USEFUL WILD PLANTS 



The Nightshade family, to which we owe the 

 tomato, the potato and the egg-phmt (as well as the 

 tobacco and some very poisonous fruits), is rep- 

 resented in our wild flora by a number of plants 

 bearing edible fiTiit. Of these the red berries of 

 two shrubs of the deserts and semi-deserts of 

 Arizona, New Mexico and Utah resemble tiny 

 tomatoes and go among the Spanish-speaking popu- 

 lation under the name of iomatillo, that is, '^ little 

 tomato." They may be eaten raw, if perfectly ripe, 

 or boiled and consumed either as a separate dish or 

 used to enliven stews and soups. Dried, they look 

 like currants and may be stored away for winter use. 

 Botanically the plants are Lycium pallidum, Miers, 

 and L. Andersonii, Gray. They are more or less 

 spiny shrubs, with small, pale, narrowish leaves, 

 bunched in the axils of the branchlets, and bearing 

 funnel-form greenish or whitish flowers — those of 

 L. pallidum nearly an inch long; of L. Andersonii 

 much smaller. To the Navajo Indians, the berries of 

 the former have a sacred significance and Doctor 

 Matthews states that in his day they were used in 

 sacrificial offerings to a Navajo demi-god. Similarly 

 among the Zufiis the plant is sacred to one of their 

 priestly fraternities, and treated with reverence as 

 an intercessor with the gods of the harvest. When 



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