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Wild Edible Plant - Day Lily

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Mitch, Mitchell, Alone, History, Channel, Survival, Nativesurvival.

Tags: native,survival,nativesurvival,bushcraft,foraging,day,lily,plants,edible,medicinal,food,wild,wilderness,spring,summer,fall,autumn,winter,shoots,bow,arrows,sinew,chert,obsidian,flint,steel,shafts,fletchings,natural,glue,hide,processing,aboriginal,abo,eastern,woodlands,seaboard,north,east,northeast,new,england,camping,hiking,overnight,earth,living,forest,outdoor,hunting,fishing,outside,hobbies,outdoor recreation,shooting sports,shooting tips,hunting tips

Video Transcription

its mission is survival if you have night fastly approaching but I want harvesters plan with you guys stay tuned all right so what we're looking at is a patch of day lilies let's get down and dirty okay so just to give you a heads up and probably only about 60 yards off the road so I guarantee to be hearing some cars and things like that that happens to be where I found the splint we're going to make it happen alright so get started same as usual all right close the plant alright so first I'm going to do is is dig around and expose the the roots and bring it up sigh to expose some of these little tubers all right so that's where all right and this done okay so now what I want to do is find out how deep the roots go on this plant I know that they're not any wider than this at this level I see some tubers here and this is my goal ok I want to keep excavating around this plant until I find where all the tubers are and I don't destroy any of them on my way my way around the plant taking it out I'll just use my hands real gentle um taking my hands and just working in wonder Neath the plant on some more tubers back here that's what we're looking for excellent ok

holy dig down gently I feel another one right here or a roof anyway so I'll be careful obviously I don't want to leave any food in the ground so gonna go slow and slowly take it out see you can see this tuber is down here way at the bottom zoominfo yeah that's my goal is to not just pull up and sever the roots right here and leave the food in the ground so I'm digging around see I keep finding tubers deeper in the earth that's another one right here to try to get out you don't know they good ok

the plant is connected by one more of these shoots let me see if has a tuber at the end of it and it does steeper than all the rest I'm gonna just be careful there we go alright so now we have a whole plant we've taken up its clean off and see what we got alright say we have it on a rucksack makeshift table here so this is the goal for the roots anyways are these tubers just plant us quite a bit I've encountered them but I mean it has to be there's like six right there 9 12 15 18 21 23 you know it's gotta be maybe even 24 25 of them on there so there's a pretty big score that will implant you know it's a nice little meal and there's more to eat than just a tubers okay we'll get into that later first let's clean it up and see we've got so I'm going to just start working this down now this is my first time working with daylily so I'm really really interesting when I find and one thing I can say right now is I just found at the base of a plan it's really interesting very fine hair sitting show to close

you know I mean that's good bird nests written all over it let's get to know there's a sheath on the tubers don't need that just some routes and stuff I can get rid of now I read that tubers and the heart and the leaves what you're after you don't really want the roots so I'm going to start by separating all the parts of this plant take them off all these roots put them off to the side then I'm going to take the tubers and separate them as well and i'll get back to you I'm doing just twisting them separate them from the rootstock don't need any cutting with a knife or anything like that metal it's done okay this one's soft so I don't want that alright so for identifying what you're looking for is these plants that grow pretty close together white towards the bottom heading towards the rib which lead to these tubers attached to the root and the leaves have this interesting growth style where they overlap each other so basically they grow with a fold in the middle just like this so they fold in half and in the middle of that the next leaf grows and so on as you can see it happens again in between these two and in between these two and then these two so the openings grow towards each other of the leaves look if there's actually another one in there as well right there it's probably the newest one down right there okay so they grow very flat very skinny plant it's wide and flat white at the bottom with tubers this is obviously a very very early in its growth as it's very early spring right now alright so i'm going to pick one of these and I'm going to clean it up a little bit see if I can peel this layer off the root very thin brown layer obviously has a dirt on it smells good

