I recently sampled milkweed and found it to be surprisingly good. It wasn’t bitter or tough like many wild plants tend to be. It grows everywhere, like it or not. It has several stages that produce food. So why was it never cultivated?
No scarcity, no market. No market, no advertising. No advertising, no demand.
It’s the same with cattails and ramps. Most folks walk right past without knowing they just missed out on a tasty dinner.
I’ve noticed a ramp-up in ramp availability these last few years. I saw a bunch at the market this morning, but never at the grocery.
I’m thinking of earlier…… why did milkweed never become a domesticated crop?
I’ve always understood that it’s poisonous. That’s the main reason I’ve never eaten it. Am I mistaken?
I had always understood milkweed to be toxic to humans, but apparently only if ingested in large amounts. I know it’s the main diet of monarch butterflies and caterpillars, however.
There are a lot of different species of milkweed, which is a genus. Some are highly poisonous, and some people are allergic to some, so that they get a rash just from touching them. As a result, people assumed for a long time that all species were dangerous.
The same thing happened to the tomato. It’s in the same family as deadly nightshade and jimsonweed, and for a long time was assumed to be poisonous.
And thus, it took a long time before someone dared to eat one and thus find out that it isn’t poisonous. (Probably tried to put his old dawg down by feeding one, and noticed that it didn’t work.)
Imagine a bowl of tomatoes. 100% are thought to be poisonous. Go ahead, eat a handful.
the native Ameicans in North America had indeed domesticated a crop before they got corn, but hey abandoned it once they got corn, because that previous crop had tiny seeds which were awkward to winnow and husk and whatever and the plant was very allergenic with dusty pollen