The original version of this article was published in the September 2024 edition of What's On.
Our ancestors were using wild edible plants (weeds) for food and medicine tens of thousands of years before we began to domesticate the plants found in supermarkets today. Yes, many of the same weeds we see around us now have been accompanying us all that time.
We've developed domesticated plants for sweetness, appearance, volume, and keeping ability, and in the process we've bred all the vigour and tenacity out of them. Wild edibles, in contrast, are still wild and complex and full of real nutrition -- vitamins, minerals, and healing compounds that our bodies can easily absorb and that no supermarket shelf or bottle of pills can ever provide -- and weeds are free!
This post lists some edible weeds that you're likely very familiar with1 and some of their uses as food and medicine. It's intended as a prompt to get to know the weeds around you, but not as advice or instruction.
Please take full responsibility for being certain about the identity and uses of any plant you forage. Unless you are learning in person from someone who is eating the plant in question (or using it as medicine), always, always check the scientific name (the long fancy name usually in brackets and italics) because common names are confusing and unreliable.
Look at images of weeds on the internet, read herbal books, or best of all find local guides who can teach you in person -- and help yourself to the wild abundance that is all around us when we know how to recognise it.
When you harvest, remember to pause for a moment and silently or out loud give thanks to the wild plants and to the land, air, and water that nourishes them so that they in turn can nourish you.
Dandelion
(This section is a partial excerpt from my ebook, One Small Serve.)
We're starting with a superstar of wild nourishment - Dandelion. Dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) have probably been used by humans for food and and medicine since before humans were a thing (fossil records indicate that they're around 30 million years old2). In recorded history, dandelions are known to have been used by ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, in traditional Chinese medicine, and by Native Americans.
Every part of the dandelion plant is edible and and safely medicinal, incredibly rich in a wide range of minerals, vitamins, and health supporting constituents. Even the bitter taste of dandelion leaves offers a cascade of health benefits.
Eat young dandelion leaves and flowers in salads; add older leaves to any cooked dish that calls for leafy greens. They're less bitter before the plant flowers. Prepare the roots like any root vegetable.
Cover a handful of dandelion flowers with boiling water, add honey (optional) and enjoy. (Regular use may help with headaches, menstrual cramps, backaches, stomach aches, and feelings of depression.)
On your way home from work, collect a handful of dandelion leaves. Chop and cover them with your choice of wine or boiling water. Drink before your evening meal, for digestion and liver support and lots of other health benefits.
Dandelions are one of the food plants I cover in my ebook, One Small Serve
Learn about 7 easy, nutritious food plants that you can harvest from for years without replanting. Establish a "one-serve-at-a-time" home-grown food habit that you can easily maintain.
Purslane
Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) is native to Australasia, North Africa, the Middle East, and India, and has now spread around the world.
Early Australian settlers learned from the First Australians to use the juicy leaves of purslane, which they called "munyeroo," in salads and as a cooked green. The seeds are also edible.
Purslane is high in Vitamins A and C, iron,calcium, potassium, and magnesium.It's also high in omega-3s, important essential fatty acids that are relatively hard to come by in modern diets.
Plantain
Plantains are a common weed of lawns, driveways, parks, and playgrounds around the world.
There are many species, but the most commonly used are broad leafed plantain - Plantago major and narrow leafed plantain -Plantago lanceoloata.
In the top image above you can see a mature narrow leafed plant with the young leaves of broad leafed plantain towards the bottom of the pic. The next image shows mature broad leafed plantain with the distinctive seed heads, which look the same for both.
Note that in both varieties, the veins run parallel in the leaf, rather than branching. This is a reliable way to identify plantain.
Eat the leaves in salads, steamed, in dips, soups, quiche, or pesto. The immature flower stalks are edible, either raw or steamed, and so are the small seeds.
Fresh plantain leaves can be crushed and applied to wounds, sores, insect bites, stings, eczema, and sunburn to stop bleeding and relieve pain or itching.
To make a fresh plantain spit poultice: pick a leaf, chew it well and apply as needed. Softening the leaves in boiling water works too, but is much less convenient.
Chickweed
Chickweed (Stellaria media) has been used by people as an edible and medicinal plant since at least the Middle Ages. It's originally native to Eurasia and has now naturalized throughout the world as a weed of waste ground, farmland and gardens. It likes shaded, moist conditions.
