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Spring Beauty (Midwest Miner’s Lettuce)

Edible spring beauty or Claytonia virginica “Well that’s a cute flower, too small to eat though—where are the rest of those ramps?” was how I regarded spring beauty for, oh, a good eight years.

I knew of spring beauty, a small ephemeral wildflower that loves the same maple as everyone’s favorite spring onion from reading Sam Thayer’s first book The Forager’s Harvest, but it wasn’t for years afterword that I finally, actually saw them for what they were: a fantastic edible green that sports a few pretty flowers, instead of just some spring flowers that tell me ramps are nearby. 

Miners lettuce was the key. 

Edible spring beauty or Claytonia virginica

Flowers, leaves and tender, juicy stem, there’s a lot to like about this beautiful spring green.

Background + Habitat

Backing up a bit, when I say spring beauty, I’m talking here only about Claytonia virginica that loves growing in ramp patches in maple-hardwood forests during spring I harvest in Minnesota and Wisconsin, since they’re the only species I’ve eaten in quantity.

There’s a number of different varieties of similar Claytonia that might all be called spring beauties around the United States, some of them said to be rare that might be better off left alone, as I’ve heard is the case with Alpine Spring Beauty (Claytonia megarhiza) that I got to try once, smuggled on a plane from Colorado to a wild food event. To be safe, research your local species and determine their protection status, if any, before harvesting them.

“The whole of spring beauty is greater than it’s parts, and you should regard the stem leaves, and flowers as one to truly appreciate it as an edible.”

Miners lettuce or Claytonia perfoliata

Common miners lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata) is a cousin to Spring Beauty. Image credit: Mary Smiley.

A Chef favorite 

Chefs love miners lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata), a relative of purslane with juicy, succulent leaves. In the late winter, specialty purveyors from the west coast ship commercial quantities of the stuff to restaurants around the country.

A few local purveyors in Wisconsin tried growing the plant as an annual (It’s a bit cold for it here in the north) for a few years that I can remember, but eventually gave up on it for one reason or another. Mostly I suspect people just didn’t know what it was, which is a shame. 

Miners lettuce is a delicious, luxurious green, but I’d basically given up on being able to eat or serve it unless I’m on vacation in San Francisco where it seems to grow like a weed at every park in town. 

Edible Succulents 

(Below) Purslane and spring beauty both share a distinctive, juicy red stem hinting at their shared botanical lineage as edible succulents. 

Edible purslane or Portulaca oleracea
Purslane
Edible spring beauty or Claytonia virginica
Spring Beauty

Midwestern Miners Lettuce 

When Jesse Roesler and I started shooting our show The Wild Harvest, I felt that the watercress salad I was making for our spring episode could use an extra garnish. When Jesse asked me what one of the other plants was in the sugar bush while we were filming the ramp segment, I said “Oh that’s Claytonia virginica”. As the word claytonia came out of my mouth, a light turned on and I realized something. 

“Claytonia perfoliata, Claytonia virginica—spring beauty is miners lettuce! 

And it is. Before I’d regarded spring beauty as just a flower, ignoring the juicy leaves and stem. If you’ve had miners lettuce and appreciate the succulent, crisp taste, one taste of the leaves of spring beauty will immediately remind you of them—just in a different form. From then on, I picked it for the table whenever I was out in the sugarbush for the rest of the season, and the season after that. 

Salad of edible spring ephemerals from Wisconsin

Spring beauty is perfect addition to a salad of spring ephemerals.

Eating 

The biggest mistake I made with this plant was just overlooking it, which I think is easy to do when you’re surrounded by ramps. If I can leave you with just one takeaway here, it’s this: the whole of spring beauty is greater than it’s parts, and you should regard the stem leaves, and flowers as one to really appreciate it.  I think spring beauty is probably best served whole, raw, in it’s natural form, not seeing a knife sans a trim of the stem if they’re too long to fit on a fork. 

I’ve heard of people cooking spring beauty, and, it’s ok, but personally I think of miners lettuce as too precious to cook, so I mostly eat it raw in salads and as a garnish to plates. 

Pastured beef flank steak with ramp leaf salsa verde, glazed nettles, spring beauty, toothwort and watercress salad

A dish from the first episode of The Wild Harvest: pastured beef flank steak with ramp salsa verde, butter glazed nettles, watercress-toothwort-spring beauty salad in the background. 

 

Giant spring beauty 

The spring beauty pictured in this post will be similar to the vast majority of them I see, but, a few years ago Sam showed me something really interesting. If you go to open areas, say on the edge of the forest near your patch, it’s possible to find some plants that have migrated from the woods to the full sun, and can be much larger in size compared to the regular ones shown in this post. Side by side with the spring beauty grown in shade, it’s a fascinating comparison, and a testament to the power of what plants can achieve given more resources. 

Tubers 

In addition to the above-ground portion of the plant, spring beauty also has small tubers underneath, with a strong emphasis on the word “small”. They taste ok, but, considering the fact that the plant dies if it’s dug up, and large tubers are likely years old, combined with the fact that digging involves dirt, whereas harvesting leaves can be done with a simple pluck, I hardly think they’re worth harvesting, personally. 

A basket of spring beauty and ramp leaves

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🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Last entry. I’ve saved t 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Last entry. I’ve saved the smallest, fern gulliest plant for last. 

False Mermaid Weed (Floerkea proserpinacoides) is a good little plant Sam Thayer showed me. It’s tiny, as in all the photos are from me on my belly, in a wet ditch. It’s so small it’s hard to get the camera to even focus on it (see pic with my finger for scale). 

Mermaid weed likes wet areas, like ditches and spots that hold a bit of water (perfect mosquito habitat😁). 

