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Wild medicines and foods.
By Christopher Nyerges
The Oak Tree
Beech or Oak Family (Quercus sps.) (Fagaceae)
OVERALL SHAPE AND SIZE: Quercus is a large
genus of more than 200 species including deciduous and
evergreen trees and shrubs. A few of our common oaks are
scrub oak, canyon oak, California or coast live oak,
engelman oak, California black oak, interior live oak, and
valley oak.
LEAVES: Among the many varieties, the
leaves which are always arranged alternately vary in shape
from small, hard, oval and toothed, to large, flexible,
almost like a maple leaf.
FLOWERS: Oaks are monoecious; that is,
they have separate male and female flowers on the same
plant. The inconspicuous female flowers are small and
greenish-brown. They look like small acorns and appear
solitary or in a spike in the leaf axils of the season's
new growth. The female flower is formed in side a cup of
bract-like sepals, which later develop into the acorn's cup
or cap.
FRUIT: The oak trees are identified by
their fruit, the acorns, which are nuts set in scaly caps.
Acorns mature and fall from the trees during September and
October.
Christopher's Acorn Bread
Here's the recipe for my favorite acorn bread.
1 cup acorn flour,
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup carob flour,
3 tsp. baking powder, 1 tsp. sea salt
3 Tbs. honey, 1 egg, 1 cup raw milk, 3 Tbs. oil.
Mix well and bake in greased pan for about 45 minutes (or
longer) at 250°F
BENEFICIAL PROPERTIES
EDIBILITY: Acorns are not eaten raw
because the presence of tannin makes them very bitter. A
number of methods have been devised to rid the acorns of
this bitterness. A common practice of the Southern
California Indians was to bury the acorns in a swamp and
return the following year. This removed the tannin and
blackened the acorns. Sometimes shelled acorns were wrapped
in a cloth container (like a burlap bag) and submerged in a
river overnight. The flowing water would leach the
water-soluble tannin from the acorns by morning.
Some would shell and grind the raw acorns into meal. Then
this meal was put into a shallow depression tamped into a
river's shady edge. Hot and cold water were poured over the
meal for most of the day, washing the tannin out into the
sand. The resultant acorn mush would then be carefully
scooped from the sand and either dried or eaten as-is.
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