Sunday, July 20, 2008

The ultimate irony of me and milkweed

Guess what?

I must have harvested a winter's worth of vegetables, and tossed them over the fence to rot.

Yup, you guessed it -- milkweed is edible.

What is edible about the common milkweed? Just about everything. The seed heads before they flower. The leaves. The seed pods before they dry up and open their gifts to the wind.

And the silky fibrous seed-bearing pod innards can be used for insulation, reportedly have a higher R-factor than goose down.

The joke is on me. However my many hours uprooting milkweed was well spent, deeply engrossed as I was, in the finer aspects of body awareness.

Thanks to google.com for connecting me with the these amazing details about edible milkweed. Now to peruse those edible weeds websites in search of additional delectable surprises.

Note: Before you go out and indiscriminately harvest the milkweed in your field, check locally to see if it's the edible sort. Not all of the milkweed family are edible.

3 comments:

Grey Horse Matters said...

That's very interesting information on milkweed, that I didn't know.

Anonymous said...

Oh no! Who would have thought one could eat milkweed? Well, there's none here in my neck of the desert, so can't give it a try. Great story.

Pax. Kimberly

Nor’dzin said...

I love your blog and have tagged you for a game - hope this is fun and not an inconvenience.