Euell Gibbons: Author of Stalking the Wild Asparagus

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There is one form of air pollution that is absorbed by plants, by the way, and that's lead . . . mostly from automobile exhausts. Strangely enough, plants seem to love it.

PLOWBOY: Wouldn't that be a reason not to pick roadside plants?

GIBBONS: Yeah. Ordinarily plants 10 feet or more from the road are safe, since lead is heavy even when it's in gaseous form and settles to the ground very fast. I would certainly have my doubts about anybody getting enough lead to poison him if he's careful. I suspect—I don't know anything about it—lead might even be an essential mineral for us. But our usual task is not to get too much of it. (Research is showing that "too much" lead can be very little indeed. Since estimates of our tolerance level are falling lower and the effects of lead in the system have been shown to be cumulative, 50 or even 100 feet from the road would be a safer figure. — Ed.)

PLOWBOY: You spent a few years in Hawaii, out of which came the BEACHCOMBERS HANDBOOK. Is a tropical environment better than a colder one for foraging?

GIBBONS: I suppose it's better the year 'round because there're times when the pickin's get pretty poor in these parts. When the snow gets deep and the ground frozen, it becomes very difficult to find wild foods here. You could still survive, but in most cases you'd have to eat to live . . . you sure wouldn't live to eat.

There were some tribes of Indians who were reduced to such scrounging almost every year. The word "Adirondack"—the mountains were named after an Indian tribe—means "tree-eaters". There've been reports of huge areas in which all the bark was removed from the white pines. Like many other tribes, the Adirondacks ate white pine, ponderosa pine and quite a number of other barks.

PLOWBOY: How'd they prepare it?

GIBBONS: Usually they boiled the inner bark . . . and if it was boiled with meat it might have had enough flavor to be good. I've never been able to fix it well, at least not pine or any of the other thicker barks.

The American Indians weren't the only people to eat bark, by the way. Laplanders, for instance, still do. They scrape off the outer layer to get the inner bark and the cambium, which is the part that produces new cells for growth. The bark is tacked on the sides of the barn or under the eaves of the house where it dries while it's insulating the building. When they need it, they grind the bark into flour and make bread with it. It has lots of starches and sugars . . . mixed with a distinct taste of turpentine (laughter).

Some of the willow barks and leaves in the Arctic are really, really tremendous. You get sugar, starch and probably more ascorbic acid than any place else in nature besides rose hips. The Eskimos eat willow around first thaw in the spring, when they need vitamin C more than any other time of the year.

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