When we take our daily walks through the forest trails of the ravine close to where we live it recalls to mind often when we see any number of wildflowers in season that many of them had recognized medicinal properties and many were also gathered for table use, as edible plants.

There are still people who will roam through the woods to pluck mushrooms to take home and prepare with their meals, but they'd pretty well have to acquire the skills to recognize which are edible and which are not. We've come across some of those people occasionally. Canadians don't tend to be as interested in or skilled as Europeans in the tradition of foraging in the wild for food.

When we come across seasonal wildflowers and other forest plants we are curious about them but never, with the exception of the wild berries and apples that are ripe in season, make an effort to discover their edible or healing properties. We may be curious, but the effort and the incentive is lacking, given the easy availability of all kinds of whole foods in a country that can boast it is capable of agricultural abundance in growing grains, fruits and vegetables, pulses of all kinds.

Yesterday we came across just one wild parsnip plant, another that had been more mature had been smashed down by someone, which in a sense is a pity, but on the other hand because some people are extremely sensitive to the oils that can cause skin outbreaks of rashes if they brush against the plant, understandable. While its foliage and stem are to be avoided, thought to be poisonous, however, its root can be eaten, just as wild ginger root too is edible, its flower and foliage to be avoided. And the same is true of compass plant, sometimes called pilotweed.

Compass plant

We're not concerned about our little dogs becoming ill from nibbling on growing things. We do offer them treats such as raspberries, thimbleberries and blackberries, as well as apples when they become ripe and they appreciate those. In Jackie's first year, though, he once in late fall nibbled on a fallen apple that had become mouldy. We thought little of it until when we returned home he was wobbly on his feet and behaved as though he were inebriated and we immediately realized he had consumed something that affected his nervous system, rushing him to the animal hospital where he was purged, given medication and watched overnight. We no longer encourage him to eat fallen apples.

Selfheal

We commonly come across another plant that I had always taken for some kind of ajuga-like one until I discovered it was in fact a plant called selfheal, and was once very commonly used for its medicinal properties, not for any one reason, but many healing properties attributed to it, which is kind of neat; reminds one of the bark of the willow tree valued for its ability to lower fevers, reduce pain; acetylsalicylic acid, the active ingredient in Aspirin, derived from willow bark.

Early pioneers to Canada from the British Isles thought so highly of the importance of some flowers and other plants that among the essentials they brought with them as settlers included seeds, not only to grow some flowers loved by them in their new land, but so they could plant kitchen and herb gardens to help feed themselves.