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Survival in anomalous zones

Edible plants of the middle zone

Getting lost in an anomalous zone, or in some other way finding yourself alone with wildlife Without many of the benefits of modern civilization, after a while you will definitely worry about getting food. It is difficult to go hungry in the wooded areas of central Russia, but even if you are a bad fisherman and hunter, there is enough tasty and healthy food for your soul. Vegetarian. A city dweller will immediately present fruits and vegetables in the windows, but besides them there are a lot of edible plants. We will try to talk about some of them on this page, and in order to learn more about plants, visit our herbalist school.

	Young stems, roots and crushed buds can be eaten. The decoction of the stems tastes similar to chicken broth. Be careful when collecting hogweed, as its juice contains special substances - furanocoumarins, which increase the skin's sensitivity to ultraviolet radiation. After contact with hogweed you can get the strongest sunburn even in the shade.
	Hawthorn prickly They also call him “boyarka”, “lady”. It is a member of the Rosaceae family. Transcarpathia is called the homeland of wild hawthorn, but even three hundred kilometers south of Moscow it is easy to find hawthorn. And yet, in the central zone, hawthorn is more often bred than it appears spontaneously.
	The leaves and stems can be eaten raw. Contains many vitamins. Good for cooking soups.
	Chilim (Water chestnut, Rogulnik) It is found in the central zone and in the south of Russia and Central Asia. Chilim fruits are very nutritious and can be eaten raw. They can also be boiled and baked. They have a very pleasant and delicate taste.
	For those who don’t know, these are the fruits of oak. You can make porridge or flatbreads from them. To prepare, acorns need to be peeled, cut, soaked in water for 2-3 days, changing it periodically, then boiled and crushed into a paste. You can fry flatbreads from it. Dried acorn meal can be stored for a long time.
	Horsetail Found everywhere. It is better not to confuse it with swamp horsetail, which is poisonous. The spore-bearing spikelets can be eaten either raw or cooked. By the way, ancient Russian cooking offers a unique recipe - pies with young horsetail. You can try making this delicacy after you’ve returned home safely.
	Ivan-tea (Fireweed angustifolia) Contains a lot of useful vitamins and microelements. You can eat shoots and rhizomes, raw or boiled. Dried leaves are used to brew a delicious and healing drink, which from ancient times until approximately the reign of Peter I was an excellent substitute for tea for Russian people.
	Clover Contains a lot of proteins. Leaves and young shoots can be consumed boiled or pureed. You can make flat cakes from the puree. It is popularly believed that clover purifies the blood.
	Stinging nettle Young shoots and leaves from the top of nettles can be added to soups and salads. Contains many vitamins and quickly replenishes their deficiency in the body.
	White water lily (Water lily) The rhizomes are eaten boiled and fried. You can bake it on coals, after cutting it into pieces. The dried root can be ground into flour, which can be stored for a long time, and baked into flat cakes.
	Burdock Burdock roots can be consumed raw, boiled and fried. They contain a lot of protein and vitamins.
	You can make soup from the root leaves. They can also be consumed raw.
	Can be found in clearings in coniferous forests, fires, edges. Rosettes of leaves and cobs are eaten.
	Dandelion officinalis It is best to eat young leaves, which are an excellent blood cleanser. Roasted dandelion roots make an excellent coffee substitute.
	The shoots and leaves have a fresh, slightly pungent taste. You can make a salad from them.
	Young shoots and leaves can be consumed raw or cooked. It is advisable to clean and rinse before use.
	Crayfish necks (Snake knotweed) The entire above-ground part of the plant can be eaten. When dried and crushed, it can be stored for a long time and used to prepare a tasty and nutritious broth.
	The peeled stems can be eaten raw. Also used for preparing many dishes. Contains large number vitamins and microelements.
	Reed (Rogoz) Young shoots can be eaten raw. It is good to roast rhizomes on coals. Sugar can be extracted from cattail rhizomes. To do this, peeled rhizomes need to be boiled and then the resulting syrup evaporated. Also, flour obtained from dried rhizomes can be used to make flat cakes.
	Knotweed (Knotweed) Young greens are tasty and nutritious, containing many vitamins. proteins and sugar. You can make broth from dried knotweed.
	All parts of the plant can be eaten raw or cooked.

Living in middle lane Russia can obtain a tasty and rich plant diet without any money. Even without cultivating a summer cottage.

For example, people get sick and are treated. Why? If you can do disease prevention. How? Very simple! Use medicinal herbs for food! Edible ones in large quantities, but purely medicinal or toxic ones - in small quantities!

