Feasting on the Bracken Fern

By E.S. O'Neill
Published on March 1, 1979
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The mature bracken fern can be mildly poisonous. You can avoid this hazard by not eating the adult plants, which contain the toxic matter.
The mature bracken fern can be mildly poisonous. You can avoid this hazard by not eating the adult plants, which contain the toxic matter.
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Pick those plants whose curled-over shoots have not yet opened up. Be sure that the roll on their tips still justifies the name
Pick those plants whose curled-over shoots have not yet opened up. Be sure that the roll on their tips still justifies the name "fiddlenecks."
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Serve the dish hot with butter or smothered in cream sauce or melted cheese.
Serve the dish hot with butter or smothered in cream sauce or melted cheese.
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To cook your foraged bounty, boil and drain the ferns several times until tender.
To cook your foraged bounty, boil and drain the ferns several times until tender.

Them brake ferns ain’t no good,” the old “stump rancher”
told me, “they pizens the ground so’s you cain’t grow
nothin else!” This conversation took place in the Oregon
woods during the 1930’s, and the speaker lived in a crude
pine shack with no garden to be seen. The odds are pretty
good that he–along with his flock of sallow-faced

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