, some are rather bitter and others may contain a cyanogenic glycoside, (taxiphyllin), which can change to hydrogen cyanide in your gut. This toxin breaks down in water, so just to be safe, we boil our bamboo shoots.

 In Connecticut, the stalks grow up to 20-30 feet tall, and many of the leaves will drop in our cold winters.  Each stalk has cross walls, and the stalk is hollow, making it light. The leaf branches alternate on the stalk, and on the side of the stalk where a leaf stem emerges, there is a distinct yellow groove in the segment of stalk between the cross walls. Robert and Gillian like to collect sections of the stalks to make drinking cups and vases for flowers, and to carry small things around. The dry, mature stalks can be used as building materials for trellises in gardens, or for plant stakes.

The shoots are easily separated from the protective sheath

New shoots start emerging in May, and we can harvest them for about 3 weeks by chopping the top 1-2 feet off of the rapidly growing stalks, or finding the newly emerging shoots between the mature stalks. The shoots have a sheath covering them when they first emerge, and it is striped yellow, green, and a bit of purple. This leafy sheath should be removed, and we slice the shoot lengthwise first before sliding a thumb under the chambered shoot and the sheath; it should come apart quite easily. We then boil the split shoots for about 15-20 minutes in water with added rice or rice bran, which is the traditional Japanese way to prepare takenoko. Tossed with some soy sauce and ginger, or lemon juice and olive oil, they make a fantastic cold salad, or delicious cooked vegetable.

Cut and cleaned shoots, ready to boil and eat

Gillian using the saw to cut some bamboo lengths for playing

Black Locust Recipe Roundup

In about another week the black locust trees will bloom for about 8-12 days, a brief period in which we collect and eat them like mad. We have only frozen them with mild success. They lose their charming snap and crunch and become suitable only for adding to cooked recipes like custards and oatmeal after freezing.

Black locust blossoms are best eaten raw out-of-hand, but we still created a few recipes with this fragrant bloom. Our favorite is likely the syrup; mixing it with carbonated water or seltzer makes an awesome soda, and it can be used as a flavored syrup for mixed drinks, with a black locust cluster tucked over the rim of the glass which has been rolled in flavored sugar. The flowers can be ground into sugar to flavor it by using a mortar and pestle, or by pulsing them together in a food processor, but the sugar tends to get clumpy if kept for too long. The syrup can also be poured over shaved ice, or saved and poured over snow in the winter. A simple refreshing drink can be made by infusing the blossoms in water with lemons for a few hours, then filtering the solids out, and serving chilled with a splash of the black locust syrup. We even make a simple wine, by fermenting the blossoms with sugar and yeast, then filtering and racking for a few months for a stunningly clear drink, mildly fragrant and sweet, but that recipe hasn't been written down just yet, we need to test it out a few more times!

Black Locust Flower Syrup

Black Locust Doughnuts

Black Locust Jelly

Black Locust Custard

Black Locust Palacsinta

Jelly, crystal clear and floral

Doughnuts, with a touch of powdered sugar

Custard, a Hungarian recipe

Japanese Knotweed for Eating and Playing

Japanese knotweed at the ideal size for recipes

We have conflicting feelings about one of the most abundant invasive plants in the Northeast, Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica, syn Polygonum cuspidatum). Yes, it is edible when it first comes up in the spring, and purportedly it has all kinds of medicinal properties, but is its potential edibility blinding some people to the fact it is also terribly invasive? I cringe all the time when I see people wish knotweed grew in their area! We have witnessed many native habitats taken over by a mono-stand of impenetrable knotweed forests, all to the detriment of diversity and a healthy ecosystem. Invasive plants like Japanese knotweed are successful because they seed prolifically, grow faster and earlier than native plants thereby cutting off sunlight for the smaller, slower-growing plants, and invasives tend to alter the soil making it undesirable for the native plant populations. While we would never advocate for the CT DEEP's suggestions of poisoning and spraying populations of invasive plants, we also feel we shouldn't gloss over the destructive nature of Japanese knotweed for romanticized versions of wild edible plants.

The history of the introduction of Japanese knotweed to North America  plus some identifying information can be found in the Wild Edible Notebook, a monthly e-publication put out by Wild Food Girl for a nominal subscription fee. We were very happy to contribute to the April 2015 edition.

Japanese Knotweed Recipe Roundup 

Over the years, we have come up with several recipes to eat the spring shoots of knotweed, trying not to present them as an ideal solution to the invasive plant problem, but rather as an alternative to spraying or ignoring your local knotweed sources. Eat the Invasives! But also remember to curb their spread by harvesting responsibly and properly disposing of any plant material that may take the opportunity to root and spread further.

