A lovely forest-backed meadow along Ohio Match Road
My foraging friend, Joanne, and I took a drive out Ohio Match Road to look for alpine strawberries, other edibles, and things in bloom. We found very few strawberries because they're harvested by wildlife before we can get to them. We also found many other wonderful and beautiful things!
I'll include the Latin names for the plants we found if I know or can research them.
We did find this unripe strawberry (Fragaria virginiana.) We left it to ripen for the wildlife but took the picture to show the small size of alpine strawberries.
Wild orange honeysuckle (Lonicera ciliosa)
Orange honeysuckle grows abundantly along the sides of the road draping its vines over trees and shrubs. Several times we hopped out of the car to nip off the bases of the flowers with our teeth and sip the sweet nectar.
White Mariposa lilies (Calochortus apiculatus).
There is a pink variety but we didn't see any at this site.
A happy mason bee occupies the blossom of a Nootka rose (Rosa nutkana)
Some of the wild rose varieties had a lovely, soft rose scent.
A wild rose in a lovely spot.
We'll be back in Autumn to gather ripe, Vitamin C-rich rosehips for making into syrup (tasty!) for pancakes, waffles, French toast, ice cream and for drying as an herbal tea
Birch-leaved spirea (Spiraea betulifolia)
This wild, native spirea lines both sides of the road. I see its domestic pink cousin in gardens around town.
Oxeye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare)
These pert and pretty daisies are everywhere. I pick them to add to bouquets on my morning forest walks.
Bunchberry (Cornus canadensis) is related to dogwood
The fruit of the bunch berry is edible and ripens around mid-summer
Hounds-tongue (Cynoglossum officinale)
This lovely "weed" possibly toxic to cattle who rarely eat it due to its offensive smell and taste, was used in herbal medicine externally in poultice form to relieve pain.
The Internet is rife with government sites decrying hounds-tongue's invasiveness and its (mild) toxicity. There are a few medicinal herb sites that elucidate cautiously its historical and present day medicinal uses. As there are other less questionable herbs that provide the same benefits, I see this plant as another pretty wildflower to admire in late Spring.
There are so many native plants to discover here! There are literally hundreds. In Utah, where I lived at the Cottage in a high-desert mountain valley, there were far fewer. The Inland Northwest of Idaho is a veritable Garden of Eden!
The following day we met with an herbalist, Autumn Summers, from Herb Pharm, who took us on a medicinal "weed" walk at Cherry Hill Park that I will share in my next post.
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