For some reason, the raised planter that I set up over a stack of garden pavers and two recycled shower doors has given birth to all sorts of cute mushrooms. They are wild and of varieties unknown to me, so I certainly would not try to eat any of them, but it makes me think that perhaps I could bone up on mushroom horticulture and use that area to propagate some edible mushrooms. That sounds like a good project for next spring.
In the meantime, however, I have been playing with some of the colorful weeds that sprang up in my backyard up in the Laughlin area where I spend some time, especially this time of the year when it is SO beautiful up there.
This one is pulse (Fabaceae), which also grows wild along Amboy road as you come out of Twentynine Palms. The word pulse is used for many legumes and in particular the edible seed parts of peas and beans, but Fabaceae is a beautiful weed, with lovely clusters of leaves and giant stalks of brilliantly colored flowers. Surprisingly, it is related to Kudzu, the plant that ate the South.
These showy yellow flowers that line the roadsides as well as my backyard are called Desert Dandelions. The flowers look a lot like dandelions, the nondescript leaves are very different. They are in the same classification as common dandelions except for the genus which is malacothrix as opposed to Taraxacum.
The species of the Desert Dandelion is glabrata .
Sonchus arvensis or Field Milk Thistle is a medicinal plant.
The Sow Thistle featured in my previous post is Sonchus oleraceus. A similar plant (Sonchus tenerrimus) is also edible. According to a Wikipedia article, they are both cooked in spaghetti in Italy. I'll have to try that. Another article says that Sow Thistle is also eaten in New Zealand as a vegetable, mostly by the native Maori, and that when cooked it tastes somewhat like chard.
frequently eaten in New Zealand as a vegetable, particularly by the native Māori. When cooked it tastes a little similar to chard.
Spiny sow thistle (Sonchus asper) is also edible, but if the spines don't get you, this plant contains an irritant which is said to be similar to poison ivy.
Being careful to avoid the aphids that the Sonchus attracts, I have also tried leaves of the Smooth Sow Thistle raw as a salad green and they are indeed milder in flavor than chicory or dandelion greens.