Daily Survival Guide

Essential Survival Knowledge:
Plants You Can Eat
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• Burdock - This plant's huge, wedge-shaped leaves, whitish underneath, emerge from a long beige taproot the first year it rows--this is when it is edible. Scrub the first-year taproot, cut it into razor-thin diagonal slices, and cook for 10 to 20 minutes. You can also peel the tender, immature flower stalk in late spring and cook it.


• Dandelions - Among the most widespread and common edible plants. You can eat the leaves raw or cook them. The roots are edible (but diuretic); and the flowers can be used to make dandelion wine.


• Mulberries - These look like raspberries, but each delicious berry has a slender stem. Great quantities of red, white, or pink berries fall from trees, not bushes, in late spring and early summer. Harvest them in quantity by shaking the tree's branches over a dropcloth.