swamp lantern

[piranha]

lysichiton americanus, western skunk cabbage. it well deserves its name, but aside from its foetid odour, it's actually a fascinating and useful plant -- it produces enough heat to melt the snow around it, which is pretty amazing. native peoples ate it (allegedly it tastes better than it smells), used the large summer leaves for lining baskets and wrapping around other foods, and the rhizome has medicinal uses. i've never tried to eat any part of it, but maybe this year. if i can make myself go close to it. i really like the way it looks though, it's delightfully odd.

Comments

skunk cabbage

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I assume it's arum family, like peace lilies? I have no idea if they're edible.

Re: skunk cabbage

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

yeah, it's an arum, our only native one. after a bit more reading it seems that it was a famine food only, which is not promising, *heh*. but i always like to try, just so that i know what i could munch on if i were marooned in the woods for days.

Re: skunk cabbage and other native food.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

Heh. The only bits of our native foods I remember is stuff like cycad seeds - that require extensive processing to leach out the poisons. Oh, and bunya nuts, but they come every two-three years.

I also suspect eating our native foods would take some adjustment of the tastebuds. We visited a honey place that had 15 different plant-specific honeys, most native species. The sunflower honey was very bland and uncomplicated after blue gum, stringy bark, macadamia, etc.

Also, if I don't post about dragonfruit in the next 24 hours, nag me :-).

Re: skunk cabbage and other native food.

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

I get/eat packages of dried dragonfruit myself.

dragonfruit

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

does it taste more interesting dried? i was really disappointed when i had my first fresh dragonfruit; for such a pretty fruit it tasted boringly bland. i guess drying would concentrate the sweetness, at least.

Re: dragonfruit

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

Not all that strong in flavor, kind of like not-so-ripe strawberries, with interesting texture from all the seeds. Some are more sour than others.

[kaet.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I didn't know there were thermogenic plants.

thermogenic plants

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

i didn't either, until i met these guys, and was wondering why there was a relatively wide ring around them without snow. so far it's the only thermogenic plant i've encountered, AFAIK. well, i've seen lotus, but not close up and personal.

science news has an interesting intro: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20031213/bob9.asp with biography at the end.

Re: thermogenic plants

[djm4]

They feature in an episode of David Attenborough's Life in Cold Blood. There's an uninhabited island just off the coast on Minorca, where the native lizards have learned to bask on the arum lilies precisely because they're thermogenic. They also eat the flies that are attracted to the lilies. But the relationship goes further than that; the lizards on the island - unlike lizards anywhere else - eat the fruit of the arum, and then excrete the seeds. This turns out to be a better way of fertilising and distributing the seeds than whatever else does it on other islands, and the lilies have become a lot more common as a result.

Re: thermogenic plants

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

oh, interesting. i should get ahold of that; thanks for the pointer.

[ckd]

Janet Kagan used that in one of the stories that's part of her wonderful Mirabile.