A friend of mine told me once of a way to distinguish between edible plants and the things you don't want to eat.
What he told me to do was to rub the juice of the plant (I guess it works better with berry-type things) on an arm or area of skin and wait for a few hours. If a rash or irregularity develops, don't eat the nature, otherwise it should be safe.
Has anyone else heard this and do you think it's a good determining factor? At this point, if I'm stuck in the wild without food and I'm getting hungry, this is really all I've got to go by.
Crush it up and rub it on your skin as you've said.
Next is crush it up and rub it on your lips. If you have burning, irritation, etc don't eat it.
Next you can place it under your tongue for a while, forgot the time. If it tastes odd, numbs your tongue, stings, etc don't eat it.
If everything is a go the next step is to swallow a tiny piece and wait several hours. If you have stomach pains, diarrhea vomiting, etc, don't eat any more. And even after this I would suggest small amounts until you're sure it wont harm you.
It's a good idea to try and only do this with one plant at a time so you can identify which one it is making you ill.
PLEASE NOTE****
THIS DOES NOT AND WILL NOT WORK FOR MUSHROOMS! Mushrooms are not plants. They're a completely different organism and can easily kill you or at the least produce bad affects if you do not know what you're doing and eat the wrong one.
That is the multi-step process that you are suppose to use with unfamilar plants. However the best method is to know exactly what you are eating before you eat it.
The "Taste/Touch" test is not infallible, it was designed to give downed fighter pilots an edge while E&Eing, Nothing beats time in the field and positive identification.
Practice and learn now while you have the time leave the "taste" test for absolute dire emergancies (dont feature it as your main plan).
Yes, please do yourself a favor and put in the effort to learn the plants in your area and the areas where you spend time.
It would ONLY make sense to use the "taste test," (as spelled out by ThoughtfulWolf) if you were in a situation where you were literally in danger of starvation and your only option for staying alive involved eating unknown plants. Otherwise, it is simply not worth it.
Get ahold of a good variety of wild edible plants books, and take the time to study them, scout your area and learn some of the more valuable (calorie-rich) edible plants. I see that you are in California. Perhaps you would be able to go on one of Christopher Nyerges' Wild Food Outings. http://www.christophernyerges.com/schedule.htm If not, he also has some great wild food books and videos on that website.
Take the time to learn the plants, and you will not be sorry!
I think you should just read up on the edible plants in your area and learn to positively identify them!
If you are in an emergency situation, it is not the time to get debilitated by eating something you shouldn't. Even a mildly poisonous plant that makes you a little ill can lead to death in an already bad situation.
Given all that, there is a little ditty that seems true for wild berries:
"White, don't bite." (Almost ALL white berries are poisonous).
"Red, go ahead." (But with real caution, because there are many poisonous red berries.)
"Blue, good for you." (There are almost no poisonous blue berries.)
Safest thing is to leave berries and all mushroom alone unless you can positively identify them...they do not have enough food value to be worth going wrong with them. Make pine nettle tea if you want vitamin C, or something you know is edible.
yikes.... i know many survival manuals describe this method, but as someone who knows a fair deal about poisonus and edible plants, i will tell you nothing beats experience! Even a small amount of some poisonus species is enough to cause severe sickness or discomfort, and in many cases death ( wouldnt want to try that with Water Hemlock or Deadly Nightshade! )
also the red white and blue berry system has serious flaws,, while a lot of blue berries are safe, the ones that arent are extremly poisous!
Nothing beats experience and knowledge! start learning your edible and poisonus plants now... dont be itimidated by the vast amount of info available.. start small learning and mastering 1 plant at a time... start out with what is most readily available in your local region.
I did a taste test on a seed and got a little sick.Upon further research I found out it was a castor bean that contains riacin.Glad I didn"t eat the whole thing.
You can´t beat knowledge. In a survival situation you can´t wait for the tasting trick. Properly done it takes a while and by then your judgement can be so clouded you wind up dead anyway.
Many mom -n- pop health food stores offer an "herb walk" at specific times through out the year. These are really worth the time and money. In my town the guy is incredibly knowledgeable about wild edibles and medicinal plants. You leave thinking that food and medicine is everywhere.
There is no single indicator of edible wild plants. Plants that can taste awful can be good for you, and some tasty plants will kill you even if you ate them in the emergency room. Bitter and sweet does not help at all. Nor color, nor what other animals eat.
I do not teach the universal test of edibility because I view it in a survival situation as irresponsible at best, deadly at worse. You can live a month without food. Why be unnecessarily sick or dead because you tried a wild plant?