Wild edible plants grow literally under our feet. Of course, you shouldn’t collect them within the boundaries of a metropolis, but in your free time you can go somewhere further away. In a pine forest, broad-leaved forest. Or take a walk through the field and pick a bouquet not for beauty, but for tea, soup or salad :)

So, we are going to the spring forest, warmed by the Sun. There may still be snow on the ground, but the hazel (hazel) tree is already beginning to bloom. All you have to do is lightly tap his dangling yellow earring and a whole cloud of pollen flies out of it. One hazel earring produces up to four million pollen grains. The first thing we can do is collect this wealth. Catkins, as a source of valuable pollen, can be brewed into tea together with other herbs for immunity, male strength and general strengthening of the body.

If hazel and alder bloom, then healing sap is already moving in the veins of the birch. In itself, it is already useful, since it is structured and filtered water. The composition also contains sugars, organic acids and vitamins. Birch sap must be collected carefully, little by little. After completing the collection, the holes need to be treated with garden varnish. Birch sap can be frozen or preserved for future use.

Let us remind you that sap can also be collected from maple trees. It is much sweeter than birch. In Canada, for example, they make excellent maple syrup. You can identify a maple tree by its leafless shoots. Maple is characterized by an opposite arrangement of buds, three leaf marks and the contact of leaf scars to form an angle.

After the snow melts, under the forest canopy you can find both overwintered green plants and young early spring ephemeroids.

Wintering horsetail, hoofed grass, and celandine emerge green from under the snow.

They are inedible, like young greens - anemone and corydalis.

But honey and lungwort are very tasty and healthy!

The borer belongs to the Umbrella family. Many of this family are poisonous plants, but the dream is incredibly tasty and useful herb. In the summer it will become harsh and can only be used in soup, but the young spring mushroom is happily eaten raw right in the forest and used to make salads. No wonder, according to legend, Seraphim of Sarov only ate it for two years.

Many people have known the lungwort, full of pink and blue flowers, since childhood. Lungwort flowers are very sweet, and the leaves are also edible. Like dreamweed, it goes well in a spring salad.

For a hint of bitterness, you can add blooming cherry leaves to the salad.

Goose onions also taste very good and will only complement the salad composition.

Even in deciduous forests we can find a valuable spring vegetable - spleen. Its leaves and stems are edible and resemble watercress. The name speaks for itself; it was previously used for diseases of the spleen.

And on open areas we meet the well-known coltsfoot. Its flowers are also edible. And the leaves that appear later are very popular as medicinal raw materials.

And the spring primrose, which is widely used in medicinal practice as a pulmonary and vitamin supplement, and in decorative floriculture, is also edible. Both flowers and leaves go great in spring salads and teas.

Separately, we will look at what is more nutritious - edible roots and tubers wild plants, edible mushrooms and ferns.

Porcini mushrooms, boletus, and boletus are harvested in the fall. And there are mushrooms that grow in the spring. These include the red dog. Sarkoscifa - little known edible mushroom, used fresh.

Morels are often found in coniferous forests. These mushrooms are conditionally edible; heat treatment is required before using them for food!

Now let's look at edible roots that can replace our usual potatoes. In first place, of course, is burdock! It is better to dig young plants 1 year old, they are soft and more edible. But if you spent half an hour digging an old two-year-old root, then it doesn’t matter! It will also make a good brew! :)

It will be difficult to eat enough of the spring clear nodules alone, since they are small, but if you try, you can pick up a handful and add it to spring soup. It is not recommended to eat them raw, because chistyat, like many other plants of the Ranunculaceae family, is poisonous. Cooking destroys toxic substances.

And finally, let's admire one of my favorite plants. This is the Purchase, also called the Seal of Solomon. Signets on the root indicate the age of this perennial plant. Kupena is poisonous in its raw form, so the root should be soaked for a long time in salted water and then boiled. But after all the events we will get a delicious delicacy with a unique and interesting taste. True, it must be thoroughly cleaned, otherwise your tongue will be scratched all over later :)

There is so much I want to tell, but I can’t fit all the plants into one article! Entire volumes and stories can be written about edible flora.. One of the most best books On this topic, I consider the book by F.V. Fedorov “Wild-growing food plants”.

And, in conclusion, I will tell you about edible ferns. The fact is that not all of them, descendants of the dinosaur era, are edible. Ostrich and bracken are incredibly healthy, edible and tasty.

But they are not consumed raw, but are boiled, fried or salted for future use.

Ostrich never has sori (groups of spores) on the underside of the leaf. Ostrich spores develop on separate brown spore-bearing shoots! These shoots look like an ostrich feather, which is why the fern was named so.

