Climate change threatens native plants that are valuable sources of food, medicine
BOSTON -- There are hundreds of native plants in our own backyards that are a valuable source of food, medicine, and even material. But climate change is threatening their existence and the communities that depend on them.
Foraging is the art of collecting wild food sources, and it clearly takes practice.
"I would say at least half the people that grow vegetables in the greater Boston area will have this as a weed and I bet most of them don't know that it's edible," Russ Cohen told WBZ-TV.
Cohen is a naturalist and has been connecting to the outdoors with his tastebuds for nearly five decades in New England. He even wrote a book called "Wild Plants I've Known… And Eaten."
"There are edible wild plants all over the place whether you are in the city or the suburbs, or the mountains or the coastline they are all over the place. So it's really fun, " Cohen said.
He also hosts dozens of walks a year at the edge of the Waltham Fields Community Farm. On this day, where the sunshine and shade meet, he was able to point out dozens of edible plants and weeds from hackberry, to black cherry, grapes, millet, and stag corn sumac.
"Those enormous things that look like old green tennis balls, those are black walnuts," Cohen said. "So black walnuts is a native species, the native range was farther south and west of here but Indigenous people said we like this nut, we want to encourage this nut to grow in the places that we go, so they deliberately planted them in village sites to tribal groups going back thousands of years."
Since then, there has been an increase in temperatures worldwide and that has changed the availability of some native plants locally.
"For example, black cherries and elderberries, I usually would tell people to traditionally look for them in the first week of September, I'm now seeing them ripe the last week of August," Cohen said. "For some species that need things, like migratory birds, for example, a certain fruit that they fatten up on to fuel themselves through migrations, it needs to be available at the time they need it. You know if climate change messes up those relationships, it could be a problem."
Russ Cohen has not only witnessed the impacts of climate change, but also extreme weather.
"I'm seeing drier dry periods and wetter wet periods. If there is a significant long-term shift in patterns, some species will cope better than other ones," Cohen explained.
And while we were foraging for fun, it can be a heartbreaking reality for some communities that depend on and live off the land.
"It makes me very emotional to be honest," said Linda Black Elk, the Food Sovereignty Skills Educator at United Tribes Technical College in North Dakota.
Linda Black Elk is usually happy and upbeat on social media when she talks about foraging local edible plants, but she told WBZ-TV, climate change is making it harder.
"I've seen a lot of plants that my husband's family considers to be so important and so sacred. I have seen them getting less frequent and less frequent. As time goes on, I have to travel much further to get a good supply of them to feed my family," she explained.
Gathering food has always been a part of her family for generations.
"My husband and my children are enrolled out here in the Dakotas with two tribes, the Cheyenne River Nation and the Standing Rock Nation," Linda said.
But, warming temperatures and extreme weather are threatening some native plants and altering the timing of others that are commonly harvested there.
"There is an elder at the Standing Rock Nation, she told me when she was a little girl she remembers harvested it on average around June 19th, now we get that plant on average on June 5th," said Linda Black Elk.
She is an ethnobotanist and teaches at United Tribes Technical College about the interrelationship between people and plants.
"It's the way that traditional foods and wild harvested foods and garden foods feed us mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically, " she explained.
She believes every plant has a purpose and that food is medicine.
"An onion, for example, it's considered a culinary item, but when you eat an onion you are eating medicine to simply lower and stabilize your blood pressure. You're eating medicine that is going to help heal congestion in your lungs and sinuses, onions are amazing medicine that we just don't think about it," Linda Black Elk explained.
And even the weeds in your yard.
"The entire dandelion is medicinal. There are other amazing clinical trials on uses of dandelion root and treating various types of cancer, and treating diabetes. Dandelions are amazing and it's wild to me to see people spray them in their lawn and then go to large grocery store chain to then buy boxes of organic dandelion root tea," she said.
When asked if she thought medicinal plants will survive climate change, her response was hopeful.
"If we take some action now, I feel like there is still hope. If we start looking at plants as our relatives, we may not be able to ignore them, we may not be able to ignore climate change. I think it's so important to get outside and really get to know all of these beings, these relatives around us," she explained.
Like Indigenous communities, she's hopeful in time people will connect better to the land. That's why she also shares through social media recipes and how to find hundreds of edible and medicinal plants growing where you'd least expect.
"How many of you are paying attention to the plant growing in the crack of the sidewalk on the way to work every day? I think if we knew the name of that plant and knew that plant had some amazing uses for food or medicine or even materials, we might start to look at that plant and the world a little differently," Linda Black Elk said.
Linda Black Elk recommends keeping track of when things are flowering, and when they are going to fruit. She also said sustainability is very important, especially when you are harvesting native plants.
"You never take too many, you never take them at the wrong stage, if you are harvesting root, you are essentially killing that plant so make sure there is plenty of others to go to seed around it. But I think there is something to be said for harvesting non-native plants, as many as you want!"
She said garlic mustard is very invasive around the northeast and a good one to try. To learn more about foraging and tips on edible and medicinal plants around us, follow her on Instagram and Facebook.