HOELLE LAB

Instructor: Kirsten Cook; should be experienced in plant identification, especially local flora

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Audience: People interested in and excited about the natural world

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Overview: This lesson will focus on the identification and collection of edible plants that can be eaten raw. We will demonstrate how we can snack for free while in a hurry on the way to class or while hiking on the trail. We will strengthen our connection to nature with the knowledge that even if we are lost in the wilds, we can feed ourselves. We will discuss how native peoples used and collected these plants easily while on the move.

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Goals and Objectives:

Cognitive Objectives

• After lecture on identification of common local edible plants, participants should be able to correctly name and identify said plants. This will be assessed in the written questions at the end of the lesson.

• After discussion of edible plant identification, participants should be able to appraise a nearby location and indicate which plants are edible. This will be assessed via the ‘tree tag’ game in which they may be ‘it’ if they cannot find the correct plant.

Affective Objectives

• After gathering and eating wild and ornamental plants, participants should feel more comfortable considering weeds and landscaping as viable food options. This will be assessed by asking them in the assessment at the end how they felt about eating the landscaping at the beginning versus the end of the lesson.

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Materials:

• Camera

• Sign in sheet

• Binder paper for participants to write assessment answers on

• Pens/pencils

• Collection of plants for the pattern recognition game (from SSMS courtyard)

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Management and Safety Considerations:

• Approximately a 2 hour class. 

• Between 5 and 10 participants per instructor. Less participants to each instructor is better. 

• Should be located somewhere outdoors that is relevant to all of their lives (their school campus or parks in their neighborhood) with a lot of open space and many different kinds of edible plants, both wild and ornamental.

• Place should be chosen with only manageable, common hazards so you do not have to worry too much about safety issues.

 

Procedure:

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East  ( ˜5 minutes + 3mins/person)

• Meet at the pond in Storke Tower Pond and wait 5 minutes for late comers to show up before introducing the lesson. 

• Have everyone write their name and email on the sign in sheet as they arrive. 

• Introduce yourself and the lesson.

  • Today’s lesson is all about edible plants! Specifically ones that we can find on campus and eat directly without preparation. I want to help you all be more comfortable with the action of picking plants as snacks.

  • This lesson also addresses two important topics: food insecurity and eating locally. Can anyone tell me what those two topics mean to you and why we should address them as a society?

    • Food insecurity is a major problem even here in Santa Barbara. Over 42% of students report experiencing some level of concern over food due to lack of funds, from low nutrition to skipping meals. Knowing how to eat plants around us that are free is a step in the right direction to helping reduce hunger.

    • Eating locally is an environmental movement to reduce energy use in food production, keep money in the local economy, and support small scale farms and gardens. This is because if your food comes from our local small farm Fairview Gardens in Goleta instead of some massive plantation in Chile, we save hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel.

• We are going to do some introductions to start off so that any stragglers can catch up.

• Let’s go in a circle and share our names, pronouns, something you are feeling grateful for this morning, and what you would think if you saw someone pick and eat a handful of those fruits over there.

• Now, again in a circle: if you could be any type of edible plant (fruit, vegetable, grain, etc.), what would you be and why? I want you to try to find a plant that describes you as a person, or maybe how you want to be viewed.

• Try to get them really thinking about the plant they chose. 

  • “That fruit has a really hard pit in the middle. Do you feel that you have inner strength?” “How do you think that the spiky skin emulates you?” “Can I infer that the gooey insides mean you are an emotional person?” “Is the color of the fruit related to how you associate yourself with the plant?” 

• Make sure you also participate in the circle share. 

  • Before we start moving, I want to show you all something really cool that the school is doing. Remember those fruits that a person was hypothetically eating? They’re from the Edible Campus Project. The group is planting edible plants in an effort to address food insecurity. 

• Show them the tangerine trees

  • Right here in Storke Plaza they have seven potted tangerine trees. I’ve discovered a bunch of other fruit trees as well: several types of Loquats and Guavas, Strawberry Trees, Natal Plums, and Pomegranates. I’m sure there are more or there soon will be!

 

Southeast  ( ˜3 minutes)

• Begin walking towards the bridge to nowhere.

• Introduce some excitement by telling a story relevant to foraging while on the move. 

  • We are going to start walking now because we have a lot of ground to cover.

  • I want to bring the relevance of this lesson to your own life and to the lives of native people that came before us. Knowing about edible flora is a really great way to get a snack or even a whole meal when you are in a hurry. On your way to class you can pick and eat some fruit so you aren’t thinking about how hungry you are instead of listening to your professor.

  • Similarly, native people had such a deep understanding of the natural world around them that as they moved between collecting water, hunting, and migrating, they could gather plants to eat on the spot or to save for later meals. 

