Growing wild salads

05/12/2011
Growing wild salads

I always have to snigger when I'm in the supermarket (in the U.S.) and see overpriced bags of lettuce labeled "Field Greens."  Okay, maybe I'm a food snob's food snob, but I come at it the hard way--two 5600 square foot potagers cultivated by hand on weekends only.  So why do I snigger?  Because of how far those pale, bland probably greenhouse-cultivated lettuce greens are from the true meaning of field greens.  Field greens are the wild edible plants that poor people everywhere harvested and still do harvest in late winter and early spring, when winter food stocks are running low and the body is starved for a jolt of vitamins and minerals.  Field greens?  Well, you could call them edible weeds--the real ones, that is.

Unlike those supermarket cellopaks, true field greens have character to spare in the salad bowl.  They're, according to variety, peppery, slightly to quite bitter, acidic, tangy.  They haven't had all the spunk bred out of them to make them big sellers to fearful modern palates.  In my personal brand of mystical thinking, wild greens have such pronounced flavors because they are bursting with vitamins, minerals, and other beneficial nutritional factors that remain undiscovered.  Why isn't anybody researching the relative nutritional value of different greens in the wild state vs. cultivated?

So if I want to be logical, I have to tell you that the best thing you can do is gather wild salads in early spring and eat those.  Although many of the wild salads to be found in the U.S. are actually immigrants from Europe, some, like Claytonia, are native.  However, no need to discriminate, even if you're a native plant snob.  Dandelions--perhaps our best-known European immigrant--are still just as delicious for being non-native, cut when they're ground-hugging rosettes in very  early spring.  And think of it this way:  by eating the immigrants, you're helping to control their invasive populations!  But imagine, some fools grow dandelions, the French and Italians among them!

Two more delicious weeds that are certainly present somewhere near you are chickweed and purslane.  Chickweed is has a mild spinachy flavor and soft texture, and can be harvested anytime it's not in flower--from spring through fall.    It's likely to be found on your compost pile as it loves rich soil.  Purslane (left) is a hot-weather, poor-soil plant, and it too is best if cut before flowering.  Both plants are great season-extenders.

Another fabulous early spring salad is wild chicory--you know, the plant with the nonstop skyblue flowers for most of the summer.  Many of us know it as a roadside weed.  The catch is that you must gather it in early spring, when it takes a practiced eye to discern its oh-so-discreet, ground-hugging rosette of leaves (right)  One give-away is its persistent, zigzagging dead flower stems from the year before.  This stem happens to be so hard and tough that you can't even cut it with your harvesting knife.  To make identification even more complicated, the plants are polymorphous.  One-year-old seedligns have leaves with rounded, undulating margins, while more mature plants like the one in the photo have the more typical, deeply dentate leaves.  This plant, Chicorium intybus, is the uhr-grandmother of all the edible chicories:  frisée, Treviso, Chioggia, etc.  Fantastic, isn't it?  Gathered in spring, it has a robust, tangy, bitter flavor.  The bitterness can be attenuated by soaking it in warm water for an hour or so.

In Europe, gathering wild salads is even more complicated because of the hordes of lettuce-family species.  Only one of them is actually toxic, but most of them are inedibly bitter or otherwise disagreeable.  Learning to identify them takes time and study.  And although I adore gathering greens in the wild, I have a hard time finding the time to do it, as their season coincides with that of my garden.

All of which brings me, in my usual long-winded and roundabout way, to why you should cultivate some of these delicious, nutritious wild species.  Of course, I suppose they cease to be wild if you're growing them.  But then, that's a boundary that is blurred in my gardens.  I often harvest what is wild, and what is cultivated often goes wild.  At any rate, this year, especially in my Provence potager, I'm making a concentrated effort to grow some of my favorite, and some of the more elusive, wild salads.

I'm going to grow wild chicory, simply because it's such a pain to find it in the spring, and also because I won't mind its months of luminous, skyblue blossoms in my garden.  I'm also going to grow Campanula rapunculoides, the Rapunzel of the plant world (photo left).  As for chicory, I'm great at spotting it when it's in flower!  Its graceful, 2-foot wands of pale bluebells can't be missed in midsummer.  But that's not when it's good to eat.  You have to spot its rosettes of spatulate leaves in early spring,  And when you cut the plant, these curl downward to form what the French call "a thief's hand."  (For some reason, this is a mysterious trait shared by several unrelated, choice European wild salads.)

I'm also going to grow some wild salads that are uncommon in my part of Provence.  Lactuca perennis forms a rosette of deeply toothed, bluegreen leaves that have a mild and delicious flavor.  In summer, the plant bears blue flowers resembling those of its relative chicory.  I would also love to grow Reichardia picroides, or coustelline, as it's called in French.  I've spent hours searching the web for seeds and can't find them anywhere.  This plant is supposedly one of the finest wild salads.

In Normandie I often grow minutina or staghorn plantain.  It's extremely narrow, straplike leaves resemble grass when the plant germinates.  As it grows, you can discern the uneven attenuated branches on its leaf margins.  The leaves become almost fleshy and make a pleasant addition to salads or an interesting garnish when chopped.

Some new wild salads have shown up on our property thanks to a delivery of "planting soil" from a nursery about 50 km away.  One of the most interesting is wild salsify (Tragopogon porrifolius), which has rosettes of thin, fleshy, mild-tasting leaves in early spring.  It also develops a delicious taproot (photo right), of course, being a salsify.  One evening when we arrived at the Aix-en-Provence TGV station this early spring, I was stunned to notice that this plant was growing practically everywhere around the station.  Last time we arrived there, I saw that the planting beds in front were filled with their dramatic, globe-shaped seedheads.  I plan on gathering some of them when we arrive there tomorrow evening.

