Wild Foods Common to the Mountains of Virginia and West Virginia

In the Mountains

There are more than five hundred plants, fifty animals, and several insects which can be eaten by humans in the mountainous areas of Virginia and West Virginia.  Several of these plants were introduced to the area by our ancestors and are therefore are not native.

Creasy Greens

 Potherbs or boiled greens are on most wild food menus. The more common among the several dozen that can be eaten are ramps, spring beauties also known as "fairy spuds," nettles, giant chickweed, pokeweed, milkweed, dandelion, creasy greens also called dry-land cress, purslane, chicory, fireweed, race weed, lamb’s quarters, and watercress. Many mushrooms can be used for food, although there are others which are deadly poisonous. In our area there are four easily recognized edible types of mushrooms: morel, shaggy mane, sulfur polypore, and puffball.

Morel Mushroom

  Among the many wild fruits and berries that are more easily found are persimmons, strawberries, wild grapes, crab apples, cranberries, blueberries, huckleberries, blackberries, raspberries, dew berries, black haw, elderberries, and wild cherries.

Common nuts collected in the wild are black walnuts, chinquapins, beechnuts, hickory nuts, and hazelnuts.

In the past, wild honey made from the pollen of yellow poplar, basswood, and sourwood was often ‘‘robbed’’ from trees colonized by wild honeybees. Today, wild honeybees have now almost entirely succumbed to parasites. The sap from sugar maple trees is evaporated to produce maple syrup and further evaporated to make maple sugar.

Bees and Comb Honey

There are also dozens of starchy vegetable substitutes, salad ingredients, wheat flour substitutes, tea and coffee substitutes, cool beverages, condiments, oils, and many other culinary uses of wild plants.

Like wild plants, wild animals have been a source of food since the beginning of mankind.  Among the historic food animals no longer found in our area are such extinct species as the passenger pigeon and the woods buffalo which is a larger forest dwelling bison now mainly found in Canada. Among those species still used as food are several species of fish, crayfish, eel, beaver, black bear, frog, muskrat, opossum, rabbit, raccoon, squirrel, turtle, rattlesnake, white-tailed deer, woodchuck, ruffed grouse, wild turkey, dove, duck, and woodcock.