Category Eat Your Weeds

Eat Your Weeds: Wild Radish

wild-radish

Wild radish Raphanus raphanistrum is a valuable winter and spring vegetable, in the brassica family. Whether the plant is native to the Mediterranean area or Asia is disputed, but it is now a globalised wild food that is loved by foragers far and wide.

The plant has various common names around the world, including cadlock, jointed charlock, and runch. The botanical name for wild radish derives from Greek, meaning to appear quickly: its germination is rapid, although the plant recedes if the soil remains undisturbed. Being a pioneer species, it likes disturbed soil. Where it springs up may indicate acidity, although it will grow in most soil types. It is a frost-hardy, tenacious plant. In a climate-changed future we may be eating a lot more plants like this.

Wild radish grows in all Australian states – it suits temperate and subalpine climates, and has also been found in subtropical areas; it hasn’t naturalised in the Northern Territory. While it can be a great food source, around four million hectares of it are sprayed each year in Australia with about $40 million worth of herbicide according to the Herbiguide website www.herbiguide.com.au. While it’s usually broadacre cropping farms that spray the plants, always be careful where you forage it – your gut flora doesn’t need any more residual pesticides.

Eat Your Weeds: Black Nightshade

nightshade

Black nightshade (or blackberry nightshade) Solanum nigrum is a highly adaptable plant, and a common weed across Australia, from the south to the tropical north. The species can look quite different from region to region. It produces small edible fruits throughout the year (depending on the region.) Black nightshade has often been confused with deadly nightshade Atropa belladonna: although the berries look similar, those of black nightshade bunch, while deadly nightshade has single berries along its branches. Deadly nightshade contains very toxic tropane alkaloids; it hasn’t naturalised in Australia.

As with many nightshades, eating too much of the unripened fruit can cause stomach upset. And as with nightshades (such as potatoes, eggplants, kangaroo apples and tomatoes), there have been questions about edibility by humans: tomatoes were considered toxic up until the 18th century. But despite all the concern, black nightshade produces forageable berries (when ripe) and leaves (when cooked) which have been, and are still, used in many parts of the world for a variety of culinary and medicinal purposes (although no longer for internal use in western medicine because of variable chemistry and toxicity).

Eat Your Weeds: Dandelion

dandellion

Botanical name: Taraxacum officinale

Parts used: flowers, stems, leaves and roots

Description: a rosette of rough-toothed leaves from a single taproot. A ‘true dandelion’ produces yellow flowers each of which sit on a single hollow stem, and that helps to identify it from lookalikes hawksbeard (Crepis species) and flatweed or catsear (Hypochaeris species), which have multiple flowers shooting from solid stems.

Nutrients: vitamins – A, B6, E, K, thiamine; antioxidants; flavonoids; alpha- and beta-carotene; minerals – high in iron and calcium, and contains magnesium, manganese, potassium, copper, choline and boron.

Eat Your Weeds: Chickweed

chickweed

Botanical name: Stellaria media Parts used: stems, flowers, leaves and seeds.

Description: creeping annual ground cover herb, with tiny white flowers and oval shaped leaves; stems can reach up to 60 cm in length.

Nutrients: vitamins C and A; minerals calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, niacin, phosphorus, potassium, selenium and zinc; protein.

You may have nibbled on this tender and highly nutritious ‘supergreen’ while out in the garden, or used it to replace spinach or parsley in a recipe. You may have fed it to your chicken, duck or turkey friends.