The amount of information that circulates around these days is pretty incredible. The percentage of that information that is inaccurate, approximate, total rubbish or lacking context is far too high. Fortunately there are sources that are well researched and developed and run by people whose mission is to provide useful, authentic and well researched knowledge.
Plants for a Future is one of these projects. I have promoted their database over the past few decades and I frequently use it for professional reasons, I first had a paper copy of the database, then a floppy disk and then it went up on the web and became more easily available. There is also the book “Plants for a Future: Edible & Useful Plants for a Healthier World”. In the jungle of misinformation that exists on the web it is always a relief to find website projects that one can trust.
Before passing on some details I’d like to thank Ken and Addy and all the people who have helped with the project and those who continue to do so. Thanks!!
Plants for the Future (PFAF.)
In 1989, Ken and Addy Fern established a resource and information center on edible plants. It is found in the form of a database and its use is free. There are now more than 7000 plants listed with their properties and uses. A tremendous resource if we want to regain a greater diversity of plants in our diets. The database is in English, but today we find good automatic and free translators online if needed. It is possible to search by botanical name and then translate the results.
https://pfaf.org/user/Default.aspx
I would also like to mention the Plantnet application. With it we can identify all kinds of living plants. Just launch the app, take a picture of the plant, indicate if it's a flower or a leaf, and the app does the rest. The plant will be identified by botanical name which can be copied/pasted into the PFAF database.
Near where I am living several yuccas have put up their flowering stalks. A little research with Plantnet followed by PFAF and we find that the stems as well as the flowers are edible. Yucca is from the same family as asparagus. Your walks in the fields and forests can be quite fun if you leave with a book on wild edible plants or if you use Plantnet and PFAF.
I am continually ranting on about the lack of diversity in our diets and how this negatively impacts our microbiomes and our health in general. Maintaining such a lack of diversity is not a good survival strategy and including a much bigger range of foodstuffs in our daily diets is profoundly important. So getting some wild food plants into our diets is a great thing to do. The resources noted above as well as the books of François Couplan, Roger Phillips and others allow us to explore our world in another way. Foraging for wild food plants is a great way to spend some time with friends and pass knowledge about our world onto our children.
Here is a link to an article I wrote about wildfood gardening