invasive plants – Marble Crow

This past weekend, my Handsome Assistant and I packed a small picnic and went for a bit of a walk. This particular area is beside the northwest branch of the Anacostia River, near an abandoned mica mine. There are some really cool mineral specimens here — the usual bull quartz, but also tons of mica-bearing rocks and golden beryl.

That’s not all it has, though.

The trail is mostly shaded by trees, so it stays fairly cool even when the weather’s warm. Lesser celandine (lush, but invasive) covers the ground between the trees, creating a dense carpet that reflects the sunlight and further cools the ground. It’s poisonous to eat, though the tubers are said to be edible, and has a long history of use as a topical medicine for hemorrhoids and scrofula.

A brown haired, caucasian man in a dark blue and white tanktop reclines on a bed of lesser celandine. His eyes are closed and his expression is peaceful. — “That’s a really bad idea, you know.”
“I know, but it looks **so soft**.”
“There’s probably poison ivy in it.”
“Worth it.”
“You’re going to get eaten by snakes. Or ticks. Probably both.”
“It’s **so soft**, though!”

A close up of a small pink springbeauty flower. — *Springbeauty (Claytonia virginica)*

Fortunately, there was more to see than just lesser celandine. There were tiny pink blossoms of springbeauty, dense pillows of moss, fern fiddleheads, and some of the lushest skunk cabbage I’ve ever seen. We also spotted some mayapples, a few of which were even mature enough to flower. I don’t know if I’m brave enough to go back and see if there’s any fruit later this summer, but it was lovely to see regardless! (I snapped a few pics of the ones we saw, which you can find in my post on mayapple folklore and magical properties.)

Large skunk cabbage plants growing up out of a dense mat of lesser celandine. — *Seriously, just look at that skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus).*

We passed next to the water, eyes peeled for sparkly mica-bearing stones, when I heard a soft “bloop.” I turned my head just in time to see a startled common watersnake (Nerodia sipedon) slipping away across to the opposite bank, gracefully undulating and occasionally poking its head up like a snorkel to take a breath. I apologized for spooking it as I fumbled for my phone but wasn’t able to snap a picture before it had swum away and camouflaged itself in the mud and fallen leaves.

They’re one of the species of snakes that are often vilified for no reason. They’re perfectly harmless but can bear a passing resemblance to a venomous copperhead (Agkistrodon contortrix). Admittedly, I made the same mistake myself at first glance — not that I would’ve behaved any differently, as both the snake and I seemed pretty chill about the whole situation. Like black racers and ratsnakes, they’re guys you actually want to have around if you don’t want to have to deal with pest animals. Also, they’re one of the few reptile species that gives birth to live young, and that’s really neat!

(Also, copperheads are pretty chill, too. They might be venomous, but they’re not aggressive. Their first defensive instinct is to freeze up and rely on their natural camouflage. Bites typically occur when that either fails, or people don’t see them, step too close, and the snake gets desperate.)

A pair of young fern fronds, still curled into a "fiddlehead" shape. — *Young ferns.*

A little further up the trail, we were navigating over a large fallen tree. Another tree lay across it, forming a kind of steep natural bridge. As I investigated it to see if it’d be safe to cross, I heard a silky rasping sound. There, nestled in the root ball of the fallen tree, I saw the shiny black coil and pointed tail of a black racer (Coluber constrictor priapus) vanishing deeper into the tangled roots.

My favorite part, however, was running into a colony of dryad’s saddle (Cerioporus squamosus) growing from a dead tree. These are edible, fairly easy to identify, and don’t really have poisonous lookalikes. They also smell exactly like watermelon rinds, which is honestly very weird. Kind of a green, watery, fruity smell, of decidedly not the type you’d expect from a scaly tan mushroom growing out of a dead tree. I wasn’t 100% positive that that’s what I was looking at, at first. Fortunately, a combination of a quick-and-dirty ID app and friends with much more foraging experience were able to reassure me.

Also?

Dryad’s saddles get enormous.

A fallen tree sporting several large dryad's saddle mushrooms.

A person's hand resting on top of a dryad's saddle mushroom. The mushroom displays the characteristic scaly brown and beige pattern and is very broad -- easily two hands long.

Like, far larger than I felt was reasonable for a mushroom. Much bigger than the reishi and armillaria that grow in my front yard, at any rate.