In a given area there will be six or so prime plants, maybe a dozen if you are lucky. Why not just learn them? I know virtually hundreds of wild plants but if I had to live off my local plants starting tomorrow only about six would provide more calories than it would take to find, harvest, prepare and cook them.
assuming you are really stranded and desperate, watch local wildlife, especially other mammals... what they are eating should be Ok for you (though I have seen goats eat poison ivy with seemingly no ill effects) better than just eating what looks pretty!
Oh no... the only animal you can watch and get a hint of what we can eat are monkeys (and even they have bacteria in their gut we do not and can eat things we can't.) Birds can eat plants with arsenic, squirrels can eat plants with strictnine. Conversely we can eat things they can't. advocado for example. Goats are indeed the garbage hounds of the foraging world, but even they can't eat advocados. Watching what animals eats is not an indicator of what humans can eat. Consider the dog: It's motto is "I can always throw it up later."
Learn the half dozen prime wild edibles in your area. Much safer.
Take pokeweed aka inkberry for example. You can only eat the young shoots in the spring when there is no red color on the stems. Otherwise the plant is always poisonous. The dark purple berries are deadly if people eat them, but the native americans used the berries for facial paint. so your theory does not apply to all plants. be careful.
I will admit that as someone who earns his living teaching people how to forage I have a financial interest in people NOT using the universal test of edibility. But my objection goes much farther than personal interest.
You can easily live a month without food. If you are indeed in a surivival situation the last thing you need is to be sick (or dead) from eating an unknown plant when in fact you don't need to eat at all. You can cope with hunger for a month, it's not so easy to cope with debilitating sickness. And, if you are responsible for others you should stay as healthy as you can. Catch a fish or run down a rat, a far safer bet than field testing a plant.
Professionally, I recommend cannibalism before field testing a plant for edibility.
There is no reliable test for edibility regarding wild plants. It is a stupid, dangerous, and woefully misguided idea. Do I need to put that in big letters to convey just how wrong it is?
"Field testing" can make you sick when you don't need to be, and or kill you. The likelihood that you will find a very nutritious or energy-laden plant in time by "field testing" is next to nil in this very leafy world. All you really need to know are the half dozen or so prime edibles in your area, or where you plan to land. Is that so hard to do? A half dozen prime edibles. That's a hell of a lot better then getting sick or dying over this or that unknown plant. In fact, I would go so far as to say "field testing" a plant is either irresponsible and or criminal.
First, you can go a month without food. Period. Even six weeks is quite doable. Next, while hunger is a pain, you can manage it because you know exactly what it is: Hunger, no more, no less. And it goes away in a few days. Further, while you may indeed be hungry you are not incapacitated. You can still function quite well hungry, sometimes even better. When you get sick from "field testing" you don't know what it is or where the problem will stop. Will it be just hurricane diarrhea or is death coming in the next hour? You don't know. And... if you are responsible for others "field testing" is a way is a very good way to take you out of the picture and make them more vulnerable exactly when they need you the most. You're still useful to them even if you are hungry. You can't help them if you are losing your life through both ends. You can't help them if you are dead because you field tested a plant. Even if you live, them having to take care of you when it was all totally avoidable is damned stupid, reduces resources, and again makes things more dangerous.
Some horrible-tasting plants are good for you, some delicious ones are deadly. And some mushrooms will take a week to kill you. Know your edible plants. There is no shortcut, unless you like being sick, you like dying when you don't need to, and you like letting others down.
I must agree totally with Straight Razor on this one. You will get much more food and live a much longer life, by learning plant species individually. While your skin test is marginally useful in some situations it would fail to protect you from some fatal plants in the carrot family, and it would help you reject many edibles, including, for instance cashews.
You will notice there are very few living older folks who use these questionable rules (this also goes for any species in the kingdom Fungi).
Like Straight Razor says, just learn six or so common edible plants in your area, to start out with. You actually already know that many or more. Learn a couple that would be edible in every season. I agree that meat is more sustainable in a survival situation, but plants can keep you alive when the meat isn't there. There is no reason at all why you should take a risk on unknown plants.
My favorite books are by Samuel Thayer. He has good photos and descriptions as well as ideas in cooking them. Most of the plants he covers are available nationwide. Go to amazon.com and read the customer's reviews about the different books. Click on their book section and type in "Samuel Thayer". There are other books that are limited to your geographic location that would also be good to have. If you can't afford them, look on the internet for wild edible plants, or order a book on the subject from the inter-library loan if your library doesn't have a good one. In the two weeks that you would have the book, you can learn at least a few new edible plants from it.
Sam's books are excellent if you live in that geograhical area -- think Great Lakes give or take a few hundred miles.
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