Bracken is easily distinguished from all other species by the curved edge of the leaflet and the longitudinal covered row of sporangia. The bracken fern does not form bushes and the blade of the bracken frond has a triangular shape.

This is where our article comes to an end. Unfortunately, the species of edible flora covered here are only a small fraction! And it’s difficult to truly know all these plants from pictures and text. Live, by immersing yourself in Nature, by touching, smelling and tasting each plant - this is the only way to fully understand and get to know herbs!

All the best to you and good health!

For many centuries, a variety of leafy vegetables have been a regular item on the menu of people - not only peasants, but also city dwellers. The selection was quite impressive. Later, with the beginning of industrialization, only a few species remained of the former diversity, resigned to the mechanization of production and withstanding long-term storage. The rest, until recently, remained on the sidelines of progress. Modern dietetics has given leafy vegetables a second life. Now we enjoy eating the culinary delights of past eras - “green” sauces, salads, soups - and enrich our body with vitamins.

Leaf crops do not show any special requirements to care. Moreover, some of them are as hardy as weeds. These are arugula, sorrel, quinoa. However, even quinoa will grow tender and juicy only on loose, fertile and well-moistened soil. On heavy, uncultivated soils, any of the vegetables will be coarse and tasteless. In addition, with rare and irregular watering, plants are in a particular hurry to bloom, which further reduces the quality of the harvest.

Borage, borage

Young leaves are added to salads, soups, and used as a seasoning. They smell like cucumber. Loves fertile, humus-rich soil. Before spring sowing The seeds are soaked for a day, changing the water several times. Leaves are collected before flower stalks appear.

Salad chicory (witloof)

Witluf translated means " white sheet": they drive it out in complete darkness, otherwise the leaves will turn green and become bitter. Chicory is a biennial, but it is grown for food for one season, and forced in winter. It is moisture-loving, prefers fertile soil. Sown chicory salad in the last ten days of May. If you sow earlier, then by autumn the plant may go into decline. Root crops are harvested before frost sets in. The tops are cut at a height of 2-3 cm so as not to damage the growing point. Forcing can begin in a month. Before this, root vegetables are stored in the basement at a temperature of 1-2°C. At home, pour several centimeters of peat into deep boxes or buckets and plant the root crops close to each other. They are sprinkled with earth on top and watered in 2-3 doses. The boxes are placed in a dark place with a temperature of 10-12°C. After a week, it can be increased to no more than 15-18 ° C, otherwise the leaves will become bitter. The heads of cabbage are ready for consumption a month after the start of distillation. They are cut off with part of the root crop. They will keep in the refrigerator for up to three weeks.

Spinach

A very popular leaf vegetable. It is also eaten fresh, but more often in cooked form: in appetizers, soups, pies. This is one of the most healthy vegetables, although the long-held belief that spinach is especially rich in iron turned out to be just a myth. The plant is cold-resistant and can withstand frosts down to -5°C. Both early and late varieties. Spinach is a long-day plant, so it tends to bloom in mid-summer, which deteriorates the quality of the harvest. To avoid stemming, late varieties of spinach are planted in the summer.

Rucola, indau

A close relative of mustard greens. The plant is unpretentious. Young leaves have a very pleasant, tangy taste. You will have fresh greens all summer long if you sow every two weeks. Arugula is one of the fastest ripening vegetables. It is cold-resistant and tolerates shading well, but with long days it shoots easily. Moreover, in warm weather she is attacked by the cruciferous flea beetle. Therefore, in mid-summer, sowing can be stopped until August. If you still set out to get a harvest all season long, then from May to July it is advisable to darken the plantings in the morning and evening so that the daylight hours do not exceed 12 hours.

Watercress

Cold-resistant early ripening plant. The taste of the leaves is reminiscent of mustard (they belong to the same family - cruciferous), but much more delicate. This plant, which does not require heat, can be sown both before winter and early in spring, in April. Crops are repeated every two weeks. This way you can harvest until autumn. And if you sow lettuce in a box on the windowsill, then fresh herbs will all year round. When growing watercress at home, you don’t even have to wait for the leaves to develop. Young seedlings, about a week old, are especially useful. They are obtained by placing the seeds on a damp cloth or cotton wool. You will need much more seeds than when growing lettuce the usual way.

