A weed is just a plant in the wrong place. Round here, alas, three of my favourite weeds — purslane (Portulaca oleracea), amaranth (Amaranthus sp.) and fat hen (Chenopodium album) — are very much in the wrong places; on the streets and by the tips where they are the object of far too many dogs’ attention. If they weren’t, I’d hurry over to Vindu’s blog to print out her recipe for Thotakura pappu, dal with amaranth leaves.
Come rainy season, our backyard used to be so full of these plants almost like weeds that the only dishes on the table would be thotakura stir fry or thotakura pappu (actually it still is like that back home)
Perfection, really. Eat the weeds and do yourself some dietary good at the same time. But it does raise the whole thorny question of what to call those species. Neglected? Underutilized? Only by scientists and the mainstream. For local people who depend on diversity, they’re neither.
Jeremy: Do you have any thoughts about how plants brought from other places might threaten the diversity upon which local people depend?
I do! There are a couple of problems, as I see it. One is that the introduced plants will out-compete local plants all on their ownsome. That’s always possible, though I actually suspect it is uncommon because local plants will be adapted to local conditions. More worrisome, the growing of the introduced plants can damage local plants in several ways. They might reduce or damage the habitat. They might create social barriers, the introduced crops being seen as “more advanced” and even “fashionable”. And as local crops fall into disuse, the knowledge to prepare them may be lost. There are probably other factors too, but that’s enough to be getting on with.
Jeremy,
I am glad you got on to the topic of edible weeds.
Vilmorin – Andrieux (1920) The vegetable garden p. 313-314 [available from http://archive.org] has a favourable writeup for Chenopodium album (fat hen, good henry, Bonus Henricus). It used to be grown extensively by Lincolshire farmers – as a cosmopolitan plant often growing in places where it is not wanted, a change of mind could easily provide a cheap and nutritious food supplement.
You might be interested in this.
cool
I just ordered a copy of invasive plant medicine http://invasiveplantmedicine.com/