Creasy Greens: Try Growing And Cooking This Edible Wild Plant

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Creasy greens are high in Vitamin C and Vitamin A. Try substituting them for cooked spinach. ILLUSTRATION: MOTHER EARTH NEWS STAFF

When we moved (from up north) to our Tennessee homestead a few years ago, we discovered a delicious—and almost year-round—vegetable that's not only a culinary delight but also a gardener's dream: It requires virtually no care at all . . . plants itself every year . . . and survives unprotected even in snowy, sub-zero weather. Known in these parts as "creasy greens" or simply "creasies", this land-loving cousin of watercress looks and tastes much like its aquatic relative, but literally grows like a weed—even in poor, sandy soil—and provides us with fresh salad makings from the garden during a season when most folks can only leaf through seed catalogs and dream of warmer days.

Creasy Greens Lesson

When we first noticed the edible wild plant growing in the long-neglected garden of our new home place, we mistook them for common winter cress and—since we'd tried that forageable before and hadn't cared for its bitter aftertaste—promptly plowed the greenery under, right along with the rest of the weeds and overgrowth. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Most MOTHER EARTH NEWS foragers are very fond of both young winter-cress greens and the unopened flower buds.] But when patches emerged again the following year, one of our wise neighbors pointed out the plants' characteristic difference: Although a sprig of common winter cress has one to four pairs of small leaves below a large, rounded end leaf, creasy greens have from five to ten sets of lateral leaves below a bigger leaf. He suggested that we give the plant a try, and we're glad we took his advice. We discovered that the sweet-tasting but pungent fresh leaves—when chopped finely—make a wonderfully piquant topping for tacos and salads, and when cooked in quiches and other dishes become as mild as spinach.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Actually, the plant Ms. Marengo describes is winter cress . . . but a different species: Barbarea verna, which is also known as early winter cress, Belle Isle cress, or—in the South—creasy greens or scurvy grass. Its closest relative, Barbarea vulgaris (common winter cress), ranges farther north than creasies—up into Ontario and Nova Scotia—and south to Missouri and Kansas. Barbarea verna can be found from Massachusetts southward . . . and both varieties are also distributed, although sparsely, in the central Plains and the Northwest. Folks living in the Pacific states can enjoy Barbarea orthoceras, or American winter cress.] 

A Wild Edible Plant of Many Virtues

Since those first few experiments in creasy cookery, we've found the greens to be eminently edible right up to the point when they begin to go to seed (they also seem to be not quite as flavorful when plucked while frozen solid). And in addition to tasting good, creasies rate extraordinarily high in nutritive value. Euell Gibbons reported in his book Stalking the Healthful Herbs that 100 grams of winter cress contain an impressive 5,067 I.U. of vitamin A and 152 milligrams of vitamin C! By comparison, the same weight of raw broccoli spears rates only 2,500 I.U. of vitamin A . . . and oranges (which of course are universally acknowledged as a good source of vitamin C) provide a comparatively measly 50 milligrams of C per 100 grams!