Silverweed
Argentina anserina
Also called Cinquefoil
We do not have a Blackfoot or Cree name for this one yet. Tell us the name and we will add it, with your word on where it comes from.
A low creeping plant of damp lake edges and slough margins with silver-backed toothed leaves and a slender starchy root.
Commonly shared knowledge. Learn it, gather it, and follow the protocol.
What it is confused with
Easily confusedOther cinquefoils Potentilla species
None of the others have that bright silver underside combined with strawberry-like runners.
How to know it
- Leaves
- Long and divided into many pairs of toothed leaflets, green above and bright silver-white beneath.
- Runners
- Spreads by red runners across bare damp ground, like a strawberry.
- Flowers
- Single yellow five-petalled flowers on their own stalks.
- Root
- Slender, brown, fleshy, tasting faintly of parsnip when cooked.
The country it grows in
- Sloughs and wet meadows
- Riverbanks and willow flats
- Roadsides and disturbed ground
Landscape types only. We do not publish where a patch is, and we are not going to.
When it is ready
- Roots September to OctoberAutumn, or very early spring before the leaves come.
Right now it is July. Nothing on this plant is in season.
What it is used for
- Food and drink
Roots roasted or boiled. A documented food plant right around the northern hemisphere.
How it is prepared
- Food
Roasted or boiled like a small parsnip.
Protocol
Ask the plant first, and offer something before you take anything. Tobacco is what is most often offered here. Say who you are, and say what the medicine is for.
Harvest the mature plants and leave the small ones to grow. Never take the first plant you find, and never take all of them.
Take only what you will actually use. Medicine picked and then left to rot in a bag was taken for nothing.
Leave the ground as you found it. Put back any dirt you dug up, and return any plant material you do not use to the earth.
Do not gather beside roads, highways or trails, where the plants take up whatever has been sprayed or spilled there.
If you are not certain what a plant is, do not pick it and do not put it in your mouth. Ask someone. Being wrong in the field is how people get hurt.