Tag Archives: Hosta

Garden tour, Perennial vegetables

God Save the King’s Hostas!

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My only post on last weekend’s big news item. This memory came up on my feed this morning. In October 2015 I talked about my book Around the World in 80 plants at the Walled Kitchen Garden Network Forum weekend at the National Trust Property Croome Court in Worcestershire, England. As usual I joked about Prince Charles having the most productive Forest Garden in the UK as he had a national collection of large-leaved Hostas in woodland at Highgrove. Little did I know that the Prince’s head gardener was sat near the front. After the talk, he introduced himself, astonished that Hosta were edible. I thought quickly and presented him with a copy of the book and signed it “To HRH Prince Charles, Good luck with your Hosta eating!”. I had known of the Prince’s good works within the organic gardening movement since the 70s and indeed Highgrove is managed as an organic farm.
I was surprised to receive this letter later that winter and it resulted in a correspondence about Hosta cuisine which lead to me being invited to Highgrove to talk more and see the Hosta collection (sadly, there are no pictures of that day as cameras are strictly forbidden nor was I allowed to see the pictures the staff took). I had a hope that the Prince might turn up, but he had a lame excuse that it was his Mum’s birthday…..and now I’ve had to modify the slide about Hostas and Highgrove (see the comments).
God Save the King’s Hostas!

My Highgrove Hosta slide:

Ethnobotanist

RIP Stephen Facciola

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I was very saddened to hear yesterday evening that Stephen Facciola, author of Cornucopia II: A Sourcebook of Edible Plants, the most useful reference work in my journey into the world of edible plants since I bought it 20 years ago, has died in California. This means, sadly, that his monumentous work on the world’s edible plants will probably never be completed. However, he was aware that it would take 20-30 years to complete when he first told me. I was in contact with Stephen over the last 10 years since he contacted me for a copy of my article on Hosta in Permaculture Magazine and I later sent him a copy of my book as he wanted to know more about Hablitzia in particular! He sent me 3 sample plant profiles in 2018 and I will  post them below and in my Edimentals and Perennial Vegetables FB group to give you an idea of what could have been.
The picture below was taken some 5 years ago when I finally got a new copy of the book to replace my original copy. Today, the new book looks almost as bad as my first one
I sent the picture to Facciola, he laughed and commented he’d never seen such a well used copy 

Thanks to Joshua Christian for posting this link to an article about Facciola that I’d never seen: https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2000/nov/22/cover-cornucopia-stephen-pacciolas-edible-world


The following obituary by David Karp was posted on the FB group of the
Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery
(incidentally, Karp also wrote this article, All Things Green and Edible in the Los Angeles Times at the completion of Cornucopia II at the end of December 1998: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-dec-27-fo-57875-story.html)
 

Finally, here are the 3 sample plant profiles that were sendt to me by Facciola in 2018. None of these plants are in Cornucopia II. Our loss is great….let us hope that a team is assembled with proper funding to document the world’s edible plants according to Facciola’s vision while we still can!

Download (PDF, 608KB)


Download (PDF, 450KB)

Download (PDF, 248KB)

 

2011: “Stephen – Nice to see that readers are using ‘Cornucopia’ to such an extent. I’ve seen some beat up copies but I think yours is the winner. Having developed a format for an illustrated book on all or most of the world’s edible plants, I’m currently not planning a third edition of ‘Cornucopia’. I do have damaged copies of ‘Cornucopia II’ I can send you but the shipping charges would be high. Please send the Hosta article. The Hablitzia article was available for free download. I enjoyed reading the posts on your “Friends of Hablitzia…” group page. Regarding the reddish early-season shoots: what percentage of seedlings have this trait? Also, do plants described as red-stemmed also have red leaves on mature vines? Best regards, Stephen”

2014: “I haven’t made much progress in writing but I have managed to do some traveling: to Holland, Oman, Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Georgia and Uzbekistan.”

2017: “Hi Stephen, congratulations on ‘Around the World in 80 Plants’. There won’t be a ‘Cornucopia III’, I’m working on an ‘Edible Plants of the World’ book which is still a long term project even though it will be an abridged version. Just how abridged depends on time, health and funding. Best, Steve”





Edimentals, Food, Perennial vegetables

Hostas, scapes and broccolis

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Last night’s greens included all my 16 Hostas, Allium scorodoprasum (sand leek / bendelløk) scapes; broccolis from sea kale (strandkål), ornamental sea kale (Crambe cordifolia) and Turkish rocket (Bunias orientalis); and flower buds of two daylilies Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus and Hemerocallis dumortieri!

Bulbils, Foraging, Perennial vegetables

Foraging the Viviparous Bistort

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There are two colour phases that almost always grow together…these bulbils are not fully grown. They are not seed, rooting themselves quickly into damp soil when they fall.

