Definitely Not Survivor Material

I jogged a new route today and found myself looking for excuses to stop and catch my breath.  An Asian woman was foraging for greens along the banks of the Charles carrying a large shopping bag full of them.  Since she didn’t look crazy, I stopped to ask what she was picking.

She didn’t speak any English, but she showed me a particular plant that was growing in bushy clumps along the riverbank and gestured that you could eat it.  It seemed like something I might have seen before, with leaves in threes that were pointy and jagged on the edges like parsley, but floppy like cilantro.  It tasted like grassy sage.  I tried to find out what it was called or what she did with it, but really nothing was getting through.

Having only paltry plant knowledge to exchange with her, I reached down to pull some young leaves from a dandelion plant, trying to explain that you could eat those, too.  She shook her head thinking I was unable to tell the difference between dandelions and the radically different-looking plant she had just shown me.  But I persisted and shoved some of the dandelion greens into my mouth.  She looked at me like I was crazy.  Then I ran away.

The problem is that now I don’t know what that mystery plant was, and it’s going to drive me insane.  If there had been any oxygen getting to my brain at all, I would have brought a sprig home to identify through a series of targeted Google searches (“green plant by river”, “green leaves that taste good”).  I thought I saw the exact plant on my run back, but when I popped it into my mouth, it just tasted like weeds. 

Anyway, here’s the weed that was the wrong plant.  That should be helpful.  Anyone know of a tasty wild plant that looks like this?

Comments

[Sis]

No, but I know one that looks pretty similar that you can smoke.

[Tammy]

Maybe that's what she was trying to tell me. (She had a really big bag of it.)

[NurseJen]

I have a similar odd-looking-but-not-quite-that sprig growing in my chives (I planted the seeds in a planter box, so I have no idea how it got in there.) I wonder if it's the same thing (though by planter is nowhere near a river...) We have little Asian ladies here in NJ who pick dandelion greens in Veteran's park all the time.

[Annie]

Mugwort. Koreans harvest it, puree it, and mix it with glutinous rice flour to make a green herbal duk, the Korean version of mochi.

Only in the past few years have the Koreans in my area started to harvest and eat dandelion greens. Sometimes it just take education.

[Heather]

Ooh, bitter. In one of my favorite video games (Harvest Moon, a really cute farming sim), you can pick it wild in the winter.

[aforkfulofspaghetti]

Heh. Smoking it would seem to be the way forward.

[Alecto]

I googled it. Smoking it is definitely the way to go.

[ALF]

Found your site from dooce's - just wanted to say hi!

[DocChuck]

Artemisia vulgaris is not called WORMWOOD for nothing.

I hope you are current on all your shots.

[melissa]

"But I persisted and shoved some of the dandelion greens into my mouth. She looked at me like I was crazy. Then I ran away."

But of course.

And Sis and Forkful already stole the obvious weed joke, so I guess I don't need to go there. ;)

[Tammy]

Melissa: Sadly, I didn't even see the weed joke coming, so hell-bent was I on eating it.

DocChuck: Are you saying I’m going to have worms??? Excellent. That ought to keep the weight down when I finally give up on jogging.

ALF: Hiya. Thanks for stopping by!

Alecto: I'll set some aside for you.

Aforkfulofspaghetti: And you, and you, and you...

Heather: I had a hard time locating the info on that plant because plugging "bitter herb" into Google brings up every bitter herb on the planet (and there are quite a lot of them, it turns out). Does it go by another name?

Annie: I think you may be right about this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemisia_vulgaris

Most of the pictures I could find were of older plants, which don't look exactly the same, but pretty damned close. Thanks for your help! You can bet I'll have a crumpled up shopping bag in my pocket for my next jog.

NurseJen: If that plant can grow anywhere near the Charles River, it can grow anywhere.