all right close enough really not that picky just a paper thin layer on the outside okay so I'm gonna taste it to dislike

hmm interesting

as a very high water content hmm very thin kinda light flavor to it hmm it's pretty good very mild flavor almost no flavor good stuff it's really good you know basing that on some other edibles that I like so powerful that you can barely eat them you know like say raw acorns from most of the icons around here because we have a lot of northern red oaks around here you know it's really intense to eat them these are actually a quite quite delicious wow really starchy taste like a really light and kind of watery reminds me of fun watercress whenever I eat asian food you know you get those circles those cuts of like watercress I think it's my people group tastes identical to that has like that will really light kind of watery like taste all right that's really good okay so now i'm going to go ahead and try this section of the plant supposed to be reminiscent of scallions so let's see if it holds up to that adjective okay i'm going to peel back some of these outer layers

nice piece

keep all the stuff right here this smells nice identical to the roots let's give a shot hmm does taste like scallions how about that little milder while it tastes just like scallions just a little milder that's awesome mmm while it is great that's awesome nice that's good that heart is fantastic really pleased with that so far two for two big fan but let's work on these green leaves now I've read let these green leaves cleaning it off over here so the dirt doesn't fall on everything else at these soups with these green leaves when they're sauteed in butter tastes reminiscent of onions or scallions obviously I'm not gonna be pulling out any butter out of my rucksack it's no butter in the woods right but uh that's okay I like eating onions and scallions raw just as well so let's give us a shot now you might notice that I'm not tearing into this plant like I do plants that I usually eat that's because it's my first time eating this plant so I'm just trying a little bit of each piece and you know I'm not overindulging and going out of control you know because each plant is different for each person okay so it might be edible but maybe you know for me personally it will have no effect maybe it won't I don't know so I'm going to take it easy just taking little pieces of it trying it out I know it's an edible plant but again I'm just checking it out now one thing I see here and the leaves if I can get that for you guys