We have started collecting some of the dried, smaller hollow stems of knotweed to use as biodegradable straws. They are not completely impervious to getting wet over hours of being immersed, but are useful when sipping drinks around the house, and kids get a real kick out of wild-crafting with natural items they can find and manipulate on their own. Gillian has even crafted a blow-dart gun with the hollow tubes, using the larger lower stalks for the "gun" by cutting off the joints at both ends, and making the "dart" from smaller diameter stalks that are have the closed joints at both ends to provide air resistance when blown out of the "gun" tube. Involving your kids in the hunt for wild foods can be fun for them, even if they are just fooling around while you do all the dirty work of harvesting. Sword fights with dried knotweed stalks are always fun, and the hollow tubes can be cut down to use as small bowls and vessels while building fairy houses.

Lots of potential straws here, as well as building material for kids and their imaginations

Eat the knotweed, play with the knotweed, but don't spread the knotweed.

Garlic Mustard Recipe Roundup

Microgreens and larger leaves

Garlic mustard is another wild, invasive green we like to cook with, creating familiar and original recipes in which to use this sometimes bitter, garlicky/mustardy plant. We encourage gathering and cooking as much as you can! The teeny sprouts that come up in abundance in the early spring are mild and can be used like microgreens in salads and on other dishes. The rosettes of leaves that grow next are tender enough to eat raw most of the spring, but will toughen and get more bitter as the season progresses. They can be quickly boiled and used like any other leafy green in recipes, whole, chopped, or pureed. We also like to eat the flower stalks that will shoot up in mid-spring from the second year plant growth, bearing clusters of white flowers. The thinner, triangular leaves that grow from the flower stalk are very tender, and the unopened and opened flowers are edible as well, all with a garlicky-mustardy bite. In the summer, the seed pods will form, and we'll eat them as long as they are still green and flexible. After the seed pods dry out and turn brown, we gather the black, comma-shaped seeds quite easily in abundance. The seeds store very well, dried and in a jar, to use for dressings, topping breads, and grinding into fiery mustard all year. Finally, the roots can be dug up and grated into a horseradish-like condiment, with a touch of vinegar. While it is an annoying invasive plant in many areas, garlic mustard can be used as food during all points of it's two year life cycle. Use it simply, use it in complicated recipes, just use it!

Garlic Mustard Recipes:

Garlic Mustard and Cheese Ravioli
Garlic Mustard Seed Dressing
Green Felafels 
Garlic Mustard Hummus
Garlic Mustard-Mustard 
Garlic Mustard Roulade 

Steamed garlic mustard seed pods and greens with butter

Rose Petal Recipe - Rose Petal Syrup

Here in the New England area, the beaches are often backed by wild roses (Rosa rugosa) that have large white or pink 5 petaled roses. The flowers will develop into large, 1" deep orange hips, and the stems are wickedly thorny. They are commonly called beach roses or wrinkled roses and are originally from Japan. Now they are listed as invasive in many areas, including Connecticut. They tolerate the salty conditions at the shore, and have proliferated there as a result, growing along sandy dunes on the east coast from southern Canada to North Carolina, and west to Wisconsin and the Great Lakes.

Before the vitamin C-packed rosehips develop later in the summer, we gather the fragrant petals from the flowers. The best time of day to gather the flower petals is late morning or early afternoon. They open each morning, become dusted with pollen around noon, and will drop their petals by late evening, leaving the pollinated and developing hip behind. By gently grasping the whole flower head with your hand and tugging the petals, you will often get most of the petals off easily. The hardest part is avoiding the prickers, and there is often poison ivy growing among the bushes, so be mindful and wear shoes and maybe even jeans when picking.

Thickets of white and pink flowered roses line the shore

The petals contain the lovely rose smell, and are edible raw as a pretty garnish in salads. They can be added to cookie dough, like shortbread, for color and flavor. We also use them to make this wildly beautiful syrup, which we then use to add to seltzer for flavor, as a flavored syrup at breakfast, add to mixed cocktails like simple syrup, and as a base for a floral sorbet. At first, the color will be a dull purple, but adding the ascorbic acid powder will create the intense pink and preserve the syrup. We buy bulk powdered ascorbic acid from the local vitamin shop, it is more commonly known as vitamin C. You could use this recipe for roses you have in your yard, as long as you have not sprayed the roses with chemicals. Many hybridized and domesticated roses no longer have the heady fragrance of wild roses, though, so we prefer the wild roses for this recipe.


