Native Plants
Q. Who is Mr. Smarty Plants?
A: There are those who suspect Wildflower Center volunteers are the culpable and capable culprits. Yet, others think staff members play some, albeit small, role. You can torture us with your plant questions, but we will never reveal the Green Guru's secret identity.
Did you know you can access the Native Plant Information Network with your web-enabled smartphone?
Ask Mr. Smarty Plants
Ask Mr. Smarty Plants is a free service provided by the staff and volunteers at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.
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Tuesday - June 12, 2012
From: San Antonio, TX
Region: Southwest
Topic: Edible Plants
Title: Request for wild and edible plant information for Boy Scouts from San Antonio
Answered by: Barbara Medford and Jimmy Mills
QUESTION:
We are with the Boy Scouts. Is it possible for you to email me information on the Wild and Edible plants at the Government Canyon? WE are teaching our scouts on this subject right now. We have already taken them on many 10 and 15 mile hikes in the canyon. Thank youANSWER:
We have to admit we didn't know what or where Government Canyon is, but we found this website on its location and uses. There were several more websites on the facility, and we looked through all of them and never found any mention of lists of plants. The lists of plants we have are all plants native to North America, and the plants we grow onsite at the Wildflower Center are native to Texas. In our Special Collections section, we have this list of Edible Native Texas Plants at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. Since we are in Austin and you are in San Antonio, hopefully this will help.
Another member of the Mr. Smarty Plants team with a sharper eye than ours pointed out a previous Mr. Smarty Plants question that might help you even more than we did. We can't guarantee that any of the plants mentioned even grow in Government Canyon, but at least it's a start.
More Edible Plants Questions
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Smarty Plants on wild edible plants
July 28, 2005 - Do you have classes or information on identifying wild edible plants that could be found in Texas?
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Are the seeds of Amberique bean edible in Beaumont, TX
September 28, 2011 - I found one of these growing in my yard.
Strophostyles helvola (L.) Elliott
Amberique-bean, Trailing fuzzybean.
Are the bean pods edible? I read somewhere that they are.
Thanks.
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Edibility of Rumex hastatulus (heartwing sorrel)
March 25, 2007 - My mother and aunt, who are in their 80s, tell stories of eating a plant, when they were girls in North Central Texas. They call the plant "sheep shire". My mother says that it is a flat weed, that...
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Edibility of peppervine berries from Madison MS
February 09, 2012 - I am following up on a question I've posed to many well experienced foragers and naturalists regarding the pepper vine plant or Ampelopsis arbor. There are many conflicting stories regarding the edib...
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