tap parallel growth looks like cordage I'm going to have to hit up these plants when they're much older and see if I can make some rope out of this because it does split that really easily it's nice and straight yeah it's not too bad no down didn't split very good I don't know we'll see we'll see anyways I'm gonna eat this this is a just a little bit of the leaf is edible it's supposed to be slightly like onions well didn't taste like onions hmm one thing I got to say though is that a completely broke apart in my mouth it wasn't like eating like leaves from trees or something where you know you're chewing on it and it's just like a bunch of cellulose it really didn't seem to be the case with this plan only a little more you know know me when you're chewing on like leaves growth green growth like this usually you know your tune and chew and chew and he just seemed to be chewing right like clover you keep chewing clover keep chewing clover and it just seems to you know seems to have enough cellulose in it kind of never really go away this is completely dissolved in my mouth it's gone it's like completely eviscerated interesting all right good times all right so this will be yeah we have tubers we have the leaves we have heart and i was the three pieces about eight today and the only thing i didn't eat was the extensions of the roots because it did specifically say the roots were edible so it'd be real specific about this stuff so until i try a little bit of this and it doesn't give me any problems and i'm gonna leave alone all right all right so the hard part of it was delicious I'll eat all this just happily little green leaves they were there great there weren't any issues there they're so mild they pretty much didn't have any flavor at all and they really didn't bind up in my mouth when I ate them so they're pretty much just vitamins you know they just a bunch of chlorophyll and goodness you know energy direct you know energy directly from the Sun so good times and the heart phenomenal it tasted like skeins I'm a huge fan of onions the tubers to tubers tasted like watercress much a little different because it's a different plant you know has its own flavor but it's pretty much what it tastes like and I could chomp on those all day as well so now let's go let's go and pull out some books alright so the first one we're going to use is wild plants I've known and eaten by Russ cone I studied under him back in two thousand nine he's a local expert and on page 67 was book is a short section on daylilies right here and the reason why I want to show this also makes my tripod is getting in the way is that he drew a picture of the tubers right there so you can see tubers attached to the root right in the middle the leaves which overlap and grow into each other now obviously this plant as of the parts like flowers those are not right now now that is the only book that I own that actually has a picture of the tubers like that I real the book I have has a picture of the flowers blooming in the classic you know date Lily picture so I'm glad he added that it's pretty cool I'm not surprised very detail oriented guy so this is why I was hesitant to eat a ton of this stuff okay so it's five different parts of day lilies are considered out are considered edible however a small segment of the population less than five percent will experience digestive upset when eating daylilies especially uncooked so it's wise to start with modest amount to see how well you system can handle it wise words okay so he mentions that a first edible segment is a cluster of yellowish tan starchy tubers that lay on the ground at the base of each plant all right that's what we want these are edible raw or cooked like a potato so they can be big boiled mashed etc the hearts which is a tender inner growth at the center of each developing cluster of leaves which is the white part may be eaten raw or used like scallions which they resemble in flavor and they do flower buds flowers and wilted flowers are the other three parts and they're also edible but obviously in that part hasn't grown up in the plan yet alright an hour Peterson's edible wild plants the book want to go to page 92 and you see on the next page over picture of the flower like most guides usually give with the leaves right here some other plants some of them edible some art okay alright so here we have the day lily and I young shoots flowers flower buds the tubers and notice the basal leaves are light green long and sword like the root is a tangle small elongated tubers let's finding out waste ground skate from gardens things like that flowers June through August now you can eat in a salad which would be raw asparagus which is usually fried may be boiled cooked vegetable same thing or steamed fritters is frying or seasoning well obviously could be a rubber or you know like scallions things like that we chop really fine and add to other dishes say like onions and eggs things like that right so it's a little known but that's one food sauce and you had early shoots the south will prepare like a spire dislike it already said okay so right here this is the part that I started with crisp snow-white tubers found early in the year will prepare the my corn I just aided it raw you want them to be firm not soft and all year the tubers are available are available all year so again that's page 92 and state lily and another great thing about this plant is that you know when you find one you actually really find a real dense huge conium you know I've never seen this plant really grow less than a dozen at a time and considering the fact that you know I just got all this food and there's quite a bit here all this food from that one plant out of all those others you know it's so rarely available I mean there was almost no prep you know I mean I just scraped this a little bit tubers are good to go the green the hearts eat just as they are the Greens eat intercessory I'm just strip and dirt off here you know I mean so it's really easy to find because early in the year there's a lot of leaves and things on the ground where everything's going to brown and then all sudden you see like a mat a small tight matt you know might be 10 feet by 10 feet of light green in the forest so you head over there and it's almost every time I've ever done that almost every time it's ben de Lille so I figured I'd finally try these tubers out because finding carbohydrates and tubers like this in the woods can be tricky sometimes and you know I'm glad that I was able to find a nice patch that had so many because in this way you know I could I could really you know experiment with this plan you know I really wanted to see how many tubers it would give me one plant out of the colony and you know just a count you know it's like 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 28 1 so 23 so it's 23 tubers in this plant that's pretty fantastic I mean this is a good size you know it's good size 20 of these you know this got to be at least 10 of them out of this size and then all the others are a little smaller that's pretty awesome lots of leaves here to eat the heart is probably the best tasting out of all that so I'm real happy with that yeah well thanks a lot for joining me tonight on this little nighttime foraging and some day lily how funny is that right nighttime forge of a day lily plant I'll see you guys in the next one appreciate you views comc sport take care

About the Author

NativeSurvival

NativeSurvival

Mitch is a Wilderness Living Skills Instructor, he has been featured on The History Channel's program "ALONE" and written articles for Outdoor Magazines; he owns and operates The Native Survival School which provides woodland living and survival classes, as well as offering quality outdoor gear he's designed. Defintely, he is a master at bushcraft's techniques.

You can find all his videos on his YouTube channel.

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