Rose Petal Syrup                          makes about 4 cups of syrup

2 1/4 c. water
3 c. granulated sugar
2 c. packed rose petals, coarsely chopped
3 Tbsp. ascorbic acid powder

1. Heat the water to boiling and add the sugar. Remove from the heat, and stir until the sugar dissolves.
2. Allow the sugar syrup to cool to 80°F, then stir in the chopped rose petals. Cover the pot and let the flowers steep in the syrup for 24 hours.
3. Filter out the flowers and squeeze them well to extract all the flavor. Filter the syrup through a fine mesh coffee filter.
4. Remove 1 cup of the syrup, and warm it in a saucepan. Add the ascorbic acid, using a whisk to dissolve it. Add the warmed syrup back to the remainder, and mix it all well.
5. Store in airtight, sterilized glass containers in a dark place, up to a year.

Garlic Mustard Recipe - Garlic Mustard and Cheese Ravioli

Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) is another super-invasive plant in our area along the east coast. The whole plant is edible, the leaves, flower stalks, flowers, roots, and seeds that are produced in massive quantities. Eating this invader can be done for a good portion of the year, and the blanched leaves store well in the freezer. The flavor overall is garlicky, with a bit of a mustard bite that some people might find bitter. We like the second year's triangular leaves better than the oval, scalloped leaves of the first year's basal rosette, they tend to be more tender and less harsh. We like to pair the pungency of this wild edible with earthy flavors like mushrooms, plus rich textures like cheese in recipes, while still adding a good quantity of garlic mustard. This recipe is mostly about making a filling. You can fill wontons or pasta dough for ravioli, or even use it to stuff some puff pastry triangles or bread. We used some wild hen-of-the-woods maitake mushrooms, because that is what we had in the freezer, but grocery store mushrooms will work fine.

Garlic Mustard and Cheese Ravioli Filling     makes about 2 cups

1 T olive oil
1 c. chopped ramps or onions
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 c. chopped maitake mushrooms, or chopped shiitake mushrooms
2 1/2 c. garlic mustard leaves, roughly chopped
4 T farmer's cheese, or drained ricotta
1 T sour cream
1 tsp salt

1. Sautee chopped ramps or onion in the olive oil over medium heat until transluscent, 4 minutes. Add garlic and chopped mushrooms, cook until the mushrooms release their juices and it evaporates, about 5 more minutes.
2. Toss in 2 cups of the garlic mustard leaves and cover the pan, cook 2 more minutes to wilt the leaves. Remove from the heat and allow the mixture to cool.
3. Put the cooked onion, mushroom and garlic mustard mixture into a food processor, and pulse a few times to mix. Add the remaining 1/2 cup of raw garlic mustard leaves, the farmer's cheese, sour cream and salt, and continue to pulse until the mixture is finely chopped. Taste and adjust salt.
4. Use the filling to fill ravioli, wonton wrappers, or as a spread.

First-year basal rosette

Second year leaves and flower stalks

Japanese Knotweed Recipe - Knotweed Fruit Leather

Japanese Knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum) is one of our most prolific invasive plants, it spreads by producing copious winged seeds in the fall and through underground rhizomes. Colonies of knotweed advance and can puncture up through the pavement in the spring, making them especially hated by public works employees who will try to cut down the stalks and poison the heck out of the plant. When gathering some knotweed shoots in the spring for consumption, try to get them from untreated areas and away from roadsides. They should also be picked before they are 12" tall; when they are still thick and have not unfurled too many leaves is the best time. To eat them raw, we prefer to peel the stalks, which can be difficult since the stalk is hollow like bamboo. When they are younger, the stalks are thicker and the peel comes off rather easily with a knife or potato peeler. For this fruit leather recipe, you can use smaller unpeeled stalks, or peel the larger ones with a stringier skin. Since we purchased a better blender, we can make this fruit leather without the peeling step.

Peeled knotweed stalks

The color is not particularly appetizing, olive green, but the flavor is similar to sour apples, without any of the knotweed's typical vegetal qualities. Our daughter, Gillian, really enjoys this snack and we had trouble keeping her away from the fruit leather long enough to take a picture. I tried two different methods of drying the fruit leather: the oven and the dehydrator. We have a cheap 1990's Ronco dehydrator that works just fine, using the fruit leather plastic tray. I then tried spreading the puree on parchment in the Ronco and it worked, but was a little more brittle. Then I spread some puree very thickly on some silicone baking mats on a sheetpan in the oven and it worked, but took the longest to dry. Once I removed it form the drying surface, I just rolled them up to store them in some glass jars.

Update: We finally saved enough money to purchase a good Excalibur dehydrator. This recipe makes enough puree to fill 2-12" square trays lined with the silicone liners. I use the fruit leather setting, about 130º F until the leather has darkened and dried. The old Ronco still works too!

This recipe is available in our book, available Spring 2016.

http://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/book/?GCOI=60239108626260&

Pile of knotweed peels