Gather Ye Wild Things: A Forager's Year
Illustrated by G.B. McIntosh
Paperback • University of Virginia Press • Price $14.95 • ISBN 0-8139-1643-7

A collection of 52 illustrated essays, one for each week of the year, to capture the essence of common edible, medicinal, and useful wild plants.

An excerpt

Spring
from “Redbud and Violet”

A faint green mist hangs in the treetops. Then redbud darts into bloom, mauve blossoms on stark black boughs. The petals are pastel but seem shocking amidst gray shadows of winter lingering in the woods.

The eastern redbud tree may stand up to fifty feet tall, squeezed thin in wooded areas but spreading broad when given space. Its range extends from the central Atlantic coastline into the Midwest. A shrubby cousin grows in California and a larger western redbud graces Texas and New Mexico. All redbuds flower bright and early, before their leaves arrive.

A branch of redbud offers pleasure to many senses. Cluster of lavender flowers dangle from dark twigs, which curve like Oriental brush strokes. You sense its odor in the air. Draw closer and taste a single bloom, penetrating its inner center of sweetness. That flavor, subtle as spring’s morning light, can adorn this season’s menu.

I like to pluck a handful of blossoms and toss them over a spring salad. That corner of the dining table begins to resemble the woods outside. Redbud’s cheery color brightens white desserts like custard or rice pudding: just stir in a handful of blossoms before you set the dish in the oven to bake. And homemade ice cream can be infused with the pastel color and flavor of early redbud blooms.

Where the redbuds bloom too high, beyond my reach, I console myself with violets. Their familiar flowers open in lawns, fields, and forests early in the spring, shy companions to the redbud blooms above. Sometimes violets grow so abundantly that they wash a lawn in blues that mirror the sky overhead.

More than one hundred species of violet grow in the United States and Canada, from the tiny white field pansy to the round-leafed yellow violet to the birdfoot, with purple flowers and intricate leaves shaped to match its name. Most familiar is the common blue violet (Viola papilionacea), with heart-shaped leaves and delicate purple flowers. Every violet signals spring; all add festive color and nutritional value to springtime meals.

Gardeners over the years have cultivated violets for color and fragrance, appreciating, too, the deep green foliage offered by the plant from spring to fall. Few have known that the humble violet offers healthy salad greens as well. Euell Gibbons’s experiments proved that half a cup of violet leaves provides almost twice the adult daily requirement of vitamin A—more, perhaps, than one should eat at once. Leaves and flowers provide substantial amounts of vitamin C as well.

Violets have long been prized for their medicinal properties. Many an old herbal prescribes violet blossom syrup for coughs and colds; the vitamin content, if nothing else, would help the ailment. Violet leaves act as a gentle laxative if eaten about a quarter cup at a time. Even violet roots have been collected and prepared as an expectorant remedy for coughs and bronchitis.

Many people prefer to indulge in violet sweets, either jelly or candied blossoms. The recipes are simple, although the gathering takes time. But time spent among the violets feels like heaven: quiet, serene, spring forever. Preserved violets will hint at that feeling throughout the year.

For violet jelly, gather a fully-packed quart of dry-open blossoms. Pour boiling water over them and let the infusion sit for one to twelve hours (the longer period if you plan to strain out the flowers). Add the juice of one lemon, and blue violet turns toward rose-red. Use this infusion and follow any standard jelly recipe provided with commercial pectin. Add two to four cups of sugar, depending on your taste. Bring to a boil, add pectin, boil further, jar, and seal. Many recipes for violet jelly call for you to strain the flowers from the infusion, but then you will miss the pleasure of flowers floating on your breakfast muffin. If your jelly doesn’t jell, you still have rich violet syrup, which can be used on cakes and waffles, ice cream, yogurt, and in herbal teas.

For candied violets, pick flowers with the stems attached. Beat an egg white lightly, just until it froths. Dip each flower in egg white, then dip it in a bowl of extra-fine granulated sugar. You might want to use a small paintbrush for touch-ups. It is important to get every bit of the flower coated in sugar to preserve it. Let the coated flowers dry on wax paper—it may take a few days—then store them between layers of wax paper in a tight tin or plastic container in the refrigerator or freezer. Many use candied violets for special cake decorations, and there must be many other uses for these floral delicacies.

Spring abounds in flowers. Springtime meals can abound in flowers too. The pale pinks and purples of redbud and violet blossoms can adorn salads and sweets, cheering the eye and palate. And, with a little preparation, spring flowers bloom on the pantry shelf all year round.

1. How did you get interested in gathering wild things?
It was a time in my life when I was living in the Virginia countryside, writing a doctoral dissertation, and taking care of goats. There were only so many hours in the day that I could keep my focus on my writing. After lunch most days, I would take walks in the woods with my goats, who are among the world’s most discriminating foragers. A friend introduced me to Euell Gibbons’s book, Stalking the Wild Asparagus. I loved the concept and starting identifying, gathering, preparing, and eating wild foods. There were many plants I wanted to learn more about, many I came upon that were no in that book. I read more, and at the same time walked more, and the fascination with wild plants grew. This all sounds so sequential, but sometimes I tell people that I was a medicine woman in another lifetime, for the time came when I would find a plant, look at it, and know what it was, or at least have some intuition that it had powers worth investigating.

