Saturday, June 25, 2011

Another reason it's called "fireweed"



Fireweed is one of the first plants to come back after a forest fire, and when it blooms, it turns whole feilds a flaming fuschia.  As you can see here, it is growing out of the ashes of the firepit in the backyard.
The whole plant is edible (as I'm sure you've gathered from my earlier posts on it), but the leaves become bitter after the plant has flowered.  Apparently, the leaves were a favored food staple for the early French explorers.

One of these years I'm going to make Fireweed Flower Wine, maybe next year, as I'm not sure either Darlin' Man or Breda Mine would really support the decision to move with multiple containers of fermenting wine....  So perhaps, this winter we'll just enjoy floral teas and dried fireweed flowers on salads and things?  I've already blanched and frozen a quart of new shoots.  We'll see how they hold up being frozen, maybe next year we'll put up more...

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