USEFUL WILD PLANTS 



CHAPTER I 



WILD PLANTS WITH EDIBLE TUBERS, 



BULBS OR ROOTS 



Your greatest want is you want much of meat. 

 Why should you want? Behold the earth hath roots. 



Timon of Athens. 



THE plant life of the New World was always a 

 subject of keen interest to the early explorers, 

 whose narratives not only abound in quaint allu- 

 sions to the new and curious products of Flora that 

 came under their notice, but also record for many 

 of our familiar plants uses that are a surprise to 

 most modern readers. In that famous compilation 

 of travelers' tales, published in England some three 

 centuries ago under the title of ^^Purchas: His Pil- 

 grimage," it is asserted of the tubers of a certain 

 plant observed in New England that *^ boiled or 

 sodden they are very good meate"; and elsewhere in 

 Master Purchases volumes there is note of the abun- 



1 



