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Thanks Bob, Like Manumuskin I too would have casually dismissed the plant as wild lettuce, a local bias. The difference would have been obvious in the field as the id would have been done by leaf smell and whether or not latex was present when the leaf was broken, not through botanical taxonomy...

Empress-Tree, Paulownia tomentosa, has a neat trick. When the tree is cut to the ground, it sends up an herbaceous stalk with giant leaves that look different than adult leaves. That herbaceous stem usually dies to the ground the end of the first year. Then a woody stem arises the next season to...

Looks like it to me too! You can use the young seedling leaves sparingly in salad, but we generally avoided wild lettuce in favor of dandelion and chicory. S-M

Chiggerbush is another name for sweetfern (Comptonia peregrina), but I don't know if it attracts or repels chiggers! Anyone willing to try this one out???

The young Smilax shoots are tasty too, but only the tender part that snaps like asparagus. Anyone ever try the sweetfern (Comptonia peregrina) or chiggerbush nutlet? Critters usually get first dibs, so it is a rare treat. I'm crazy about the spicy scent. Let's put things in perspective. Harmful...

Tastes like wild hickory nuts... I grew up on Mother Earth News, Organic Gardening, the Foxfire Books, and Euell Gibbons Stalking the Wild this and that. They resonated so well with the gathering ethos that existed with the immigrant farming community. It irks me that the following plants were...

That feed mill was Richland Grain Company and Paragon Poultry, my dad's operation. Its progenitor was founded by Andy Levari, who built the first feed mixer and warehouse behind Richland General Store in the '40s in support of the growing egg industry. We partnered with Andy on turkey...

It’s not too late to plant if you can find seedlings for sale, and even possible to grow from seed Asian greens, cilantro, and radishes. I’m setting out plants of lettuce, greens, daikon, cilantro, parsley, Thai and sweet basil, scallions (to overwinter), snow peas, gherkins, and even a couple...