HOW TO BE A SEA SCROUNGE
(Page 9 of 9)
Orach, or seaside lamb's-quarters, looks almost exactly
like its relative, the common lamb's-quarters or pigweed,
and is just as good in salads or lightly boiled and
buttered. Find orach among the rounded stones above the
water line, sprawled on the ground or growing upright as
high as 5 or 6 feet. Its dark green, scaly-looking leaves
are shaped like arrowheads and will more than take the
place of spinach or chard as a vegetable.
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The glasswort, which starts off as a patch of small
translucent green shoots and grows into a jointed,
apparently leafless cactus-like plant a few inches high, is
found on clay shores and in salt marshes that are barely
covered by high tides. Another spinach substitute, the
glasswort (or samphire, as it's called by some) is a fine
salad green.
Should you come across a collection of fleshy, gray-green
leaves sending up 4-8" spikes of dull greenish flowers,
you've found the goosetongue, a beachcombing version of the
common garden plantain. Goosetongue, which grows along clay
shores over most of the coastline of the U. S. and Canada
and even on the inhospitable-looking rocks of sea bluffs,
can be used in salads or prepared like green beans and
served hot with lots of butter.
And if you hanker after a little dessert, gather some beach
plums, a strange relative of the domestic plum and cherry
found on 3-10' high shrubs in the dune sands of the East
and Midwest. The bush is covered with magnificent white
blossoms in the spring and later bears an abundant crop of
red, purple or yellow-orange fruit ranging in size from
one-half to an inch in diameter. The beach plum can be
eaten as picked, made into tart jams and jellies or used in
pies.
There are many other edible plants to be found at the
seashore . . . too many to cover here. But there's one
plant the sea scrounge should take care to avoid, because
it's definitely NOT edible: the poison hemlock.
If you're tempted to take home a sprig or two of that wild
parsley you found up the hill from the beach, or those wild
carrots (Queen Anne's lace) growing in the field by the Old
Shore Road, be mighty careful. Hemlock is very difficult to
distinguish from either of these plants and a mistake can
be your final undoing. The seeds of the hemlock are deadly
too, and are often confused with caraway, anise and fennel.
It's not really that big a problem (after all, how
many poison hemlock deaths did you hear about last year?)
but forewarned is forearmed.
The sea has fed and fascinated people since the beginning
of time and still holds a magical allure for the sailor and
the sportsman. It can hold more than allure for the careful
sea scrounge: the ocean and its shores can be the cheap and
plentiful source of all the delicious food he cares to
gather.
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