- Stinging nettle (brennesle).
1. Use for tea - just pour hot water over the leaves. My grandmother taught me to use it as a "seasonal cleanse" each spring. (Blut Reinigung or Blood Purification). Fresh leaves are most potent in the spring.
The local pharmacy carried it as a tonic. (back in Germany). The roots are used for medicinal purposes as well.
I have never seen stinging nettle in my area in the states - so I just buy a box of tea bags in the health food store every spring:).
I've never considered it as a food staple but rather as a herbal medicine not to be used as a daily tea on an ongoing basis. I'd use it like a green in a spring soup that's all.
Here is what webmd in the US has to say about it:
https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-664/stinging-nettle2. Stinging nettle is also very beneficial as a "plant tea" in your garden. Excellent fertilizer and strengthening agent for your garden plants. Just throw a big bunch of nettles in a couple of buckets of water - let sit for about two weeks - voila, your plants will love you for it.
Any experienced gardener in Germany loves that stuff:) even though it becomes a stinky vile mess while it is soaking.
3. We have
wild elderberries since our property borders a big ditch in the back.
This year I'm harvesting the flowers to make
Elderflower Champagne:). My mom's old 1952 cookbook has a simple recipe.
We have enough flowers so that I might try to make an old dessert recipe too. The edible flowers will be dipped into a crepe-like dough then deep fried and dusted with sugar or powdered sugar.
4. There is a native Florida hibiscus that makes excellent tea - the small reddish pink flowers are more potent in the spring. The Asian section of our local flea market sells them fresh.
(The internet says it is known to be good for your kidney, liver, urinary tract and to lower your blood pressure. So again, not a tea I'd drink by the pitcher or long term. It is used in Chinese herbal medicine as well.)
For now, I just have a can of sweet hibiscus tea which upon closer inspection turns out to be mixed with rosehip and berry leaf teas - from the grocery store.
It is an attractive purple bush that I once planted in the yard before I knew about the tea. It was way too prolific and making babies right and left. So now I'm waiting for the new fence to be up before I plant one in a different part of the yard where it can go wild once it is established.
Sorry, not a forager - I just like herb teas and grow herbs for tea and spices for cooking, like bay leaf and lemon verbena, basil and dill...