2. Did you make all the recipes in your book?
Yes, either on my own or in my class on Gathering Wild Things. As my passion for gathering wild things developed, I began teaching a community college class. Each season a group of 12 or 15 of us would spend every Saturday morning exploring a new terrain. Sometimes we would just go out to see what we could find. Other times, we had a purpose: gathering cattails for starch or tapping a sweet birch tree for sap, for example. Many of the experiences and recipes I offer in my book were activities in that class.

3. Can all these wild things be found throughout the United States?
Much of my gathering has taken place in my home of Piedmont Virginia, the eastern foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Some of the things I write about—ginseng, for example—are hard to find in many other parts of this country. But, oddly enough, many of the weeds that are most common and easiest to add to your daily menu, like dandelions or chickweed, do grow coast to coast in temperate climates.

4. What is the best way to get started gathering wild things?
Adding common edible weeds to your salad is definitely the easiest first step to introduce wild things into your and your family’s life. Consider chickweed, wild violet leaves and flowers, redbud flowers, young dandelion leaves, purslane, wood-sorrel, sheep sorrel, wild onion or garlic greens, or lamb’s quarters—all quite easy to identify positively, all easy to find, and all mild in flavor. Toss these in with familiar salad vegetables and keep it a secret until your family enjoys that salad—then let on that they have been eating weeds!

Reviewer's comments

It’s ... a truly lovely book, elegantly designed, beautifully illustrated and well-written. I found it rich reaching for there is a wealth of information on many levels that make it more than just a “gatherer’s notebook.” It’s also a joyful book; obviously Ms. Hitchcock has some chlorophyll in her veins!
--Ann Zinger, author of Downcanyon, Wind in the Rock, and Shaped by Wind and Water: Reflections of a Naturalist

Ms. Hitchcock writes almost poetically about wild things, weeds or flowers, that grow in yard or forest or anywhere in between. There are also numerous fine drawings of some of the plants described. The theme of the book is the practical uses of wild things. Salads, teas, “coffees,” soap, tonic, ointments, previously unheard of practical (after a fashion) reasons to stop mowing your weeds and start harvesting them. There are 52 short essays designed to get you out of the house each week of the year. Even city kids such as I who have no intention of gathering wild things will find the book interesting.
--The Tampa Tribune

Susan Hitchcock’s approach to wildlings is one of perceptiveness and understanding. With her doctorate in English literature one might expect the familiarity of the use of academic language, but she is especially aware of the use of a specific word to affect a feeling of pleasure toward her subject. In many cases her writing is that of a see and taste presentation.... Ms. Hitchcock’s use of the English language continually directs us toward greater consciousness to a subject dear to the heart of those who love the outside world. Another welcome tool she uses is her occasional tie-in with our time and history, e.g.: “Echoing the movements of peasant women throughout the ages.” Such continuity is desirable in troubled times such as these.... The illustrations by G. B. McIntosh are botanically correct, artistically pleasing, and should be of great help to those who want to identify the subjects covered in the text. They are drawn by one who is obviously proficient at the drawing board as well as friendly with nature. This book, though far from being a comprehensive guide to plants, is certainly one that those of us interested in plants, their uses, and folklore will want to add to our shelf of nature books. It sits well among Thoreau, Burrows, and Gibbons.
--Billy Joe Tatum, The Ozarks Mountaineer, author of Billy Joe Tatum’s Wild Foods Cookbook and Field Guide

Sassafras and dandelions, wild strawberries and day lilies, rose hips and elderberries are among the edible and otherwise valuable wild gifts to which the author directs the novice forager. In fifty-two brief essays, she describes in literate and friendly fashion where to look for what’s in season, and she gives traditional uses, recipes, and instructions for preserving your finds. G. B. McIntosh’s distinctive line drawings help in identification.
--Lee Pennock Huntington, Country Journal

The rich bounty of the wild—the hundreds of edible or otherwise valuable things found as near as one’s backyard—has long been a most neglected resource. Now, the pleasures of discovering and using these riches are revealed in this elegant new guide to foraging for treasures of the landscape. Fifty-two short essays, one for each week of the seasonal round, describe the many rewards to be found by the gatherer: the unexpected greens that make fresh, vigorous salads; the roots that can be harvested, ground, and roasted into rich new coffees; the tree bark that, dried and brewed, becomes a bracing spring tonic; wild herbs with such a depth of flavor that bottled ones seem pallid by comparison; a humble plant that makes the pleasantest soap ever; and the delights of the venerable fruits of abandoned orchards. Each of the essays includes interesting facts and traditions, formulas, recipes, and instructions for preserving your hoard. And each contains lovely drawings which aid in identifying and using plants and other found objects of forest, stream, and meadow.
--The Herb Quarterly

Susan Tyler Hitchcock suggests these websites to those who are interested in her book, Gather Ye Wild Things: A Forager’s Year.

Phytochemistry and Ethnobotany Plant Database from James Duke
John Kallas’s Wild Food Adventures
American Botanical Council
Herb Research Foundation
Invasive Species Projects and Programs