Native Food Plants: Meet the Plants II
by Brian Geier, Education Program Coordinator
We are learning about native food plants and sharing weekly using the hashtag
#nativefoodplantfriday.
“Meet the Plants” quarterly blog posts share a seasonal summary of the posts in an easily readable format. Welcome to the Spring edition! Here, we’ll look back as some of our favorite native food plant stories from late fall, winter, and early spring: stories of the Chanterelle, the Oak, and the Rose.
Disclaimer: Information about native food plants shared here is not necessarily meant to encourage the harvest of these plants from “wild” populations on public lands. This information is shared to inspire further learning and to encourage land stewardship and nature connection.
If you are interested in working directly with native food plants, we encourage you to support restoration efforts protecting and establishing stands of native plants for the future, and to support the access and management of lands where you live by traditional Indigenous knowledge practitioners. Here are some recommendations:
The Rogue Native Plant Partnership works with local native plant nurseries and native plant farmers to increase the amount of native plant seed and stock available in the region. and to establish new stands of native plants in gardens in your area.
The Upland Stewardship Corps will be a series of opportunities to get directly involved with restoration on the ground at Vesper Meadow and Willow Witt this summer. Sign up to the email list to learn more. Other opportunities can be found at our events page.
The Indigenous Gardens Network is working to restore areas where first foods and other culturally significant items can be cultivated, harvested, and made accessible to Indigenous people.
Now let’s meet more Native Food plants!
Oak (Quercus spp)
Following the catastrophic fires of 2020, we took a look at the oak (Quercus spp), a species often associated with fire as an agricultural act.
A History of Suppression
A discussion of oaks/acorns along the west coast is one that is intertwined with fire, cultural burns, fire suppression, and the violence and dangers of colonization. Oaks depend on low-intensity, relatively frequent fires to reduce competition from conifers and other species, and fires can also assist in controlling the life cycles of weevils and worms that feed on acorns. Yet oaks are also vulnerable to intense fires. Fire is an agricultural act, generally and carefully practiced with community, family, and individual traditions and variance by Tribes in the west for thousands of years.
Writing in “It Will Live Forever”, Beverly Ortiz/Julia Parker point out that “to understand acorn food, one must know something of the people who used it-who have used it for centuries-and who continue to use it today.” Parker, a Miwok/Paiute of the Yosemite Valley goes on to describe the Mariposa Battalion, a volunteer state-endorsed militia led by James Savage, who removed the Miwok/Paiute from what is now Yellowstone National Park. Savage’s Battalion found caches of acorns and other dried foods-- immense structures full of ‘hundreds of bushels” of acorns and baskets. Unable to find the people, the Battalion set fire to the caches, in an effort to starve them out. Savage wrote in his journal about how he preferred the look of a burning cache of acorns to that of stored foods for Natives.
Ironically, the use of fire by indigenous people would soon be outlawed, and a 100+ year period of fire suppression would deny indigenous people access to traditional foods and ancestral lands, and lead to the build up of fuels, paving the way to an era of catastrophic fires.
“Landscapes have changed so dramatically in terms of fuels and structure that restoring their condition may not be feasible simply by reintroducing fire,” writes Jonathan Long. “Under indigenous regimes, burns were so frequent and fuel levels so low that they did not pose a hazard to the forest. Reclamation of degraded stands may require multiple reentry burns before the resource is set up for intensive use and frequent fall burning, and burning outside the historical fall-winter seasons may realign the system to the point where in-season burning can occur more safely.”
Oaks and acorns remain one of the most abundant and easily gathered native foods in our region. They also provide a lens to understand the importance and role of fire, and the need to have indigenous-lead and informed land restoration planning and implementation.
What’s in a Name? Acorns, or K’anawi-taqwela (Chinuk Wawa)
Language is a complex subject and one that is potentially painful, with a history of ‘linguicide” and brutal suppression tactics used against indigenous languages and speakers extending into the 20th century. Language revitalization is important for the identity and health of Native people, and can help deepen understandings of the region for anyone living here.
Chinuk Wawa, a pidgin language---meaning it is a simplified means of communication that developed between groups that did not have a language in common---developed in the lower Columbia River region amongst the Tribes of what is now Oregon and Washington to facilitate trade, and later incorporated elements of English and French. It was also later learned and spoken by many early Europeans.
