USEFUL WILD PLANTS 



flavor does not readily commend itself to cultivated 

 I^alates. 



Dietitians who insist on the value of salads as part 

 of a riulillv balanced ration have a stron^2^ backer in 

 Mother Nature, if we may take as a hint the large 

 nunilier of wild plants which everywhere freely 

 offer themselves to us as ^'greens'' — all wholesomely 

 edible and many of decided palatability. Especially 

 in the spring, when the human system is starving 

 for green things and succulent, the earth teems with 

 these tender wilding shoots that our ancestors set 

 more or less store b}^ but which in these days of 

 cheap and abundant garden lettuce and spinach we 

 leave to the rabbits. To know such plants in the 

 first stages of their growth, wdien neither flower nor 

 fruitage is present to assist in identification — the 

 stage at which most of them must be picked to serve 

 as salads or pot herbs — presupposes an all-round 

 acquaintance with them, so that the collector must 

 needs be a bit of an exjDert in his line, or have a 

 friend who is. 



There is one, however, that is familiar to every- 

 body — the ubi(iuitous Dandelion, whose young plants 

 are utilized as pot-herbs particularly by immigrants 

 from over sea as yet too little Americanized to have 

 lost their thrifty Old World ways. It is a pleasant 



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