STALKING THE WILD ASPARAGUS

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I suppose this wild vegetable is really no better than the cultivated kind, but, because of the memories it evokes, it always tastes better to me. It is exactly the same species as the cultivated varieties. Birds long ago scattered the seeds from domestic plants, and now, all over the eastern states and in irrigated sections of the West, wild asparagus grows in fence corners and hedgerows. The mature plant is familiar to everyone who takes any notice at all of wayside plants, for its lacy green foliage decorates the roadsides from early summer until the first freeze. A frond or two from this graceful plant will never fail to improve the appearance of a wildflower bouquet. In the fall, some plants are covered with bright red berries a quarterinch in diameter, each containing from one to six hard, black seeds, but the birds soon take care of these.

The edible tips and spears, in which we are chiefly interested, appear long before the asparagus puts on its summer finery, and they must be located by that drab, old, last-year's stalk. My neighbors often smile when they see me by the roadside with my asparagus knife and pail. They think it is much simpler to merely buy the asparagus one wants at the supermarket. But I have a secret they don't know about. When I am out along the hedgerows and waysides gathering wild asparagus, I am twelve years old again, and all the world is new and wonderful as the spring sun quickens the green' things into life after a winter's dormancy. Now do you know why I like wild asparagus?

THE SPRING BEAUTY OR FAIRY SPUDS
(Claytonia virginica)

One spring I helped an artist friend build a cabin near a trout stream in central Pennsylvania. He planned to spend much of each year in this retreat and was interested in raising and foraging as much of his food as possible, for, like all artists I know, he wasn't overloaded with money. As a place to raise vegetables, he chose a sunny little clearing near his cabin site that was literally carpeted with Spring Beauties when we first inspected it in April.

These pale-rose-colored flowers with five petals and five tiny golden stamens are familiar to nearly everyone who goes into the woods and fields seeking the first wild flowers of spring. They are borne on slender stems, seldom more than six inches high, that spring from inconspicuous plants that consist mainly of three to a dozen slender pointed leaves, four to five inches long and only about a half-inch wide. Although this is one of our best-known early wild flowers, few people seem to know that this insignificant little plant also bears an edible tuber.

I had collected a few of these Fairy Spuds before for experiments, but ordinarily I couldn't bring myself to destroy such a beautiful wild flower for the sake of the small tuber from which it grows. Now, since these flowers were to be destroyed for the sake of a kitchen garden anyway, I could dig with an easy conscience. Each evening after we had quit work on the cabin for the day, I would repair to the garden plot with a hand weeder and a pail, and in about an hour I dug all the tubers the two of us could eat. My friend would rake over the area where I had been digging and plant a few vegetable seeds. That is the only garden I ever knew to be completely spaded up with a hand weeder.

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