These plants will be joining other, better known wild salads that I've been growing forever. "Wild" arugula, with thin, tender leaves and yellow flowers, is a perennial in my gardens.  But because it is slow to establish from seed, I also grow "cultivated" arugula (Eruca sativa), an annual with white flowers.  Curiously, it's the "wild" arugula (Diplotaxis tenuifolia) that is cultivated for sale by greengrocers in France, while Eruca sativa, itself a wild plant native to the Mediterranean basin, and the species sold in American supermarkets, is barely known in France.  To further complicate things, there's a 'false arugula' (Diplotaxis erucoides), itself delicious, which has popped up in my landscape thanks to that delivery of foreign soil.

Then there's the sweetest and tenderest of all wild salads:  mâche or doucette, as it is sometimes known in the French countryside for its sweet mild flavor.  This plant has become a mild-mannered weed in my Normandie garden, reverting, you might say, to its wild state.  On a recent visit to Burgundy, I saw a mâche plant growing in a stone wall (photo left), which reminded me how much it likes good drainage. In my potagers, good drainage abounds as I plant everything in raised beds.  Along with arugula, mâche is the star of the wild salad world, having 'made good' in commerce.  It has always been cultivated by the ton in France and now is even available in some American supermarkets.  Of course it never tastes as good as when grown in your own garden.

A wild salad that is also a decorative perennial that you'll never find at the supermarket is salad burnet (Sanguisorba minor).  Its daintily toothed, compound foliage remains attractive and can be harvested all season long.  The leaves have a sharp cucumber flavor that is best added to your salads in small amounts.  In June, the plant sends up numerous reddish blossoms.  It self sows readily but not aggressively and is very drought-tolerant.

Of course, the Mediterranean basin is a privileged environment for edible wild plants and herbs.  I was amazed to find an enormous swath of coriander growing wild as a weed in a lavender field up the mountain behind our house in Haute Provence.  Fennel, hyssop (at left), thyme, mint, rosemary, parsley, sage, lavendar, chives...all these are Mediterranean plants.  Grow them and include their leaves and/or blossoms in your salads, as well as cooking with them of course.  Experiment with using unusual parts of herb plants in your salads.  Green coriander seeds, for instance, make an interesting addition.  To use hyssop flowers, pluck the florets and scatter them over your salad after tossing.

Many wild salad plants double as great cooking greens.  One of the best in this department is Silene inflata.  Catch this plant before it flowers, harvesting the young, tender, deep green leaves.  They are fabulous cooked with pasta.  Wild mallow (Malva sylvestris) is another delicious cooking green traditionally used throughout the Mediterranean basin.  As with the silene, pick the leaves before the plant throws up its tall spikes of pink and purple blossoms.  The same holds for the leaves of Shirley poppies, those luminous red wildflowers that fill fallow fields all over Provence in May.  Very young leaves are good in salads too.

Composing salads with wild plants is an art unto itself.  With experience, you'll learn how to "dose" these flavorful leaves, mixing them with milder lettuces to create salads that excite your palate and nourish you with their concentration of vitamins and minerals.  Once you get in the  habit of eating them, a bowl of lettuce will taste downright insipid.

Growing these plants is not in the least difficult, as many of them are natural denizens of difficult, dry environments.  While I can't generalize on rules for growing, since they are botanically so diverse, the vast majority will thrive in any decent, well-drained garden soil.  And a good number of them are perennial, so you only need plant them once.  (The same may be true for the annuals, which self-sow easily.)

Remember when arugula was a trendy plant, because it was just being 'discovered'?  Well, grow some of these plants and you'll be way ahead of the herd..Know that the presence of even a sprig of chickweed on the plate has become the signature of prestige for French chefs.  You may find yourself  taking some samples from your garden into your favorite restaurant to introduce the chef to what a real walk on the wild side is all about.

Cuisine is as subject to trends as fashion, and they say  that fashion goes in cycles.  In 'discovering' wild salad plants, chefs are just reconnecting and validating some of the oldest culinary traditions on earth.  My friend Nicolas Sourdive, one of the greatest living potters in France, grew up in Provence gathering and eating wild salads.  When I visited the pottery in March, and had dinner with Nico and some of his coworkers, the conversation turned to wild salads in the most natural way.  After all, it was peak season, and these were folks who had never lost touch with the tradition of gathering them.   Nico told me he'd called a friend in Geneva who loved gathering too and they had compared notes on what they'd found.  I asked him where I should look for the elusive rapunzel plant.  "Ah, la raipounche!" he exclaimed, eyeing me with newfound respect.  (Raipounche is the colorful Provençal word for the plant, and Nico pronounced it with a flourish.)  He couldn't believe I (an American) knew about this plant.

The next morning as I was drinking my coffee very early at my hotel before taking off for Paris, Nico appeared (he lives only two doors down).  In his hand, he clutched a plastic bag which he proffered shyly.  "Some salads for you.  I gathered them yesterday and they're all sorted and washed."

What a beautiful gift!  As I savored those hand-picked greens at dinner that night, I seemed to taste the flavor of all the warm spring days to come.  Plus, I felt flattered that Nico had seen into my soul enough to know how much I would appreciate his offering.  Some women get dozens of long-stemmed roses.  Me, I get dandelions!  And I like it just fine that way.

Poppies and wild mallow growing in a field in Provence.

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Products of Interest:
Average to dry soils--Bladder campion
Average to dry soils--Wild red poppy
Average to moist soils--Salad burnet
Average to dry soils--Rampion bellflower