11153 The Forager's Garden

a directory of forest-garden plants

Daylily development

Hemerocallis fulva ‘Kwanso’ with double flower

chopped and used like an onion. After opening, the flower is less nutritious but still a great visual addition to dishes. The key to getting the best out of them flavour-wise seems to be frying, which caramelises the sugars in the petals. They have a useful ability to thicken soups and stews: a simple but attractive miso soup can be made by frying a handful of daylily flowers, then adding hot water, cooking for a short while and adding miso.

After a short while (hence the name daylily) the flower withers and dries. It is then still less nutritious, but retains its ability to thicken, and dried flowers are often collected and stored for this

forest edge crops purpose. Some people also use the flowers in salads: personally I find they have an unpleasant aftertaste and slight burning sensation and only ever use them cooked. Flower colour may have an influence on taste. The daylily breeder Brian Reeder,* who breeds cultivars for edibility as well as appearance, writes on his blog that “some of the darker anthocyanic pigments found in Hemerocallis hybrids also gives a stronger, somewhat more astringent flavor to the petals, while pale yellows, lavender, pink and near white are often very light and sweet.”26 Finally, the roots, which on some species form tuber-like thickenings, are also edible. The forager and chef Hank Shaw, who writes the ‘Honest Food’ blog, describes them as “quite possibly the best tubers I’ve ever eaten”.27 I rarely use them because they are not produced in great quantities and it involves digging up the plant, but if you are dividing them or are lucky enough to live in one of the places where daylily has become an invasive weed, take full advantage.

There are many species of daylily. Plants for a Future list over 20 and only one, H. forrestii, gets anything less than a four-star rating for edibility.

As with the hostas, many daylilies that you might encounter do not fit strictly into any one species as they have been hybridised widely and many are listed only as Hemerocallis and their cultivar name. I would be a little more cautious trying new cultivars of daylily than hosta, as they are more chemically complex. According to Brian Reeder, who must have tasted a large number of novel cultivars, “I have found that some of them are good to eat, while others have odd, sedative effects, and others are almost laxative in nature.”28 Personally I have never noticed any ill effects from cooked daylilies and it should be remembered that they have been used in China for thousands of years, but care would be advised when trying any cultivar that is new to you.

Different daylilies flower at different times and

* A clear case of what New Scientist magazine calls nominative determinism. Brian’s blog is called Daylily Breeder.

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having a range of species and cultivars ensures a succession of flowers at different times of year.

I grow H. citrina, dumortieri, esculenta, fulva, lilioasphodelus, middendorfii var. exaltata and minor and a range of cultivars, including ‘Whichford’, ‘Burning Daylight’, ‘Franz Hals’, ‘Yellow Moonlight’, ‘Pink Damask’ and ‘Cream Drop’. You can also find double cultivars of daylily which have the culinary advantage of being chunkier: H. fulva ‘Kwanso’ is one that I grow. Two common ones that I have found rather disappointing in terms of size and yield are ‘Stella de Oro’ and ‘Corky’. Many new cultivars are becoming hard to recognise even as daylilies. The trend in breeding seems to be for more open flowers, with petals curved back hard – pretty much the opposite of what you want for cooking. Species and older cultivars are generally better.

Growing daylilies is easy. They do best in a moist, fertile soil in sun or semi shade. There is apparently a daylily gall midge (Contarinia quinquenotata) which can lead to distorted flowers. Fortunately I have never seen it in my garden. Slugs are fond of the young growth. This isn’t a problem with established plants but new plants are worth protecting when first planted out.

Burdocks and thistles Arctium and Cirsium species

Young burdock plant

Burdock flowers

ASTERACEAE

If you grow burdocks, you’ll soon find out why they were the inspiration for the invention of velcro. Their hooked seeds hitch a ride on anything vaguely woolly, including the gardener’s jumper or hat, to aid their dispersal. Often they fall off eventually, but their ideal is for their host to die with the passengers still in place, giving a planting spot with the rich, fertile conditions that they like best. So far I haven’t given them the satisfaction.

