#us native plants

[los-plantalones]

common yarrow.

[herbalnature]

Check out the fiery beauty of the Platanthera ciliaris, a vibrant orange orchid adding a pop of color to the green wilds. These feathery blooms, native to the US, are a delightful find for nature enthusiasts and photographers alike!

[basketofmooneggs]

Look at this cool flower!

This flower is known commonly as jack-in-the-pulpit or Arisaema triphyllum. It's native to the US and found commonly in woodland areas around the country. I took these pictures in Maryland back in May. The plant flowers through June and then apparently the plant produces berries that ripen right around now and are bright red!

This was my first time ever seeing this relatively common native plant. It's apparently easy to propagate if you find some near you but not edible for humans. Please share pictures of the ripe berries if you have them.

[los-plantalones]

I wanted to highlight this because I knew it would come up as SOON as I mention common milkweed (asclepias syriaca), which is a milkweed from the Eastern and Central US.

Indigenous peoples, respected ethnobotanists, and veteran foragers eat milkweed by the bucket! If other people knew how amazing of a plant it is – there is something edible and delicious about it at every stage of growth, it is very easy to plant / spread its seeds, and it grows almost like a weed – they would love and cherish it.

If more people were encouraged to utilize it, they would be less likely to get rid of it in their yards. They might even start growing a whole patch. It’s a sustainable food source. We would be helping its insect friends who are HARMLESS to our gardens but important for the environment.

It’s not like, say, ramps that are overharvested every year and have disappeared from huge stretches of land where they were once abundant. Ramps grown from seed take SEVEN years to mature. Milkweed grows and matures the same year.

People eating milkweed don’t contribute to monarch butterfly decline. The use of herbicides, Big Agro, cities just mowing down whatever the hell they want are to blame.

That said, it’s still important to forage in an ethical way. Never strip a plant of all its flowers, leaves, or fruit. Never harvest an entire patch of plants from a single area. Check for beneficial insects and leave them alone. If a native plant has gone to seed, help spread those around.

This is NOT a callout — this is important information that I want everyone to know. Eating milkweed will NOT harm the monarch butterflies.

Learn More:

The Forager’s Harvest

Learn Your Land

Part 1 | Common Milkweed

[los-plantalones]

It’s that time, y’all. Time to commune with the hot stink babies 🥬

[los-plantalones]

check out these hot stinks

[los-plantalones]

adventures with prickly pear!

this is the only cactus native to the east coast of the US, and it’s a blessing and a curse honestly

a blessing because I LOVE CACTUS, the pads and fruit are edible and delicious, it’s great for the skin (the goo is better than aloe on sunburns imo), the flowers are gorgeous, and i love a girl who survives and thrives

a curse because it spreads like wildfire if you plant it, and the spines…. it’s an opuntia, what else do i need to say? tiny triangles of evil fiberglass pain. to gather it, i have to wear giant leather gloves and triple bag it. preparing it involves burning or wire brushing the spines off

i have… many stories about the dangers of prickly pear

[los-plantalones]

y’all know what this is?!

it is a clump of jewelweed seedlings!

common jewelweed (impatiens capensis) is native to north america and likes to grow along waterways. in the summertime she grows lovely little orange flowers.

but my favorite thing about her is her sap! it’s great for topical use on irritated skin. i make salves out of it and other happy-skin plants every summer. AND anD if you apply the sap to an area of skin that’s been exposed to poison ivy, it can prevent the rash from developing.

OMG there’s a poison ivy preventative!? well. . . no. this is a more of a “i am in the middle of the woods and have no soap and water but i DO have this plant” situation.

the thing is, you have to have to apply the jewelweed sap almost immediately after exposure to urushiol (the itchy juice in poison ivy), and if you’ve been in contact with poison ivy for more than a few minutes – which most people are because they don’t recognize/notice it – then it’s DEF not going to work. urushiol is absorbed by the skin too fast.

it’s still a cool plant and it DOES reduce itchiness and irritation from dermatitis and bug bites. 🦟