Sowing the Seeds of Civilization

Never mind Gibbons' antiquated language for referring to the former occupants of said ruins. The point is that wild edible plants can often be found growing in the vicinity of archaeological sites--a point which was impressed upon me more than once by my Bard College archaeology professor Chris Linder. Professor Linder often found lamb's quarter growing on or near the archaeological sites we studied in New York state.

The native people were very keen about the plants that inhabited their environment, so when European settlers first came to North America and brought with them the seeds of their own plants, whether on their shoes or in their ships, it did not escape the attention of North America's original inhabitants. In fact, Cattail Bob Seebeck explains that a small green plant known as "plantain"--revered in the Old World for its medicinal properties--was nicknamed the "white man's footprint" by Native Americans because it seemed to spring up wherever the white man stepped.

I write all of this as a lead-up to an exciting albeit inadvertent discovery that Gregg and I had recently. After attending Cattail Bob's wild edible plants class, we returned home to Fairplay, Colorado to find a tumble mustard growing in the backyard. The leaves of the tumble mustard make a pleasing green both fresh and cooked, and the tiny seeds are also edible. We were able to identify this plant based on what we learned in Cattail Bob's class.

Weeks later, while walking through South Valley Park at the mouth of Deer Creek Canyon near Denver, Gregg and I recognized numerous dried tumble mustards. We opened a seed pod to eat some seeds and this is when the epiphany occurred to me. That tumble mustard in the back yard--it did not get there on its own. It got there because of us! How is that, you might ask? It is because about two months ago, while at the bank in Conifer, Colorado, we picked up a nice-looking dried tumbleweed and set it up at home in the corner of the deck as a decoration. But that was no tumbleweed; it was a tumble mustard! It does not take a huge stretch of the imagination to conclude that some seeds must have dropped off and sown our tumble mustard plant, which we found growing just a few feet away in the soil below the deck.

Gregg's stepdad Jim likes to joke with me about the fact that he is more civilized than I am. You see, Jim is a gardener, while as a forager (he claims) I am stuck in the hunter-gatherer days of yore.

Jim went so far as to recommend that while out collecting wild edible plants we should also collect seeds and attempt to cultivate them. Originally I pooh-poohed this idea. How would that then constitute a wild edible plant? Come to find out that none other than Cattail Bob Seebeck, wild edible plant forager extraordinaire, does exactly the same thing!

"Do you dig holes and plant the seeds?" I asked Cattail Bob during the class in Drake, Colorado, when he invited us to take home some seeds from a few of the wild edible plants on his property.

"I don't want plants I have to tend; I don't have time for that," he replied, a twinkle in his eye. "I want plants that can take care of themselves."

Even though it constitutes somewhat of a concession on my part, I'm right there with him, especially now that Gregg and I have inadvertently replayed the early stages of civilization's evolution right in our own back yard--and I cannot deny the fact that we have more delicious food to eat at our disposal as a result of it!