  • A rather impressive example is a story that has survived to today. Way back in the beginnings of this country, white Europeans were colonizing and expanding across the landmass to seek manifest destiny. Standing in their way were the original inhabitants of the land, Native Americans. We all know a little bit about the devastation wrought by colonizers on the native peoples and obviously there was opposition between the two: one sought to protect the land they worshipped and one sought to develop and ‘civilize’ that land. This is a story of one of those instances of opposition.

  • The United States military was charged with bringing in a group of Apache men in order to move them to a reservation. The Apache were on foot, walking through the wilderness with only the clothes on their backs, whereas the military men were trotting on horseback with caravans of supplies. The military men would move at a fast pace throughout the day and then settle down by their cook fires at night for a hot meal and good sleep in their tents. And yet, even though they had the advantage of horses, they were always a day or two behind the tribe. The Apache, although on foot, stayed ahead of the military for months because they were able to eat what they foraged as they walked, and they never needed to stop to cook. They could eat handfuls of blackberries, or stoop to collect the tubers of Indian Potatoes and nibble until they were full. They never had to set up camp because there was no need to cook anything, they would just sleep under the stars. In the end, the Apache were brought in because the military captured their wives and children that had been hiding separate from the traveling men. 

 

South   (˜25 minutes)

• Something important to think about is how watering with reclaimed water affects us as foragers. As the plant grows taking in the water, it filters out any contaminants, so the fruits and leaves are safe to eat. 

  • There is the possibility, though, that if the sprinklers get the leaves and fruits wet, they aren’t clean. Basically try to avoid eating plants that have had direct contact with reclaimed water, but don’t worry if they are watered at the roots.

• Make sure to offer each of the plants to everyone to try! 

• Ask them to take a look, smell, feel and taste and try to describe the plants as well as possible. Then point out other things they should look for in identification.

  • I call this place the Bridge to Nowhere! In amongst all of this acacia, is Black Mustard and Sour Grass. They are both spring herbs, but Mustard tends to last longer.

    • This is Black Mustard. Can you tell me what you notice about it? Use all your senses! Look, touch, smell, taste.

      • It is identifiable by its yellow clusters of 4 petalled flowers on tall straight stems, seed pods, unevenly toothed and deeply lobed leaves that get quite large as the plant grows. The plant is invasive and is seen up and down California, usually in the front country. It tastes kind of bitter and spicy. You can eat the flowers and immature leaves. The older they, are the more bitter.

    • What stands out to you about sour grass? 

      • It is identifiable by its low to the ground clumps of clover/heart-shaped green leaves that may have brownish patterns on them, yellow 5-petalled trumpet-like flowers in groups at the top of unbranched stems, and their distinctive sour taste. Most of these ones here are dead from too much sun exposure. You can eat the leaves, flowers, and and stems.

• Walk down to the parking lot

  • This here is a Loquat. Each fruit has between 2 and 8 seeds. Loquats are tropical and sweet, fuzzy, and yellow to orange in color. If the fruit pops off with little effort, it’s ripe. The leaves are evergreen, about 10 inches long, leathery, deeply veined, simple and oblong.

• Make sure to offer each of the plants to everyone to try! 

• Ask them to take a look, smell, feel and taste and try to describe the plants as well as possible. Then point out other things they should look for in identification.

• Walk up the stairs towards the Thunderdome.

  • This tree is a Strawberry Tree, no relation to strawberries but in the same family as Manzanitas and Madrones. You can see the red, cool, peeling bark. The flowers are like little pink bells that are slightly larger than their white counterparts in Manzanitas. The leaves are 2 inches long, oblong and toothed. The fruits are green to yellow to orange to red and are ripe when they are deepest red and pop off easily. The fruits are sweet but have a very strange, bumpy texture that is a little odd on the tongue.

  • These spiky shrubs are Natal Plums. Oddly enough, landscapers decided putting plants with inch-long, poisonous thorns along the bike paths was a good idea. Shiny, deep green leaves. The flowers are snowy white. The fruits have small edible seeds and taste absolutely disgusting when unripe. You want it to be a little soft and dark red or almost purple; they should pull off easily. When the skin is broken the fruit oozes a white fluid called latex; this is something to avoid if you have a latex allergy. Interestingly, on campus there are short and tall natal plums in shrub and tree form!

• Walk to the drainage/field between the pool and CAPS

  • This is Mallow. It grows almost everywhere, especially areas of compacted or disturbed earth. Its leaves are anywhere from the size of a penny to bigger than your face, fuzzy, have 6 to 8 soft, rounded lobes, are deep green and a little crinkled, and the veins all start from the central point of the stem. The flowers are small, purple, pink or white with 5 petals and grow from the axil where stems come together. They have seeds that look like tiny green pumpkins or sectioned cheese wheels. They usually grow close to the ground but can get up to 7 feet high depending on the type. The flavor of the leaves and seeds is kind of bland, and the furry texture turns a little slimy in your mouth.

