Out of the Weeds

THESE COMMON PLANTS AREN'T UNDESIRABLE AT ALL THEY MAKE GREAT MEDICINE.

- DAWN COMBS & JEREME ZIMMERMAN

Whether you live in the country or an urban area, you likely have a plethora of edible, medicinal plants just outside your door. Considered by many to be pretty but useless flowers at best, these herbal allies are packed with nutrition, flavor, antioxidants and even an ability to heal cuts, bruises and other injuries.

You don't need to be a credentialed herbalist or a medical professional to know how to safely harvest and use wild plants, but always take caution before harvesting any wild plant intended for ingestion or other healing uses. Check several qualified sources to ensure with 100-percent certainty what you're harvesting to compare different thoughts on their uses, learn potential hazards and to identify nonedible lookalikes.

Understanding the larger ecosystem these plants belong to will help provide you with a holistic approach to wild foraging. Never harvest from roadsides or in areas that may have been sprayed by pesticides, and always forage sustainably, responsibly and ethically.

From early to late spring in North America, there are myriad edible plants that pop up in yards and wildscapes that haven't been sprayed with pesticides. Some, such as dandelion, stick around through most of the summer.

The list is very long, so start with the following big players, and you'll soon be addicted to foraging.

RED CLOVER

None of us is a stranger to clover, especially for its soil-building capabilities, but red clover (Trifolium pratense) in particular makes good medicine. It's a classic alterative, meaning it improves the condition of the blood.

The flowers and the top pair of leaves are picked for their high vitamin and mineral content, namely calcium, chromium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, tin, and vitamins B and C.