There are two species that you can grow, both of which yield different products at different points in their biennial lifecycle. The greater burdock, A. lappa, is probably best known by its Japanese

Dry burrs for seed collection

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a directory of forest-garden plants

forest edge crops (C. oleraceum) is a more agreeable customer, with soft, unspiny foliage that can be used as a pot herb and shoot vegetable. Unlike its cousins it is a perennial which spreads slowly to form a clump, growing to a little over a metre in height.

Asters Various species in tribe Astereae ASTERACEAE

Peeling a burdock flower stem

name of gobo. Lesser burdock, A. minus, is a native Scottish wildflower. As it name suggests, it is smaller than gobo, but its flower stems will still top six feet in fertile conditions. I grow both in my garden and harbour hopes that they will hybridise.

The first year product is the root. This can reach up to a metre long, so digging one up is quite a project. I like them best cooked the Japanese way as kinpira: julienned and then braised with soy sauce, mirin and sesame oil. They can also be used as a filling for maki rolls or in stews. According to Moerman’s Native American Food Plants, the Iroquois dried burdock roots for use in winter.29 In the second year, the part to use is the young flower stem. With its bitter skin peeled off and cooked, it has an artichoke taste. If you leave it alone at this stage it will produce the magnificent mature flower stem and those hitch-hiking burrs.

The nectar from the flowers attracts a range of butterflies and the seeds, which are produced in large quantities, can be sprouted and eaten. When processing the seeds, look out for the large quantity of irritating hairs that come out of the seed head along with them.

The plume thistles of the genus Cirsium are closely related to burdocks and some can be used in similar ways. In season, I forage the flower stems of the native spear thistle (C. vulgare) for the sweet, juicy pith, but I wouldn’t encourage them in my garden as they are ferociously spiny. Cabbage thistle 176

Cabbage thistle

Cabbage thistle flower

The genus Aster was recently broken up by botanists into a slew of new genera, mostly with unlovely names like Symphyotrichum and Doellingeria, but most of them continue to be known as asters in their common names (and in Latin by those unwilling to give up a blessedly short, memorable name).

The group seems quite prone to confusion in the nursery trade: not so important if you are just after a pretty flower, but more significant when you are planning to eat them. For instance, I grow (and eat) a cultivar called A. ageratoides ‘Ezo Murasaki’.

I originally bought it as Aster scaber, but when I had a visit from Stephen Barstow, who is a big fan of the real A. scaber, I discovered that it was no such thing. When I went back to the nursery I bought it from they told me that they had discovered that it was actually Aster trifoliatus subspecies ageratoides. Now Aster trifoliatus doesn’t even exist, but A. trinervius subspecies ageratoides is a synonym of A. ageratoides, which my plant fits the botanical description of. Buyer beware! Fortunately, given all this, while many asters aren’t particularly worth eating, I haven’t come across any risks in the former genus as a whole, so nibbling on the wrong aster is unlikely to kill you.

The asters are mostly plants of scrub, wood margins and open woods, often preferring a moist soil. The ones of interest are all rather sprawling, medium-sized herbaceous perennials. They grow in expanding clumps: some, like ageratoides, expand fast enough that some care is needed in placing them but most are quite well behaved. They

Leaves of Aster ageratoides ‘Ezo Murasaki’

A hoverfly enjoying a chamchwi flower

mostly flower very late in the season, giving rise to some poetic names. The New England aster is known as ‘the last rose of summer’ and asters in general are often called Michaelmas daisies, after the festival celebrated on the 29th of September, now named for the Archangel Michael but originally honouring the Celtic sun god Lugh. When, as I do, you harvest the flower shoots heavily, they may not even flower until the start of winter, justifying a final name of ‘frostflower’.