Sorrel

Perennial plant for obtaining large leaves can be cultivated as an annual. Can be used to force leaves at home. Soups and green cabbage soup are made from sorrel, added to salads and pies fillings. This is extremely unpretentious plant. For a long time, the sorrel that appeared in the garden was weeded out, considering it a weed, but at the same time the leaves of the wild sorrel were collected for food. The plant prefers slightly acidic soils, frost-resistant. In order to receive fresh young leaves throughout the season, sorrel is sown in 2-3 periods.

Garden quinoa, vegetable

Young leaves and shoots of the plant are edible. They are rich in protein, vitamin C, and mineral salts. Quinoa is undemanding to soil quality and is resistant to cold and drought. It is found everywhere in the wild. A similar weed, white pigweed, is often mistaken for quinoa. In times of famine, quinoa helped our ancestors out more than once, whether good or bad, but by replacing bread. True, because of this, it acquired the reputation of a plant that can only be eaten when dying of hunger. But quinoa is good both fresh and boiled - in soups and borscht. From the seeds you can make porridge, which is said to be slightly inferior to buckwheat. There are also decorative varieties quinoa with burgundy, beet or cream colored leaves.

Chard (chard)

A relative of quinoa and beets. There are two known forms of chard: leaf and petiole. The leaves are eaten fresh - in salads, as a side dish, or added to omelettes and soups. Before sowing, the seeds are soaked for a day. Young plants easily tolerate light frosts. In order to get greens as early as possible, at the end of March the seeds are sown for seedlings, and a month later they are planted in the ground, initially covered with film. Chard loves fertile soil and bright light. The first leaves can be cut a month after sowing, but the massive harvest will only be a month later.

Many wild plants can be eaten. Not only that, but they also carry health benefits. What common wild plants are edible?

Snooze

There is a lot of greenery in this plant useful substances: vitamins A and C, proteins, glucose and fructose, fiber, essential oil, malic and citric organic acids. Dreamweed contains micro and macroelements: magnesium, potassium, copper, titanium, manganese, iron, boron.

Young shoots with light green leaves are eaten. Snyti greens are placed in cabbage soup instead of cabbage; they should be cooked a little - they are too tender.

You can prepare okroshka: kvass (yogurt), snyt, green onions, dill, cucumber, a little mustard. Dried leaves are used as a dry seasoning for first courses and meat dishes.

Burdock

As a plant used for food, burdock has long been known in Japan, Siberia and the Caucasus. Roots and leaves are used. The roots are eaten baked and fried; boiled and pickled burdock roots are a delicacy in China and Japan.

In terms of their taste, burdock roots resemble potatoes, making an excellent substitute for them in first courses. They are also eaten raw - they are quite juicy and have a sweetish taste. Their burdock root flour is used to bake cakes and fry cutlets. Dried and roasted roots are a coffee substitute. They make jam and marmalade.

Young leaves are added to salads and soups.

Quinoa

From quinoa seeds they prepare porridge, which tastes similar to buckwheat, bake pancakes, flatbreads, casseroles, cook scrambled eggs and puree. Young leaves are added to salads, dressings, and cabbage soup. Quinoa is pickled, fermented, dried, and added to soups.

The plant cleanses the body of toxins and absorbs toxins from the intestines. Treats constipation.

Nettle

Nettle is the most popular representative of edible wild plants. Even people far from village and dacha life know that spring dishes with nettles are not only tasty, but also healthy.

Cabbage soup and salads are prepared from young nettle shoots.

Fireweed or Ivan-tea

The leaves and roots of the plant are eaten. The roots are used to make flour for cakes. The leaves are used in salads, cabbage soup, and tea.

woodlouse

The entire above-ground part of the plant is edible.

Chickweed greens are added to salads, borscht, soups, purees, and used as a filling for pies and dumplings.

When boiled, it is eaten with butter.

Dandelion

The entire plant is eaten. Make flour from the roots and brew a “coffee” drink.

The leaves are added to salads and dressings.

Jam is made from the flowers.

Plantain

Plantain leaf is used in salads, teas, drinks, soups and seasonings. Young leaves, with the addition of sorrel, make a delicious soup.

Dry dressing for soup: the leaves are washed, dried in the oven, crushed, sifted. Store in glass containers. Can be used to season first courses.

Fern

Two types of ferns are eaten: bracken and ostrich. Young shoots are collected at the beginning, boiled for 10 minutes, drained and used for their intended purpose.

Salads are made from the prepared shoots, they are fried and pickled.

The shoots taste like mushrooms.

Wheatgrass

The wheatgrass weed that has become common to everyone can be successfully classified as a wild edible plant. Wheatgrass is used to make flour and cereals, which are then used to cook porridge and bake bread.

In the spring, white wheatgrass rhizomes are dug up, washed with water, dried, and ground into flour.