Like chickweed, Floerkia greens are like nature’s Microgreens. They’re in the Limnanthaceae, (a new-ish group of brassicas) and like the Toothwort form earlier this week, you’ll taste a strong mustard-family flavor in a mouthful of their tender stems. 

They’re literally wild mustard sprouts, and, unlike other wild sprouts (garlic mustard 🤬) they stay sprouts, and, they actually taste good. 

It has a wide range over much of the eastern and western U.S., and is listed as secure globally, but is endangered in some states and shouldn’t be disturbed in those places. 

I’m lucky enough to have some large colonies near me so I do clip a few handfuls each year-my annual reward for removing some of the garlic mustard nearby, that, along with atvs, dirt bikes, and contamination from local water pollution, is one of the biggest threats to this tiny green. 

#floerkiaproserpinacoides 
#wildsprouts #mustardsprouts #ferngully #tiny #foraging #mermaid #🧜‍♀️
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Virginia Bluebells (Merten 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) are one of the most beautiful harbingers of spring I know, as well as one of the most delicious. 

They’re in the Borage family, along with the namesake plant, Comfrey (which I only eat a few flowers of occasionally) and Honeywort. 

The flavor of the greens, like borage, has a rich flavor some people might describe as mushroomy or fishy, but after a just a few moments of cooking (30-60 seconds) they get mild and delicious, with a subtle bitterness. It’s a good bitter though-nothing like dandelions or garlic mustard that aren’t fit to be in the same basket, let alone on the same plate. 

The shoots are sweet and delicious, much more mild than the greens. As they can grow to be over a foot long, they’re almost more of a vegetable than a leafy green, depending on when you harvest them. 

Bluebells love moist, rich soil, but you don’t have to go to the woods to get them. Many people know Virginia Bluebells as a garden plant, and they can make a great edible addition to your landscape.

#virginiabluebells #foraging #ephemerals #springwildflowers #wildfoodlove #mertensiavirginica
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Narrow-leaved Wild Leek / 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Narrow-leaved Wild Leek / White Ramp (Allium burdickii) 

If you’re in a ramp patch you might occasionally see some with white stems (pic 1,2). These are a cousin to the more common variety with much larger leaves and red stems (pic 3,4,5)

Allium burdickii is not as common as the red-stemmed variety, and in every ramp patch I’ve been in, the white ramp is heavily outnumbered. 

Where I harvest, I like to leave them alone, and mark the areas where they grow with sticks or middens on the ground so I can go back in the fall and help them spread their seeds. I also try and remove garlic mustard when I see it-a much more imminent threat in my mind to ramps than foragers out to gather some leaves. 

2020 was a banner year for ramp seeds, and you can still help the plants right now (pic 7) as some seed heads are still full and would love for you to give them a shake as you walk by. 

#alliumburdickii #ramps #ephemerals #foraging #spring
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 #4: Erythronium leaves E 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

#4: Erythronium leaves 

Erythronium (Trout Lily) are another ephemeral that I see widespread in my ramp patches, there’s at least 32 species world-wide, with at least one endangered species in MN (Dwarf Trout Lily). 

They’re a beautiful, delicious plant I eat every year, but I can’t recommend serving them to the general public. Plenty of people say these are edible, but also emetic if eaten in “quantity”. 

I can tell you, at least with E. albidum and E. americanum I’ve eaten, that some people are much more sensitive than others, so if you want to make a salad to serve people, make sure they’re comfortable eating it, and use a few leaves as a garnish. 

Funny enough, I didn’t learn about these from a foraging book. Like knotweed, I learned about them from one of my favorite chefs: Michel Bras, one of the most influential chefs of the turn of the 21 century. 

Any chef that works with wild plants owes a debt to Bras. His book, although a little dated now, still teaches me new things all the time. While flipping through the book I also caught a recipe using tansy flowers 😳 that I’d probably pass on. 

The whitefish crusted with sunflower seeds is a dish of mine from 2012, and an example of how I eat the leaves: a few at a time, as a garnish. 

#troutlily #erythronium #michelbras #ephemerals #foraging
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Plant #3: Cutleaf Toothwor 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Plant #3: Cutleaf Toothwort (Cardamine concatenata) is another beautiful spring wildflower that loves to grow in the same habitat you’ll see ramps and spring beauty. 

Its small at first, but grows to a worthy size for eating as it flowers. It’s related to cabbage and mustard greens (Brassicaceae) and eating just a few leaves will give you a potent, spicy pop of mustard-family flavor reminiscent of horseradish. 

Eaten in combination with other things, like in a salad, the flavor becomes submissive and you’ll barely know it’s there. 

Some people eat the spicy roots shaped like canine teeth, but for the work I hardly think they’re worth it. 

A great wild spring green for the salad bowl-eat them leaves, tender stem, flowers and all🤤. 

#cutleaftoothwort #cadamineconcatenata #ephemeral #springedibles #foraging #wildfoodlove
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Plant #2 is Virginia water 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Plant #2 is Virginia waterleaf, and, I’m cheating a bit as it’s semi-ephemeral. The plant comes up in spring and goes to flower, but gives a second harvest of fresh growth in the fall, where other ephemerals I know do not. 

This is a great starter wild green-easy to recognize with the splashes of white on the leaves that may or may not be present. After you learn it though, don’t be surprised if, like me, you eventually pass it up for more delicious greens nearby. 

The plant gets tough quick, and the flavor is..meh, so I usually have small amounts of very young greens in blends of blanched and sautéed mixes. 

My favorite part is the wee flower buds, that, if you get at the right time, can be harvested in decent quantity and are good steamed as they’ll soak up oil sautéed. 

#hydrophyllumvirginianum #waterleaf #foraging #fueledbynature #weedeater
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