You can eat the leaves, stems, and flowers of chickweed, but not the roots. It makes lovely salads -- just harvest, chop, and add salad dressing.
Chickweed is high in chlorophyll, calcium, magnesium, manganese, zinc, iron, phosphorus, potassium, vitamins C and A, folic acid, riboflavin, niacin, and thiamine.
It stimulates digestion and metabolism and has a strengthening, anti-inflammatory, diuretic, and detoxifying effect.
Chickweed also contains something called saponins, which increase the permeability of cell membranes - meaning that it can increase our ability to absorb nutrients, especially minerals, from whatever we're eating.
(Chickweed is another plant I cover in One Small Serve.)
Cobblers Pegs
Cobbler's pegs (Bindens pilosa) -- a pain in the butt, right, to have to pick them out of your clothes? Perhaps the more a plant persists in following us around, the more likely it has something to offer us.
Cobblers pegs are originally native to the Americas but are now widely distributed around the world. They're a weed of gardens, parks, crops, pastures, roadsides, disturbed sites, waste areas, waterways, and the exposed margins of bushland and forest. They're regarded as an environmental weed in New South Wales and Queensland.
The leaves of cobblers pegs are edible -- eat them raw in small quantities, add them freely to cooked dishes, dry them and make tea. They're a good source of chlorophyll, vitamin C, calcium, iron, potassium, and magnesium. They're also high in tannins, which may be helpful for digestive and respiratory upsets.
Research has turned up a long list of ailments that cobblers pegs can help us with, including toothache, allergies, fevers, food poisoning, and many others.
Amaranth
Amaranths (Genus: Amaranthus; the scientific name will be "Amaranthus something or Amaranthum something") are native to tropical regions, but because their abundant seeds can survive cold winters and sprout in the spring they have spread to many other parts of world.
Amaranths are common weeds in gardens, along roadsides, and in gateways, and there are also decorative ones, bred for their showy flowers.
Search the internet for images of amaranth and you'll see there are many, many varieties, from very weedy to very ornamental. Once you've looked at lots of amaranth pictures and started to pick them out in your environment, you'll see the similarities that they all have -- it just takes a bit of practice. All are edible, but watch out for the spiky ones!
The image at the top of this post is an amaranth flower stalk; the image above is of amaranth in our garden.
Throughout the spring and summer months I add amaranth leaves and stem tips including the flowers/seed heads to any cooked dish calling for leafy greens. Young amaranth seedlings may come up thickly enough to harvest by the handful -- chop and then lightly steam or stir-fry.
Do cook your amaranth -- it's high in oxalic acid which you don't want to be ingesting lots of; cooking reduces it substantially.
And yes -- the amaranth "grain" (it's actually a seed) in fancy packets in the health food store --comes from these same plants. Amaranth seeds are very nutritious but also very small, so I just collect entire seed heads and chop them into dishes along with all the other amaranth parts.
If you do want to harvest only the seeds, shake the dry seed head over something to catch the seeds.
Sources
The information and tips in this post have been sourced from the following resources (as well as personal experience):
Healing Wise - Wise Woman Herbal by Susun Weed,
How Can I Be Prepared With Self-Sufficiency And Survival Foods? by Queensland Herbalist Isabell Shipard
Wild Food Forager Diego Bonetto
One Small Serve
Growing and processing your own food is a huge task. In One Small Serve, I show you a smaller, simpler approach. Learn how to grow and use 7 food plants that are
- easy and very low-maintenance
- productive for two or more years without replanting
- deeply nutritious
Establish a "one-serve-at-a-time" home-grown food habit that's easy to maintain
Includes a series of free extra tips + free email support
Please comment 🙂
Please scroll down below the Endnotes, and share your weed-eating or medicine-making thoughts and experiences.
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Endnotes
- In my home area of the Atherton Tablelands, Far North Queensland, but most of these weeds also grow prolifically in many, many other parts of the world.
- Cabi Digital Library, Sacred Plant Company
to get rid of oxalic acid do you have to discard the water it has cooked in? does the temperature neutralise the oxalic acid?
Hi Veronique, thanks for commenting 🙂
Here is a study that indicated that boiling vegetables was the best way to remove soluble oxalic acid and that it is removed into the water – so yes you would have to discard the cooking water. I’m not sure what role temperature plays in all of it.