This area has another cool feature, labeled on the map as “prehistoric rock shelter.” I haven’t found any other information about it, but it’s a nice, cool, shaded spot to sit and rest for a bit. The area underneath is at a bit of a slope, but it’s still a comfortable place to take a break.

The author and their Handsome Assistant sitting together under the rock shelter.

My Handsome Assistant, pretending to hold up the rock shelter. The "shelter" itself is a very large, flat boulder jutting up at an angle, creating a kind of natural awning over a bare patch of soil.

I also found a tree that was shaped kind of like a sad skull, and a very neat feather — most likely from a hawk.

The roots of a large tree. They seem to form a pair of eye holes on either side of a triangular nose hole.

A brown and white barred feather laying on some lesser celandine.

All told, it was an eventful walk and a lovely picnic. Everything was vibrant and green, and we saw (and heard!) a lot of cool wildlife.

Here’s hoping you’re also finding cool things wherever your adventures take you.

The other day, I posted a video of foraging and processing kudzu roots to a group I’m a part of. A few friends seemed interested — one messaged me that they knew of a potential patch. That weekend, armed with trowels, bags, and gloves, we set out to track us down some kudzu.

If you’re in the southeastern US and you do any kind of gardening, the word “kudzu” may well strike fear into your heart. As Nature.org‘s “Kudzu: The Invasive Vine that Ate the South” puts it, “kudzu is quite a killer, overtaking and growing over anything in its path.” Drive down a highway, and it’s not uncommon to see it choking out trees, climbing over fences, and dragging down powerlines.

*Insidious kudzu vines have overwhelmed by Carol M Highsmith is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0*

In short, we were more than happy to learn how to eat some.

In its native range, kudzu is still an aggressive grower. It’s not invasive, of course, because a native plant by definition can’t be invasive. One of the things that helps keep kudzu in balance is the fact that it’s useful as a food and medicinal plant. People regularly harvest it to eat as a root vegetable and process into starch.

There’s only one problem: It was very early spring. There were no leaves on anything. Identifying it meant looking for a specific kind of brown twig in a mass of other brown twigs, then trying to follow it back to the ground, dig there for a while, and hope it had led to something resembling a kudzu root. Fortunately, kudzu doesn’t have many lookalikes, and its hairy stems and growth habit help to differentiate it.

Also, kudzu roots get enormous.

My Handsome Assistant is a powerlifter. Even with him pulling and our friend and me digging, it still took a lot of time to liberate several fairly small roots. Still, it was a success and, I figured, I decent amount for a first attempt. Nothing we’d have to bust out a table saw to cut through. Just enough to hopefully end up with some starch (and give us the opportunity to decide if it was worth the effort).

A small clump of kudzu roots in a stainless steel sink. — *Some of the kudzu roots, trimmed from a larger one.*

Tl;dr, I’m probably just going to make them into a stew next time. Maybe paper.

Processing the kudzu roots involved scrubbing them well, peeling away their tougher, fibrous outsides, cutting them into chunks, and pureeing them well with plenty of water. Once pureed, we strained the pulp, squeezed it out, rinsed it, squeezed it out again, and poured the liquid into large jars to let the starch settle to the bottom.

It was that last bit that proved the most problematic.

See, we’d hoped to get the roots before they used their stored energy (in other words, starch) to put out a flush of new spring growth. However, the roots we got were small and fairly skinny (which is probably for the best — we might’ve needed a backhoe for big ones). The little bit of starch that settled out ended up lost during the refinement and decanting process.

Still! It was an interesting learning experience. I’d definitely change how we did some things (like I mentioned, I’d love to try preparing the smaller roots in other ways, like roasting or stewing). I also have a mold and deckle and, considering that starch is used as sizing for papermaking, I’d like to try using the pulp to extract most of the starch and, rather than discarding/composting the pulp, see how it works in paper.

I’ve also heard that the flowers smell like grape candy and can make a jam that tastes like something between apple and peach. Since I’ve had really good results making rose petal confiture, I’m excited to try making some with kudzu flowers.

So, obtaining some kudzu starch may have been a bust this time, but I have ideas!

Tag: invasive plants

A riverside hike (with giant mushrooms!)

The solution to kudzu: Eat it.