BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS— The president of the Garden Club of the Lakes told a Lake Region civic group that their next meals could come from their own back yards.
Jackie Host told the Keystone Heights Rotary Club that the trend of eating weeds is growing due to the public’s desire to move away from processed foods and to move closer to the landscapes around them.
“It really, actually gets people in touch with their garden,” she said. ‘When you go out and you weed, instead of throwing it away or instead of putting a pesticide on it, you harvest it, and you take it in and put it in your salad.”
Host added that while many weeds are safe to eat, some are not, and residents should be aware of the species they are consuming.
Host defined a weed as any undesired plant within a specific area, adding that a maple tree could be considered a weed if the tree is in an undesired location.
“Or you can be like Ralph Waldo Emerson who said a weed is just a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered,” she said. “About 80% of the food that we have on our shelves in the supermarket today didn’t even exist a hundred years ago, so everything that we eat was a weed until we cultivated it and made it what it is today.”
Host said that sorrels, miner’s lettuce, pineapple weed, clover and dandelion are common edible plants many gardeners consider weeds.
“A lot of these plants are actually not just good for you, they’re medicinal,” she said.
Host showed the group a slide of weed salad made from plants native to California. The mixture included dollar weed, aster and daisy.
She then reviewed a list of native or naturalized Florida weeds that residents can enjoy in a salad, including wild onions, sumac, wild mustard, wood sorrel (also known as four-leaf-clover), Florida betony and Florida roselle.
Host also said pine needle tea is a popular beverage residents can create from one of the area’s most prolific trees.