Hazelnut (hazelnut)

In addition to traditional hazelnuts, the leaves can also be used to make cabbage rolls and added to salads.

Vegan nut milk is made from the nuts.

Of course, the list of edible wild plants can be continued - with an attentive attitude to nature and a certain level of knowledge, a person will not go hungry!

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Finding food is a primeval form of travel. Even if the search area is only a couple of blocks of urban or suburban parkland, such an activity may appear to be something primitive, something pre-linguistic that lies in the immemorial times of early humanity.

I first started learning about edible plants when I was seven or eight years old. Over thirty years of research, I came to a striking conclusion:

• no matter how harsh the conditions may seem, there is always something to chew on, something you can get hold of if you know what and where to look.

• Foraging for wild foods can give you the ability to see, feel, hear, and understand details of an area—such as directions and slopes—that you may not have noticed before.

My main criterion for selecting the following wild plants was their availability and growth directly in urban and suburban areas. When collecting edible supplies, do not forget to correctly identify the plants, for which use special guides and reference books, and do not eat more than you need. But mostly, if you are not lost, when looking for wild edible plants, just enjoy the walk.

Plantain is good example of how “weeds” can often be full of edible parts that you wouldn’t even realize were there.

Found in the most unsightly areas, such as overgrown lawns, roadsides, and sometimes growing out of sidewalk cracks, plantain is easily identified by its recognizable stems.

The outer leaves of plantain are tough and need to be cooked so that they are not too bitter and internal shoots tender and can be eaten straight raw.

Perhaps the most accessible of all edible plants, the needles of pine and most conifers can provide vitamin C, which can be chewed or brewed into a tea. Young shoots (usually lighter green) are more tender and less bitter.

A teacher once told me that if you find yourself in a survival situation and find reeds, you will never go hungry.

It has a few edible parts that I've never tried but have heard are delicious - like pollen, which can be used as a flour substitute.

I tried cattail root, which can be cooked like potatoes. And it's really delicious.

Acorns are edible and very nutritious, but they require some time before cooking. pre-treatment(leaching) to remove tannic acid, which makes acorns bitter.

To leach, you need to cook them for 15 minutes, thus softening the shell. Once cooled, cut them in half and scoop out the pulp. Collect this pulp in a saucepan, add water, salt, and cook again for 10 minutes. Drain the water and cook again, repeating the process 1-2 times. In the end, you will be left with sweet acorn pulp. Salt to taste.

Sumac is a bushy tree with spirally arranged, odd-pinnate leaves.

Remember that there is poison sumac that you should stay away from, but it can be easily identified by the white fruits instead of the red fruits of regular sumac.

We prepared delicious lemonade from sumac fruits: boil water, add the fruits, let it brew and cool, then strain through cheesecloth. Then add sugar and ice.

Juniper is small coniferous trees and shrubs. There are dozens of species of it found all over the world in their native habitat, and it is also used as ornamental plant. Juniper needles range from soft to hard and prickly.

When ripe, the berries turn from green to green-gray in color, eventually ripening to deep blue. More of a spice than an actual food, juniper berries can be chewed and the seeds spit out.

Their medicinal properties are still being studied by science as a medicine to treat diabetes.

Wild mint

There are dozens of species of the genus Mentha, native throughout the world. The definition of mint is good introduction in the study of plant structure, since all types of mint have a clearly distinguishable square shape stem (as opposed to the usual round) stem.

Take it, brew it, and get a wonderful aromatic tea.

Wild onion

Wild onions are easily identified by their smell and hollow, rounded stems (just like regular onions). Look for it in fields and grassy areas.

Hare cabbage is sometimes confused with sorrel. Both plants have three leaves, but the bunny cabbage leaves are heart-shaped rather than round. Rabbit cabbage leaves are edible, have a pleasant tart flavor, and are rich in vitamin C. Eat in moderation.

Dandelions can be found everywhere. can be used for cooking. Added directly to salads.

Ivan-tea is beautiful purple flower on high leg, whose seed pods are pleasant to the taste, especially the young ones that have not yet opened (located in the upper part of the flower pictured here) and have a subtle honey aroma. Young shoots are also edible.

I found fennel or wild dill everywhere I went. Take a pinch of the shoots and smell; if it instantly smells like licorice, it's fennel. The shoots can be chewed raw and the seeds can be collected and used as a spice.

Clover also grows almost everywhere. All parts of the plant - flowers, stems, seeds and leaves - are edible. As is the case with most green plants, young shoots are the most tender and pleasant to the taste.