Important: Safety Warning
This page states that certain wild plants are safe to eat. Its identifications and edibility claims are more than a century old and in some cases simply wrong, and deadly look-alikes exist for many edible species. Never eat a wild plant on the strength of this text.
In addition, this page prescribes plants as medicine according to pre-modern medical theory. Several of the plants named are toxic, correct identification is difficult, and the doses given have no scientific basis. Do not ingest or apply any preparation described here.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
Home › Contents › Goats' Beard
Goats' Beard
Description. This is distinguished by its narrow and fresh green leaves, and the long leaves of the cup, about its yellow flowers. It grows to about a foot and a half in height. The leaves are very narrow, they are broadest at the base, and smaller all the way to the point. The stalk is round, thick, firm, very upright, and towards the top divided into two or three branches. The flowers stand at the extremity of the stalks, they are of a beautiful pale yellow, very large, and surrounded by a cup, composed of long and narrow green leaves, which, for the greatest part of the day, are closed over it, so that it seems only in bud. The seeds are winged with a fine white down, in the manner of those of dandelion, and when ripe, they stand upon the tops of the branches, in a round head, in the same manner. The root is long, and white; and the whole plant is full of a milky juice, which, after it has been a little time exposed to the air, becomes yellow, and thick like cream. Place. It is a common wild plant, growing in meadows. Virtues. The root is used. It is so pleasant in taste, that it may be eaten in the manner of carrots, and other roots at table, but it exceeds them all in its qualities. It is an excellent restorative, and will do great service to people after long illnesses: the best way of giving it, for this purpose, is to boil it first in water, and then cutting it to pieces, boil it again in milk, which is to be rendered palatable in the usual way; it becomes thus a most excellent medicine in the form of food.