12 plants that won't let you die of hunger in the wild

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

If you find something from this list, you will not be hungry.

If you get lost, then with the presence of berries, nuts and mushrooms, you will not be lost. Worse, when they are not there, the products are over, and you do not know how to fish and hunt. Do not despair: many plants will fit in food.

1. Sorrel

At the base of the leaf, at the petiole, there is a sagittal notch. The sorrel leaf itself also resembles an arrowhead. It has a sour taste due to its high content of ascorbic and oxalic acid. Protein is also of nutritional value. The leaves are eaten raw and placed in soup or green cabbage soup.

2. Clover

Its leaves can be shredded and eaten raw as a salad. They are rich in protein. Mashed potatoes and stew are prepared from boiled leaves.

3. Dandelion

Young juicy leaves are good for eating raw after pre-soaking in salt water for half an hour, and if there is no salt - soaking in fresh water for two hours to get rid of bitterness.

You can also eat the roots: they are washed, cut lengthwise and dried. Then fry over the fire until crisp. The roots have a pleasant sweet taste due to sugar (it contains up to 10%) and starch (up to 53%). If you roast and grind them into powder, you can get the base for a drink that resembles coffee.

4. Rhubarb

A plant with large leaves, sometimes wavy along the edge, and a paniculate inflorescence. The flowers are often white or greenish, sometimes pink or blood red.

In Europe it is used as a vegetable crop. They eat only thick leaf stalks peeled from the skin - the rest is poisonous. The edible portion is very juicy and nutritious. Boiled and stewed rhubarb stalks are delicious.

5. Ivan tea (fireweed)

This tall plant (up to one and a half meters) has a pleasant honey aroma, a uniformly pink color of flowers in an inflorescence-brush, tapering upwards. The leaves on the stem are arranged alternately and look like willow leaves.

Fresh leaves and shoots of fireweed are put in soups. Very pleasant, sweet roots are eaten raw. From the dried roots, you can get flour and bake cakes or boil porridge.

6. Burdock

A ubiquitous plant. Peeled burdock roots can be eaten raw (tastes better on plants before flowering). If the roots are baked, they will taste sweet and delicious.

7. Reed

Can be found along the banks of rivers and lakes. This is a tall plant with a thin stem, narrow leaves on it and a spikelet-panicle at the top.

Its roots can be eaten raw - they are juicy and tender, and also contain a little sugar, so they are sweetish. They can also be boiled and baked, dried. After drying, grind into flour for tortillas, and also fry and make a drink.

8. Reed

Grows abundantly near water. These are soft and light stems without leaves, with a modest brown panicle at the end. You can eat the roots of the reeds, they are tender and sweet, especially in spring.

9. Stinging nettle

Unlike stinging nettle, dioecious is taller, its inflorescences are long, and the leaves are pointed and elongated towards the end.

Shoots and leaves can be sent to a salad after standing in boiling water for 5 minutes. Also suitable for soup.

10. Cattail

A beautiful plant with a velvety thick brown inflorescence, often found on the banks of water bodies. It is mistakenly called reed.

Young shoots are considered very nutritious and tasty. They are boiled and eaten. They taste like asparagus.

Cattail rhizome is baked whole, like potatoes. Also, the roots are cut into pieces half a centimeter thick and dried by the fire. If you grind them, you get flour for cakes and bread, if you fry and grind them, you get the basis for a delicious and nutritious drink.

11. White water lily (water lily)

At the water lily, they eat the rhizome (located at the bottom). It is boiled, baked or fried.

12. Susak (Yakut wild bread)

It grows in water, has thin long leaves and stems. The inflorescence at the end of the stem resembles an umbrella with large pink flowers - one apical flower and three independent inflorescences.

The rhizome of the plant is baked or fried with lard, flour and the base for the drink are prepared from it (as from the roots of cattail and reed).

Finally

Do not take plants if you are not sure what exactly is in front of you. Better to starve than eat something poisonous. Please note that some of the mentioned plants or parts of them are edible only after heat treatment or soaking.