Plant Nerding Out from Coast to Coast!

Hey wildcrafters,

I hope you had an awesome summer, I sure did.
I drove to the Atlantic ocean and back again, while checking out a lot of new ecosystems loaded with new and familiar plants.
I also got the chance to meet up with a few fellow plant nerds and learn about these new places. Over the next little while I'll be posting a few photos from my journey with descriptions of the plants and places I visited and also my observations of the similarities and differences in foraging across the country!

Check out the pictures to learn what I got up to!

 

Despite the dry year I managed to gather enough tender greens to make a large salad for Firemakers Gathering (http://www.firemaker.org/) this contains Lambs Quarters (Chenopodium album), Siberian Miner's Lettuce (Claytonia sibirica), Lance Leaved Plantain (Plantago lancelata), Self Heal (Prunella vulgaris), Pea Flowers (Lathyrus nevadensis), Huckleberries (Vaccinium parvifolium), Native Black Berries (Rubus ursinus), Black Raspberries (Rubus leucodermis) , and Thimble Berries (Rubus parviflorus).

 Some grasses and sage brush in Summerland. while summerland was very dry and most of the natural areas looked like this I found abundant lambs quarters growing wherever the irrigation reached, it is much more common there then in Victoria.

As you can see despite the dry arid climate the Okanagan Valley is very lush due to nightly irrigation, this makes it a great place for foraging, lots of weeds under all those vineyards and orchards.

 We found a ornamental cherry tree loaded with cherries in a small little mall in the Okanagan Valley, they were just as good as those that you would pay for, just a little smaller.

 Here is me with our harvest after only a half hours work.

 We made a stop near Lake Louise to appreciated the beautiful colored water and lovely wildflowers.

 Some beautiful wildflowers near Lake Louise, the purple is a species of aster (Aster spp.), the red is Common Red Paintbrush (Castilleja miniata), and the yellow is Balsam Ragwort (Senecio pauperculis).


That's its for now folks, stay tuned for the next segments of my cross country voyage!

Happy hunting

- Katherine