Clark's Oregon Wildflower Blog: Please pass the salad...

Sure, you can make a salad using all kinds of leafy things -- but the trick is, which ones are edible and/or won't leave you in the bathroom all weekend. Well there are many books in the library and hundreds of web sites devoted to tossing your own "wild" salad, so I won't try to duplicate anything here.

The plants noted in today's posting are known for being good ingredients for a wild salad, although I have not sampled them myself to be honest.

Burdock (Artium minus) is a native of Eurasia and is thought to have been introduced here as a vegetable. The entire plant is edible as fresh or cooked. Since introduction, it has spread to unwanted areas, making it more of a weed at this point.

Prickly Lettuce (Lactuca serriola) is a common roadside weed that is said to have tasty leaves for use in a salad or sandwich. When this native of Europe is broken, it bleeds a milky liquid, so is also called Milk Thistle. The plant can be eaten as a salad, although it has something of a bitter taste. Young leaves can be eaten raw or cooked. The Ancient Greeks also believed its pungent juice to be a remedy against eye ulcers and Pythagoreans called the lettuce eunuch because it caused urination and relaxed sexual desire. The Navajo used the plant as a ceremonial emetic. In the island of Crete in Greece the leaves and the tender shoots of a variety called maroula or agriomaroulo are eaten boiled.

Dandelion (Taraxacum). This is a whole genus of of plants, covering varieties that grow worldwide. Dandelions are found on all continents and have been gathered for food since prehistory, but the varieties cultivated for consumption are mainly native to Eurasia. There are also many "false Dandelions" that look similar. For more Dandelion information, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandelion.