An arrangement of edibles

March 10th, 2024

miner's lettuce salad again tonight (oil & vinegar & red pepper flakes; semi pictured is potato leek soup)

Enormous miner's lettuce. Twice the diameter of the biggest I've seen before. Found an even bigger fresh green one and ATE it.

Beet Tartare with Miner's Lettuce (Vegan)

Miner's Lettuce by Arlene Schag Via Flickr: The common name derived from historic gold rush days in California. Miner's Lettuce Gourmet Soup Recipe

A few extras from Watershed

miner's lettuce is so tasty.... it grows at my school by the thousands and you can just pluck those suckers off the ground raw and cram them into your mouth like some wretched starving thing. 10/10 plant, truly

damn wait i wanna try it now omg

late winter/early spring yard check, part 1: oh she spranging

Native plant spotlight! This is miner’s lettuce, it’s a fun little edible plant that’s rich in vitamin C; you can beat the scurvy allegations while having a hike! I’d describe the taste as somewhere between butter lettuce and baby spinach

i have a headache and a sweet tea so i'm ready to fight the universe again

• Gets naked in the forest

• Animal skulls

• Knowledge of the mushrooms

Are you sure you're not a witch?

(Love the photos btw)

Honestly a witch. You forgot to include foraging wild plants to eat!

Rooreh (Ohlone), palsingat (Cahuilla), or Claytonia perfoliata flowering. This friend has a wide range in the west. They're a lovely sour, crunchy edible – a bit reminiscent of spinach. Gold rush miners learned from native peoples that eating rooreh could help fight off scurvy, and for this reason in the post-1849 they've often been known as miner's lettuce. Recently there's been a push to return their older names to prominence and credit indigenous knowledge in both academic and amateur botany spaces. I've been trying to find the Coast Miwok name for them, since these particular plants live on Coast Miwok land, but have had no luck so far; if you know that name and are wiling to share it, please do!

Cafe Ohlone's spring menu often includes a dish that features rooreh, but if you're not in the bay and can't spring for their Sunday brunch tickets (I'm pretty sure they're sold out for the season, anyway), they're perfect candidates for your next winter garden - they're very cold hardy. I find them on riparian trails and used to be in the habit of taking them home - these days I'm more food secure and let them be.

this time of year there's a ton of miner's lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata, winter purslane) growing in the partial shade areas on our land.

my experience with it isn't quite the same as the wiki page; it tastes a lot like butter lettuce, just a hint of spinach. texture wise it's almost identical to butter lettuce, just a bit thicker, more substantial without being tough.

apparently wild growths can have excessive oxalates but my mouth says ours has less than spinach.

Miner’s Lettuce

i was like fine with it still pretty much being winter (there were snowflakes this morning) until i had to put together my (late) seed order and started thinking about the garden and now i'm like i cannot BELIEVE there isn't rhubarb or wild greens yet #rude