Chickweed is one of the few wild edible greens available in the coldest part of winter. Chickweed, Stellaria media, is a tasty and ubiquitous salad herb you’ll find growing in many sidewalk planters and in wilderness areas, too. It’s a delicate green, usually fewer than five or six inches tall. The flavor is very mild and pleasant, and if anything, mostly tastes like water.
You can identify chickweed by the very fine line of peach fuzz style hair that grows up along the stem and switches sides at each leaf juncture. It looks a bit like a Chinese staircase twirling around, and when it blooms with tiny white star-shaped flowers, I like to think of it as a stairway to the stars. The Latin name Stellaria hints at this, too.
Medicinally, chickweed has a number of actions. If applied externally in a salve or simply mashed up as a poultice, it’s cooling and soothing for skin, very helpful for itching and irritation. Internally, chickweed is a mild diuretic, moving water through the body, helping with detoxification of the lymphatic system, and is known to be a remedy for rheumatism.
This is a great green to eat raw. It can be preserved using vinegar, creating a salad dressing, or glycerine, if you wanted to take it as a tincture. (Related post: How to Make A Glycerin Tincture).
From a spiritual perspective, the essence of this plant comes across to me as sweet, gentle, playful and child-like. While many plants do have male or female energy in them, this one is androgynous. It has a receptivity inherent to it — very yin. Chickweed would be a great plant ally for someone who is working on developing intuition, balancing a too-fiery nature, or wanting to cultivate gentleness.
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Upcoming Classes:
* Guided meditation to connect with the plant spirits of hawthorn & yarrow, great teachers of boundaries, on Thursday, Feb. 7.
* Herbal Smoking Blends workshop on Thursday, Feb. 14.
* Guided meditation to connect with the spirit of Western red cedar, a wonderful ally for sensitive people, on Thursday, Feb. 21.
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Cattail is available during the winter. And there may be a few other roots.
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Becky, I love this post. Can I link to it at TastingLife.org? Sending you goos wishes from Denver, broken finger and all. Nanxy
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Thank you so much, Nancy. Absolutely! I always appreciate extra traffic and my intention in writing these posts is to share them.
I really like your blog. Not to throw any other homework to you but do you know off the top of your head any other winter edibles? I’m familiar with a good deal of edible plants but you’ve hit the nail on the head with “What edibles are still available right now in the winter?” Thanks. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.
Thank you! I appreciate you reading it.
There really isn’t much else except pine needle tea, old rose hips and hawthorn berries still on the branches (if they look OK), maybe miner’s lettuce if you see it. http://firstways.com/2012/02/27/siberian-miners-lettuce-not-just-salad-2/
Oops. meant to reply here.