The nation most keen on eating asters is Korea, where the word chwi refers to all sorts of plants in the aster family. Used as vegetables, they are chwinamul. The most esteemed of these is 177

a directory of forest-garden plants Doellingeria scabra, the former Aster scaber, which is known as chamchwi or ‘true aster’. Originally collected as a mountain herb, it is now widely cultivated and seeds can be bought from Korean seed suppliers. The leaves are used in salads or stir-fried or blanched as namul. They are used after stirfrying as a wrapping leaf (ssam) to wrap strips of meat and other vegetables, brined to make k­ imchi or pounded with rice to make rice cakes.30 Other hardy asters used in Korea include Aster ­tataricus (Tatarian aster or gaemichwi),31 Aster glehnii (­Ulleung Island aster) and, for a real tongue-twister, Miyamayomena koraiensis.32 Aster ageratoides is also from Asia, with a natural distribution including China, Korea, Japan and the Russian Far East. I don’t know of any traditional use of it but I find that the flower shoots, which are produced in great abundance, stir-fry nicely. It is available in a range of ornamental forms. If you like more of a challenge, you might want to try tracking down Galatella hauptii, a steppe aster from Central Asia which receives a mention (as Aster) on Plants for a Future.

From Asia we move to North America, where most of the asters are now in the genera Eurybia and Symphyotrichum. The New England aster (S. novae-angliae) is a tall herbaceous perennial that has become a popular garden plant, bred into many different varieties. One website describes it as having “very mild, mint-like scent”.33 Timothy Coffey mentions the use of the blue wood-aster (S. cordifolius) as ‘greens’34 and the bigleaf aster (E. macrophylla) was used by the Algonquin and Ojibwa35 and is popular on US and Canadian foraging sites for its young leaves. I have yet to try any of these but I suspect that the flower stems would be useable in the same way as the Asian species.

All the asters dry quite easily and can be reconstituted for later use or crumbled into winter soups and stews for flavour.

forest edge crops

Gomchwi Ligularia fischeri ASTERACEAES

This one’s for the bears! It’s another Korean chwinamul, and its name literally means bear aster.

This is always a good sign as our hairy friends seem to have quite similar tastes to humans, and indeed gomchwi is one of the most popular sannamul in Korea – to the extent that it has become a cultivated crop as well as a wild mountain vegetable. It is cooked in all the most distinctive Korean styles: steamed and dressed as a namul, fermented in

tolerance for some shade and an alarming habit of completely collapsing if it becomes too dry – although it will make a full recovery if watered in time.

A moist, shady, forest edge spot is perfect for it.

Shidoke Parasenecio syn Cacalia delphiniifolia ASTERACEAE

Shidoke is a woodland sansai which the blog ‘­Shikigami’ describes as having a “fantastic and unique flavour” when boiled very briefly.36 I h ­ aven’t managed to obtain it yet but it sounds very promising.

Butterburs Petasites species ASTERACEAE

Gomchwi (Ligularia fischeri)

Gomchwi flower

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kimchi or used as a ssam to wrap other foods.

Plants from different sources can vary considerably. A plant I grew from seed received from Stephen Barstow (who obtained his original seeds from Korea) has light green leaves and a mild flavour. Two other plants received from other sources and originating elsewhere in the species’ range have darker, thicker leaves and an unpleasantly strong taste. If you want to grow it, I’d suggest getting seeds from a Korean seed company.

Other species of Ligularia have become popular garden plants in Scotland, especially the cultivar ‘The Rocket’. Gomchwi shares with these a

Comparison of mild and strong Ligularia fischeri

Butterburs are strange, primeval-looking plants, although deep down they are just another daisy.

They flower before they come into leaf, and since they can spread over large areas by underground runners this can be an impressive sight. The leaves then look rather like rhubarb, but without a central point that they all grow from. Many species are edible, but the best (because it is the largest and least fiddly) is Japanese butterbur, Petasites japonicus, or fuki.

Traditional cooking methods are designed to remove the toxic, bitter alkaloids found in the raw plant. There are two edible parts: the flowers, called fuki no to, are picked when still in the bud, and the leaf petioles are picked while young. Petioles are boiled for half an hour in water (although some recipes use much less than this), then they are cooled and the skin is peeled off (it is thin and comes away easily by hand at this point). Like gobo, they are good at taking up the flavour of seasonings and they can be cooked in the same way. The flowers are boiled and then squeezed to remove the water before being used in tempura or 179