470 sturtevant's notes on edible plants 



Ptelea trifoliata Linn. Rutaceae. hop tree, shrubby trefoil. 



Eastern United States. The fruit, a winged seed, is bitter and has been used as a 

 substitute for hops.' 



Pteris aquilina Linn. Polypodiaceae. bracken, brake. 



Northern regions. The rhizomes, says Lindley, have been used as a substitute for 

 hops and furnish a wretched bread. Pickering ^ says it is enimierated by Epichamus 

 as edible. Lightfoot sa>-s the people of Normandy have sometimes been compelled 

 to subsist on bread made of brake roots. In 1683, says Lacombe, such was the destitution 

 in some districts of France that the Abb^ Grandel writes " some of the inhabitants are 

 living upon bread made of ferns;" and in 1745 the Duke of Orleans, giving Louis XV 

 a piece of bread made of fern, said, " Sire, this is what yotir subjects live upon." In Siberia, 

 says Johnson,' the rhizomes are employed with about two-thirds their weight of malt 

 for brewing a kind of beer. The brake is enumerated by Thunberg among the edible 

 plants of Japan, and Bohmer sajrs the yotmg shoots are much prized by the Japanese. 

 The fronds are gathered when still undeveloped and used in soups. The roots serve the 

 inhabitants of Palma and Gomera for food, as Humboldt states; they grind them to powder, 

 mix with barley meal and this composition, when boiled, is called gofio. In 1405, Betangon 

 found the people of the Canaries in Ferro living on fern roots, " as for grain they had none; 

 their bread was made of fern roots;" it was the only edible root of Palma when Europeans 

 first visited the island. Professor Brewer says that the young, tender shoots are boiled 

 by the California miners and eaten like asparagus, being found mucilaginous and palatable. 

 The fronds of the brake are used as a potherb in New England. Everywhere in Vancouver 

 Island and the neighboring country, s&ys R. Brown, the Indians gather the roots and boil 

 and eat them as food and they look upon them as a great luxury. 



P. esculenta. tara fern. 



The root is tmiversally eaten by the Maoris of New Zealand. To these roots, the 

 natives of New South Wales have resource whenever their sweet potatoes or maize crops 

 fail. In the Voyage of the Novara, these roots are said to have formed the chief subsistence 

 of the Maoris before the introduction of the potato and to have been called raoras. 



Pterocarya caucasica C. A. Mey. Juglandeae. 

 Orient. The plant produces an edible nut.'' 



Pueraria thunbergiana Benth. Leguminosae. 



China and Japan. The roots are fleshy and yield a starch of excellent quality. The 

 wild plants are dug for their roots. ^ The roots contain starch, while the leaves and shoots 

 are used as food.* 



'Gray. A. Man. Bot. no. 1868. 



' Pickering, C. Chron. Hist. Pis. 97. 1879. 



Johnson, C. P. Useful Pis. Gt. Brit. 294. 1862. 



< Unger, F. U. S. Pat. Off. Rpt. 321. 1859. 



' Georgeson Amer. Card. 13:387. 1892. 



Science 498. 1884. 