Educators and their students can now learn about Chinuk Wawa and the importance of language revitalization with curriculum, lesson plans, and trainings being developed under an effort codified as “Senate Bill 13: Tribal History/Shared History”. SB 13 is an agreement between Oregon and the 9 federally-recognized Tribes here. More info can be found at OR Dept of Education’s SB 13 webpage.
There's even a Chinuk Wawa App created by the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, with fun games built in for learning plants! You'll have to download it to hear how one Native speaker pronounces the Chinuk words for “acorns”: K'anawi-taqwela!
Rose (Rosa spp)
Rosa is a genus native to many parts of the world. There are a couple different species native to southwestern Oregon, including the focus of our learning here, Rosa nutkana. Many non-native roses have nativized here from people’s gardens and farms, and roses hybridize, so future populations of native roses and species that depend on them could depend on today’s restoration efforts.
What’s in a name? The Nutka Rose
The “Nutka” or “Nootka” rose gets its name from the scribblings of a British sea captain who approached present-day Vancouver Island, named it “King George’s Sound”, and noted that the native name was Nutka. Some say he was sloppily referring to the Nuu-chah-nulth people. Others say that he recorded “Nutka” after natives paddled out to his ship and advised that he take it around to the harbor (“itchme nuutkaa”, a place you can go around), and he mistook that (or simply applied it) as the native name. Nutka/nootka has since been used to refer to the area, as an outsider’s label for the Nuu-chah-nulth peoples, and, of course, to the rose that grows there.
The dense, matting root system of a Rosa nutkana.
Ecological Restoration with Rosa nutkana
In late winter, shoots of Rosa emerge from perennial roots, roots that have earned Rosa’s role as a powerhouse in ecological restoration. Rosa’s super-power is in soil stabilization, which it accomplishes with its dense, matting root systems. Restoration efforts place Rosa along streambanks, on steep hillsides, around wetlands, and/or as a “human buffer” to keep humans out of sensitive areas.
Encouraging Biodiversity with Rosa nutkana
Farmers might consider using them in hedgerows, because of their contribution to insect diversity: Rosa is a host for gall wasps-the wasps with an impressive, almost unbelievable ability to lay eggs on a plant, and somehow induce the plant to produce a gall (a structure of mutated tissue that protects eggs as they develop and then provides hatched larvae with food in the form of fine, almost hairlike, plant structures). The gall wasps, only alive as adults for a couple weeks, produce an abundance of larvae, some of which provide habitat and food for yet another type of wasp, the parasitoids, who can deposit their eggs deep into the intricate spaces of rose galls with special, unfurling egg-laying parts. The parasitoid wasps consist of several genera, and are important beneficial insects valued by agriculturalists for their predation of many common pests of vegetables and fruits.
The Chanterelle
Washed and trimmed Chanterelle mushrooms.
Ok, ok, yes, the chanterelle mushroom is not a plant...but they are such a beloved and beautiful food, and a fascinating and important part of the ecosystem, so that they are included here.
Inter-Species Connections
Chanterelles are a literal expression of interspecies connection; they are the fruiting body of a fungus that consists of microscopic, hairlike “hyphae” that grow in forest soils, forming a sheath around the root tips of live trees. A vast network of fungal hyphae supply the trees with water and nutrients, while the trees provide carbohydrates to the fungus. When eating these “mychorrhizal” mushrooms (those that live in symbiosis with living roots of trees), we are literally eating carbohydrates that are energy from the forests’ trees.
Traditional Ecological Knowledge: “Knew that Already!”
One elder pacific northwest basket-maker recalled being taught by their grandmother, in the 1950’s, to gather roots for basket making. When digging into the ground for roots, upon finding white fuzz (a mushroom’s hyphae), the grandmother cautioned not to gather there, because the white fuzz is “how the trees talk to each other”. This anecdote (received through Kim TallBear speaking on a podcast) illustrates the immense levels of understanding of native ecological knowledge, and highlights the need to amplify native knowledge, when appropriate, in our current efforts to understand and work with the land.
Current mycology is only beginning to understand how, through mushrooms, trees “talk”, and can actually exchange nutrients from healthy to unhealthy trees. Read more here.