Greetings, I hope that if you’ve been hiking or harvesting that you have had a wonderful time. Hopefully, you will have avoided the poisonous plants that I talked about last week. Today, I want to go over some of the plants that have other uses, but aren’t quite poisonous and have either an annoyance or bite back. I even talked about two plants that bite back during my beginners to harvesting class. You may even be familiar with them already.
Plants that bite back
Devil’s Club
Devil’s club is an awesome plant that has some powerful medicinal properties. However, every rose has its thorn (insert cheesy 80’s music video here). The spines can embed themselves in your skin and cause festering wounds. So if you are planning on going to devil’s club country, make sure that you take tweezers with you.
Cow Parsnip
Cow Parsnip is also called putchki or pushki, which is the Russian name for it. And YES Cow parsnip is DIFFERENT than Devil’s Club. I have ran into two different people in the last week that thought they were the same plant. While you can eat the inside rhizome of cow parsnip, you can only eat the shoots of Devil’s Club. The medicinal properties are completely different too.
If the chemical present on the hairs and sap of Cow Parsnip get on your skin, it can cause a nasty rash. The rash seems to come about after the chemical is hit by the sunlight, making it seem like you get an instant sunburn. Some people may not be affected, but it’s better to play it safe. My husband and his brother played with fresh cow parsnip when they were kids. His brother got the burns and he didn’t.
I suspect that he has something in his skin that makes him immune to both cow parsnip and poison oak. Once, while living in an area that had poison oak, we used to let our cat, Noodle, outside. Guess what she found. Yup, that’s right. Poison oak growing in our backyard. We didn’t know about it until I was getting a rash on my stomach where she liked to lay. Jason? Nothing, nada, zip. Perfectly fine and HE had been cuddling Noodle just as much as I had. So that’s where my hypothesis comes from.
Stinging Nettle
Everyone is probably familiar with the unfortunately itching and burning that this prickly plant brings if you touch it. However, it has a lot good things about it too. To combat the stinging if you so happen to brush against it accidentally you can use plantain to combat the itch. However (I haven’t tried it as I really dislike the sensation in the first place) you are supposed to be able to actually rub the affected area with nettle AGAIN to stop the stinging/itching.
Sidenote and rant warning:
Stinging Nettle is one that I didn’t include during my class because I haven’t encountered it a lot while hiking. I kept looking but couldn’t find it. The first time I saw it was in someone’s garden. The first time I found it in the wild was at Tern Lake by the parking area. One plant. By itself. By the parking area. That is of NO use to me (except for the picture I got out of it). If I had harvested it, it would have broken pretty much every rule to harvesting wild plants that there is: harvest away from the roadside, only if there is a lot of the plant around, and only harvest one out of three plants. /Rant.
Of course, you could add to this list everything that has thorns: raspberries and roses for instance. However, as they are quite well known, I left them off of the list.
What are some plants that you’ve run into that have been bothersome but aren’t listed here?
there was a bunch of stinging nettle growing behind our house on walker lane, the one where the yard sale was. the stuff lined the outside of the entire back fence and was growing up over it in some places. it was a good 6 feet. its private property though. i hear the house is up for sale now and the seller wants a bit too much for it. i was having to dig it out of the yard everywhere. wish you could get to it.
Oh wow, I wish I could get it too! Stinging nettle is something I use in my massage oil you like so much! You could always dry it out and use it as a tea, or even in soups. I hear the stalks can even be used to make yarn from some of my Society fiber friends.