Suburban Snacks and Other Uses of Neighborhood Plants

In the 1960s, no one fretted over making tea, carbonated beverages, or salads from, respectively, sassafras twigs, roots, and leaves. As well, we gathered and soaked acorns and fashioned them into flour for pancakes.

As per the fruit of brambles, which grew seemingly effortlessly in the vacant lots left among housing projects, as well as along most roadsides, we gathered those precious, tart bursts without fear for jam and snacks. To boot, nearby woodlands, where orchards had once thrived, offered us kids all manner of tart apples.

Additionally, we pulled on honeysuckles’ stamina to extract sweet nectar, crunched rose hips for their tart essence, readily slobbered from eating sour, yellow wood sorrel blossoms. Furthermore, regardless of the possibility of stomach aches, we ate the fruit of ornamental Pecha trees.

Back in the day, especially in places where small plots of land were not being used for houses, hence, where pesticides were not used, we foraged. We gave no thought to other kinds of risks associated with our harvests (Analogously, our generation rode bikes, helmetless, stayed out until dark, and drank from garden hoses, but never dared to sip soda directly from cans.)  Consuming “wild” food was no more remarkable to us than winning at hopscotch.

Rambling among wild foliage was equally routine in our childhood. I recall, for instance, once leading my mother through a thicket that had long since been farm acreage. By scooting among saplings and untidy vines, then up a fairly steep embankment, we were able to save three blocks of our usual hike to our community’s pharmacy.

Perhaps that adventure had winded my mother since, after filling prescriptions, she treated my sister and me to frozen soft serve and then insisted that we return home via sidewalks. What’s more, she never again asked us to guide her on that shortcut.

Anyway, when I was a child, people referred to family vegetable gardens, but no one spoke about useful herbs. Namely, folks grew “crops” such as watermelon, tomatoes, corn, and beans, but knew nothing about the wonders of nettles, milk thistle, or dandelion. Moreover, at the time, garlic was a culinary adjunct, not an antiviral friend, elderberry was kids’ skin paint, not a prized warrior employed to fight pathogens, and chamomile flowers were for ornamenting hair, not for soothing irritated alimentary canals.

Into the bargain, we youths had small appreciation for plants that fed birds or nurtured pollinators. We never stopped to question whether or not the Pyracantha berries we plucked and flung at each other could have prevented wintertime starvation for robins, wax wings, or starlings. Similarly, it didn’t occur to us children that by impulsively grabbing at lavender, milkweed, and alyssum that we were causing local bees to have to work harder.

In those days, not only were we little ones free to visit the local park, unchaperoned, and to run through each other’s backyards, but we could also, at will, scavenge any plant that we fancied, except for those buds and stems that sufficiently roused adults into yelling at us and into warning us to stay off of their properties, at least for the day. Simply, flowers, shrubs, and grasses, as well as hardwoods, softwoods, and lianas were our playthings.

Interestingly, I don’t recall ever learning that any child among us had been poisoned by ingesting a toxic drupe or leaf. Sure, my companions and I suffered from numerous cases of contact dermatitis, but our rashes could have just as easily been caused by accidentally brushing against the vegetation growing along our informal route to the community drugstore (penny candy held a great allure) as by grabbing the weeds or the intentionally planted specimens growing in public gardens.

As per my family’s green friends, no one was interested in our beans or tomatoes as they were “commonplace.” Our roses were looked upon as “nice to smell” for their annual week of florescence and our coleus were “boring.” Our magnolia tree, which bloomed pinkish-white prizes, however, was “worthy of note.”

No matter how often my parents scolded us minors not to pick the magnolia’s flowers, more often than not, we denuded the reachable branches of that tree before it fully blossomed. More specifically, its unopened buds were textural magic; their green shells were coated with soft, silvery hairs that were delightful to stroke. Any blossoms remaining on the tree after we sprogs took “all” of its buds were treasured thereafter. Those flowers were pretty. Second, their thick petals could be fashioned into toys. Bits of corollas could be used to crown or gown dolls and stuffed animals.

Irrespective of the nature of our harvest and the uses that we found for it, most often, we young ones would lie on our backs in the shade of my family’s sugar maple and stick its split open, winged fruit on our noses. After a long day of snatching local plants, it was sufficient for us to watch the clouds float by. We were fortunate to grow up in an era when neighborhood plants were sourced for snacks and entertainment.