Get To Work!

 The foraging season has kicked into high gear with dozens of plants waiting to be harvested. This pic is of Wood Sorrel, Oxalis stricta, often call shamrock. The leaves and seed pods make a great addition to a salad, contributing a nice sour note. Unfortunately the leaves fold up almost as soon as picked so you don't get the cool shamrock visual effect. While not a staple food source, there are many wild plants and "weeds"  waiting to be made into a very nice salad. Dump the iceburg lettuce, and come over to the wild side. Your salads will be tastier and you will save a few dollars too.
This week we have several items we want to harvest. Elderberries are in full bloom and we will pick a lot of those. Some we will dry for tea. I make a elder flower wine also so I need  bunches for that. I'll post that recipe just as soon as I find it! Seems to have been misplaced. The basswoods or lindens,as they are sometimes called, are blooming too. I hope our bees find them, it will be great tasting honey. We will pick those too, for tea. We have had enough rain lately so I will be watching for several species of mushrooms which should fruit now.

Here are a couple medicinal plants I spotted yesterday. This one is Round-Leaf Pyrola, Pyrola rotundifolia, which I have never used. It does act as a styptic among it's other uses so that is handy to keep in mind. It does contain arbutin, which the body breaks down into hydroquinone,which is toxic. It is also a proven antibacterial agent. If I were to use it at all it would be in a salve for skin eruptions.
Below is Common St. Johnswort, Hypericum perforatum, popular now as a anti depressant, and used for that quite extensively in Europe according to some sources. It does cause photo sensitivity so use with caution if you're outside a lot.  It contains 6 or 7 known biologically active compounds. I'm sure once drug companies figure out how to patent some of them it will be used more extensively in western medicine.