  • This one is Pickleweed or Glasswort. It tends to grow in sloughs with briny water where the ocean mixes with freshwater. That’s why it’s salty to the taste. Identification is easy: thin, long rounded oblong succulent green to reddish leaves that branch a lot. 

  • Dandelion, I’m sure you’ve all heard of. The flowers are yellow and alone on unbranched, hollow stalks. Seed stalks are fluffy and white. Leaves are deeply lobed with no bumps or hair and are usually basaly situated. Young leaves and flowers are edible but dandelions are called bitters for a reason. They have a lot of look alikes, most of which are edible.

• Show them any other edible plants present to prepare for the game

  • These are vetch, fennel, oak, stork’s bill, pineapple weed!

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Southwest   (˜15+ minutes)

• As a formative assessment to see what they have learned about identifying edible plants, play ‘tree tag’. Set boundaries that make sense for the number of people and fitness level of the group

  • Alrighty, now is your chance to prove that you learned something today! 

  • The name of the game is Plant Tag. Basically: one of you is ‘it’ and trying to tag everyone else. The rest of you are trying to not get tagged. I will name a plant that we talked about that will be safety or ‘base’ until I yell another plant name. If you are touching that plant, you can’t be tagged; don’t step on the plant or pick it though, you have to have a hand on it and it must be clearly visible. If you get tagged, you are also ‘it’. The game continues until everyone is ‘it’. The last person to get tagged starts the next game as ‘it’.

• You can also play a chaos tag version: everyone is it and trying to tag everyone else; if tagged they sit out until the person who tagged them gets out, then they’re back in; they can only win if they tag everyone else out. Still have protective bases that you change constantly to keep them on their toes and so they cannot stay on base the whole time.

• Plants to name: Mallow, Fennel, Oak, Vetch, Dandelion, Pickleweed, Stork’s Bill, Pineapple Weed

• Play until they get bored or until you are nearing the end of the class time.

 

West   (˜15 minutes)

• Walk to SSMS Courtyard

• This game is to end with some community and teamwork.

  • This next game is all about remembering. I will give you 30 seconds to memorize the pattern and type of plants I set out before you. Then you will get 5 minutes to work together to replicate the pattern from memory. All the plants I used can be found nearby in the courtyard.

  • You all take a moment between yourselves to talk about strategy while I prepare the activity.

• Prepare plant pattern (nasturtium, jacaranda, jasmine, grass, dandelion look alikes)

  • Alrighty come take a look for 30 seconds. 

  • Now go try to find the plants I used and remake the pattern.

  • Are you sure that’s right? Here’s another 30 seconds to memorize, now make final touches!

 

Northwest   (˜5 minutes)

• Do you trust me? Everyone close your eyes. I have one final treat for you. I am going to place an edible plant in your hand. Don’t look!

• What does it feel like? What does it smell like? What does it taste like?

• Open your eyes! These are nasturtium! They are edible flowers with a very distinctive taste that is akin to peppery mustard. Flowers are yellow or orange or red and interestingly shaped. Leaves are broad, round and flat, with veins radiating out from a central point. They usually grow as vines and ground cover.

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North   (˜5 minutes + 2 mins/person)

• Ask everyone to write down their answers to the assessment questions in preparation for discussion. Pass out the assessment papers.

  • Alright y’all. Take a moment to think on what you did and learned this morning. Please write down your answers to these questions; the more detailed the better because this is partially how my teacher assesses how I have done. Once you’re done, we’ll share with each other what we learned. Please do write down your answers so that I can get the assessments back after the class.

• Write on whiteboard: feelings at start, feelings now, plants in the past

  • Can you all share your answers to the first 3 questions? How did you feel at the beginning of the class? Did that feeling change? Have you encountered any of these plants in the past?

 

Northeast   (˜2 minutes)

• Collect the assessments

  • Thank you all so much for coming, it means so much. I really hope you learned something that you will take with you as you wander the world.

  • If you want to learn more about edible and useful plants, check out the Isla Vista Ethnobotany website! It’s linked to the UCSB Anthropology Department.

  • Next lesson is this coming Monday the 21st 3-5pm at Sueño Orchard. We will be preparing or cooking a meal from plants we collect!

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Assessment:

1. At the beginning of the class, how did you feel about picking random plants to eat?

2. Do you feel any different now at the end of the lesson about eating the landscaping?

3. Think back to the plants we talked about. Have you noticed any of them before today? Which ones? Where?

4. Name as many types of edible plants as you can remember from the class.

5. Choose 2 plants we talked about. How would you describe them?

6. What did you enjoy about the lesson?

7. What would you recommend to make the lesson better?

8. Is there a topic that you wish we had spent more time on? Less? Why?

9. If you came to more than one of my lessons, how did this lesson compare to the other one(s) you attended?