A Wild Salad

June in Connecticut.
I’m visiting Dad. He is recovering fast from major surgery.
My brother Greg is here too.
Dad wants a wild salad for lunch, he loves them.
“Greg, Dad wants a wild salad. Want to look around?”
Greg is an avid forager. Not as knowledgeable as me, but truly carnivorous and a total hunter. If it moves, he’ll eat it. When we forage together the synergy is incredible.
“Let’s go.”
I grab a bowl and we head out of the house.

First, the road into the woods. As we enter the forest there’s lots of wild grape vines, Concord grapes. All end in tendrils, elegant, green and red, forked, arcing out, searching in the air for a grip that they seize within minutes. It is far too early for grapes. I contemplate the leaves. They are used for dolmades, a Greek dish of rice wrapped in grape leaf and marinated. The leaves are not really tender enough for us. The tendrils are sour and add an interesting texture to any salad. When you prepare and serve the salad, be sure to pull them apart, for they wrap around everything, binding the salad into a solid unit.

We see sassafras, saplings and small trees. The wood is lousy for a fire – much too soft, low in BTUs. The leaves are distinctive - mittens with a thumb sticking out, sometimes two thumbs, sometimes none. The root bark of sassafras was cherished in Colonial times, when syphilis from the New World swept Europe. Tons were exported. I don’t know if it helped. We pick the young leaves on the branch tips, pale, tender and aromatic.

Down the forest road are lots of greenbrier, Smilax rotundifolia. As children we cleared woods of the greenbrier, a tough job with the thorny vines entangled with everything. We didn’t have a clue then that it could be eaten. We want the shoots. They are light green and elegant, with small shiny leaves and fine tendrils. The mouth ‘feel’ is lovely, almost buttery. Ants love them too, and a few can be seen running up and down every shoot. We knock each shoot against something hard to dislodge the ants.

Next is a hemlock tree. Its twigs are tipped with delicate light green clusters of needles, feathery to the palate, mild to the taste. I pick a handful. This is not the poison hemlock, Conium, made famous by Plato. Conium isn’t a tree, and is no relative of the forest hemlock. These names are strictly coincidental, nothing more.

We enter a field. Ahead is a stand of young locust, creamy with dense masses of flower. The locust is an amazing tree. It thrives where man disturbs the land – disused parking lots, dumps, cities. It is a real survivor. The wood is very hard, yet the tree grows far faster than any other native hardwood. Because of its denseness it is the best firewood around, superior to hickory or sugar maple. It makes the best posts – they last a century or more, far longer than the next best wood, cedar, which lasts a decade or two. Because it is rot resistant it makes a great boat building wood. The problem is that it is tough and ornery, very splintery, and with lots of silica that dulls tool edges fast. The grain is beautiful, golden and flecked, something like mahogany. What a tree! How did the locust acquire so many extreme properties? We are after the flowers. They are like pea flowers. All these fertilized flowers will turn into huge pea pods. This puts the locust is in the pea family. Locust flowers are quite solid. The sun is out, and they are full of honey. We take joy in a few mouthfuls of sweetness, and break off thick clusters, to be sorted out later.

Two crabapples straddling the stream. I try the leaves but they are too old. Too late in the year. We move on. Down the field Greg points out red clover in blossom and turns an inquiring look at me. Why not? We try a couple and they are nice. Around are other clovers – white clover and the tiny yellow trefoil. All are in the genus Trifolium, of the pea family. Their flowers are actually a bundle of tiny pea flowers that in time will turn into minature pea pods. You need good eyes or a magnifying glass. The clovers enrich soil by fixing nitrogen in the roots and leaving this behind when they die. Red clover is exceptional for its phytosteroids. These have a moderating effect on estrogen and are beneficial for women with excess estrogen or a high ratio of estrogen to progesterone. Rich in nutrients, the clovers are blood-builders. Dad doesn’t have to worry about estrogen, but his tongue is pale and he needs to build up his blood. We pick clover flowerheads.

Framing the gates between one field and the next are two young linden trees, lime flower, basswood, Tilia. They are in bloom. The green blossom is cooling, mucilaginous, soothing, calming. It is an excellent nervine. It also makes a fine Yin tonic. Yin in Chinese medicine means moist and cooling. Yin deficiency means dry, and perhaps hot as a result. The tender blossoms are very nice eaten straight up. I try one. The sepal is now too tough, but the green flowerhead, a spherical spray on a stalk, is still good. We pick handfuls of linden flowerheads.

Along the stone wall are woody nightshade vines, Solanum dulcamara. The purple flowers with yellow centers face us, an intense stare. They look like the flowers of their relatives, the potato and the tomato. I’ve eaten the red berries of dulcamara, like tiny tomatoes, quite good. These flowers will add an interesting dimension to the salad. We take some.

Down the stone wall are a few barberry bushes, Berberis vulgaris. The yellow spring flowers, now gone, are sweet. In the fall they become oval red berries, drupes with a single seed, nice to eat, and a food reserve for winter birds. Barberry is popular with herbalists. The inner bark, the part used, is tawny yellow. This yellow indicates the presence of the alkaloid berberine, a potent antibacterial, useful for infections like tonsillitis and Helicobacter pylori. Barberry is bitter and is a fine digestive and bile stimulant. It is appropriate for stimulating a weak digestive system, with improved absorption and excretion, or as an element of a sensible detoxification program. We want the light green leaves towards the end of the twigs, oval, tender and sour. We strip some twigs of their leaves.

On to the vegetable garden. The first ‘weed’ I spot is wood sorrel, Oxalis. The leaf looks like clover, but is much thinner and more delicate. It is tart. We gather some leaves, leaving behind the bitter flower buds. Another ‘weed’ is purslane, Portulacca. The leaves are thick, succulent and mucilaginous, and very cooling. This is a particularly nutritious plant, rich in Vitamins A and E and essential fatty acids. Why do gardeners destroy it when it is healthier than anything else they grow? The mysteries of ignorance. We break off leaves and branchlets, taking care to leave the purslanes alive for another day.

On the way to the house are rose bushes. Rose petals are calming, and are great for agitated women. I take a few roses, some small and pink, and one large red.

Making the salad.
The flowers are set aside. The greens are rinsed and the tendrils disentangled. I put the lot into a large wooden bowl and squeeze in the juice of an orange. That is the dressing, and that’s it. A vinaigrette would overwhelm. I toss the lot and then sprinkle the flowers atop. The salad is ready, an extraordinary cascade of greens under a panoply of flowers red, pink, purple, green, cream.

We start lunch with the salad. Murmurs as the exotic cacophony of texture, color and form hits the plates.
“A top restaurant would charge $50 for a plate.”
“No, this is priceless. You can’t do this commercially.”
It is not possible to get this kind of thing at a restaurant. Or a supermarket. This is in an utterly different dimension.
We enjoy the exquisite elegance of the living wildness.

And that is how to make a wild salad.