It’s a rare event that I forage outside the garden at this time of year and almost never for leafy greens. I’m trying to find time at least once a week for a walk in the woods and at the weekend I did just that and I was surprised to find that the alpine bistort (viviparous knotweed / harerug) bulbils were ready to harvest. It often grows in large quantities along tracks in sunny spots on the edge of the forest.

We had a perennial veggie quiche for dinner and these were used as as a tasty nutty topping. The vegetables we used included sorrel (Rumex acetosa / engsyre), musk mallow (Malva moschata / moskuskattost), day lily flowers (Hemerocallis / daglilje), various onions (løk), Hablitzia leaves and Hosta.

 

Edible flowers, Edimentals, Salad

7th August multisalad

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A little composition put together last night together with my daughter and artist friend from UK and wwoofer Kristina from Czech…including Allium macranthum (centerpiece), Allium carinatum pulchellum “Album”, Allium flavum, various Hosta flowers, tiger lily flower, Fedia, Adenophora, mallows, chicory leaf etc.

Food

Emmer multispecies tempura

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Tonight’s dinner was the first tempura of the year, made with Emmer wheat….delicious!
With Mustard “Giant Red”, dandelion, Hosta flower shoots, assorted lily flowers, ground elder, Daubenton and Daubenton variegated perennial kale, Rosa spp., ragged jack kale, Crambe cordifolia flowers and buds, broad bean tops, Houttuynia cordata “Chameleon”, Calendula officinalis flower, Sonchus oleraceus, giant bellflower flower buds, Allium cernuum flower, Allium senescens flowers, Allium rubens flowers, Diplotaxis (perennial rocket), grape leaf, mustard broccolis, various lettuces, Hablitzia tops, Scorzonera flower stems and buds etc.

Nutrition, Perennial vegetables

Hosta nutrition

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A nutritional analysis of Hosta is reported in the enclosed open access article from Japan (2017):  “Analysis of essential macro-micro mineral content of twelve Hosta taxa” by Mehraj, Nishimura and Shimasaki.  The good news is that the overall conclusion is that Hostas are  excellent sources of a number of minerals important in human nutrition!
Various Hosta species were collected from the wild as well as from commercial vegetable growers (it is indicated that the Hosta were simply collected from the wild and are not selected otherwise), they were grown for a year in the open before being moved to pots for the analysis.

A few quotes:

“Hosta plant leaves have higher K and P content than that of the other (common) leafy vegetables.”

“We found one species (H.  sieboldii) among the studied 12 species containing 1.15% of Ca, higher than STFC-2015, Japan and all levels found in other studies conducted in different countries for various wild edible plants. Data from our study indicated that H. sieboldii could be an excellent daily diet source of Ca. It appears that Japanese people used to consume this species as a source of calciums. The results of this study indicate that hosta taxa are a good source of Mg and Mn.”

“The Zn content of hosta leaves was higher than other fresh vegetable reported”

“Hosta plant leaves contained higher minerals than that of asparagus. From the results and discussion, it is clear that hosta leaves are a very good dietary source of minerals.”

“H. alismifolia, H. sieboldii, H. nakaiana, H. longissima, H. montana can be considered excellent sources of some minerals and can be recommended for their K, Ca, Fe, P, Mg, Zn content.”  (NB! H. montana is often considered as a synonym or subspecies of H. sieboldiana)

Download (PDF, 265KB)

Edimentals, Garden tour

Edibles in Bergen’s Muséhagen

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I spent a couple of hours in Muséhagen (the old botanical garden) in the centre of Bergen before taking the train to Oslo on Sunday and spent the time edimentals spotting amongst all the sun-worshippers, a strange experience in a town best known for its rain…

Sweet cicely (spansk kjørvel) is a “noxious weed ” (svartelistet), but also one of the best edible introductions to our flora, only invasive as we eat too little of it ;)

Hostas 

Book, Perennial vegetables

New Norwegian Fruit and Vegetable Encyclopedia with Hablitzia and Hosta

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Published this month is a new Norwegian Fruit and Vegetable Encyclopedia written by Kari Vetlesen
Among its pages you will find both Hablitzia and Hosta (mentioned for the first time in a Norwegian book as edible?)
Unreleated, I hadn’t seen the following article about eating Hosta before:
https://www.pressherald.com/2017/06/04/flower-power-on-your-plate

 

Talks

Perennial vegetables and edimentals for cities

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This week I gave a couple of talks for the first time  on the subject of “Perennials: Attractive and climate friendly city vegetables” ….covering everywhere from roof gardens to shady backyards to city farms, including Slottsparken – the park around the Royal Palace in Oslo which is in reality a productive forest garden ;) (full of Hosta and ostrich fern / strutseving)!