My mother did the gardening for a very Southern-aristocrat type of family in Nashville. Apart from the very tended plants in the walled gardens, there was a plant that grew wild on the grounds called “poke weed”. Large green leaves on tall purple stalks. Once in a while, the kitchen help would have me pick a bunch of the leaves so they could make poke salad, but they had to boil the leaves because they were poisonous. I’ve never come across or even heard it mentioned ever again, but it was my impression that this was somewhat forgotten lore. The patriarch of the home only ever left Nashville to go to Yale law, and to fight in WWI.
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That sounds a bit like the Destroying Angel or Death Cap, but no amount of preparation makes either safe.
Indeed! I think it was just False Morels.
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Yeah, but nicotine, while immensely toxic in large doses, isn’t nearly as toxic as cycad poisoning.
Think along the lines of “if you eat any significant amount (untreated), you’ll die of liver failure”…
not exactly a 1:1 comparison.
You could also say "people take perfectly non-toxic grain and ferment it into a dangerous toxic chemical that can cause death and a whole host of other organ damages if the dose is too high…
I get that cycad is more toxic to humans than tobacco.
Do you get that the post is a joke?
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poke salad wasn’t unusual in the deep south
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cycads were/are a staple for the indigenous people of australia. the nuts ate treated, ground and used as flour for baking bread. such spiky plants, they can make a bushwalk hell.
there is weird poisonous grass seed in australia – when the sheep eat it, their heads swell up and they become extremely photosensitive.
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I figured it was hungry adolescents who did it as a dare.
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Native Americans in California also ate a poisonous food that needed special processing: acorns.
Once dry, the acorns are cracked to remove the nutmeat. This was traditionally done with a small, handheld stone pestle. The acorns are then ground or pounded into acorn flour. The flour is pounded as fine as possible. Once the acorns are ground into flour, it is then leached. Acorns contain tannic acid which is very bitter and which is poisonous in large amounts. The leaching process removes the tannic acid from the acorn flour. The leaching was traditionally done by digging a shallow sand pit near a creek. The flour was then carefully spread in the bottom of the pit and water was continuously poured over it until it was sweet. It would take several hours of pouring to leach the flour.
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Not just Native Americans.
Poor/desperate people the world over ate (or drank) acorns.
Ersatzkaffee is arguably where the modern English usage of ‘ersatz’ for anything inferior to the original came from.
Some types of that were/are made from acorns.
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Hey, maybe you or @Skeptic know - what is the difference between acors and hazelnets - they looks very similar. I assume differnt taste.
…with apologies to Monty Python:
No. 1 The Acorn:
No. 1 The Acorn…
No. 2 The Hazelnut:
No. 2 The Hazelnut:
Or is that a cobnut?
It isn’t. Cobnuts are completely enclosed by the leafy green husk.
I suppose the dried versions do look a bit similar but yes, the taste would be rather different. Hazelnuts being nice and acorns being all bitter and, well, oak-y.
You’d be pushed to eat enough acorns to be poisoned unless you were really desperate. The taste alone would make you stop unless you really like your oaky red wines…
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Yeah when I have bought stuff with hazel nuts, and they are on the wrapper, it looks like an acorn with out the hat.
My favorit candy is Kinder’s Happy Hippos.
OMG - I love these adorable bastards. The hazelnut kind, not the chocolate. They are hard to find in the states, though.
PS - got any larch pictures?
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Oddly enough, I can’t tell one tree from another. If only there were some sort of handy training film or something I could watch.
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wow, cool!
apparently not. My apologies.
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you never see acorns in north america – the squirrels spirit them away pretty damn quick.
Growing up in a suburban neighborhood lined with giant oak trees in front of every house I have to disagree. Acorns were everywhere during the season. But the site I quoted did say that Native Americans shook them from trees to harvest rather than waiting for them to drop.
