WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE 



{Nuphar polysepalum, Engelm.), whose globose, 

 yellow flowers, sometimes as much as five inches in 

 diameter, are a frequent and charming sight afloat 

 on the bosom of shallow lakes and marshy ponds 

 of the coast region from northern California to 

 British Columbia. The globular seed vessels are 

 full grown in summer, and it is the practice of the 

 Indians to gather them in July and August, and, after 

 drying the pods, to extract the seeds, which may then 

 be kept indefinitely. These are commonly prepared 

 for consumption by tossing them about in a frying 

 pan over a fire until they swell and crack open some- 

 what as popcorn does, which they resemble in taste. 

 They may be eaten thus out of hand, or ground into 

 meal for making bread or mush.* 



The common Sunflower of our gardens, whose 

 monster heads appeal to esthetes because of a par- 

 ticular style of languid beauty they possess, and to 

 birds and chickens because of their luscious, oleagin- 

 ous seeds, is but a coddled form of one of our com- 

 monest wild plants— the Annual Sunflower {Heli- 

 anthus annuus, L.). This species is indigenous 

 throughout western North America, and sheets 

 summer and autumnal plains for miles with the gen- 



4Coville, "Notes on Plants Used by the Klamath Indians of 

 Oregon." 



49 



