
My Highgrove Hosta slide:
My Highgrove Hosta slide:
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!
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!
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.
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)
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