Wild Greens
Peak wild greens season is an eagerly awaited time across our country, especially in the bluegrass state. A fleeting moment of natural abundance in early spring, the fresh greens of field and forest flourish for a fleeting moment before, setting to seed and fading away long before gardeners harvest the first spring asparagus. In Kentucky, we enjoy dozens of nutrient-dense plant species which fortify and nourish the body, each with a unique range of health affirming properties with a wide array of broad spectrum vitamins and minerals and surprisingly delightful flavors to boot!
Our Wild Greens formula captures this fleeting peak of wild greens season into a stable extract form, ready to be consumed year round. We carefully handpick the most nutrient-dense species of greens, combined to form a balanced powerhouse of minerals, vitamins, and flavonoids for optimum gut health. The soothing, digestible formula provides supporting complex polysaccharides which promote ideal probiotic composition in our guts for a favorable addition of flora to our gut-microbiome. In addition to digestive support, this formula contains herbs known to promote immune wellness, liver and kidney function plus the added benefit of radiant skin. An easy and efficient way to ensure that our bodies receive enough healthy minerals and vitamins that are important for dietary health and a robust bodily system operation.
Wild Nettles: While many folks are familiar with the common garden Nettles, Urtica dioica, a European species, we use our locally abundant wild species, Urtica chamaedryoides. Loaded with essential vitamins, minerals and deep green chlorophyll, this traditional food, medicine and fiber plant offers a strong central pillar in this unique blend. Renowned for its earthy flavor, Nettles is traditionally used to help lessen seasonal allergy symptoms, as an anti-inflammatory herb and powerful antioxidant to help the body resist stress and disease.
Spring Beauty: Our populations of both Claytonia virginica & caroliniana are so healthy and vigorous that they frequently grow in vast ground-covering stands across hillside after hillside, tucked safely under our deciduous emerald canopy. This is actually a fairly common occurrence regarding Kentucky botany. While a certain plant might be rare in Massachusetts, Colorado or Michigan, it certainly doesn’t mean that this plant is necessarily rare in Kentucky. We’re including a few pictures to demonstrate how large and succulent our spring beauties get, in addition to how they cover entire hillsides.
While the bulb-like root (technically a corm) was savored by the tribes across this region as a sweet, starchy delight, we only harvest the superfood-status leaves for our purposes. The plant grows back quickly from its starchy storage root. While loaded with nutrients, we love the rich complex polysaccharide content of these sweet, tender leaves. In a way similar to Aloe Vera, these healthy compounds soothe our digestive tract and help promote increased absorption of all those desirable minerals and vitamins. Known as “prebiotics”, these complex polysaccharides help to feed the healthy gut probiotics, which are known to be essential to life and wellness.
Sochan: Sochan is a Cherokee name for this amazing and under-utilized edible relative of Echinacea. Rudbeckia laciniata, also called cut leaf coneflower, is one of our very favorite wild foods. The leaves have the rather rare quality of remaining tender and delicious throughout their growing season, well into the summer! While almost all the other wild greens become tough, bitter or otherwise inedible, it’s a real gift to have the blessing of gentle Sochan. The flavor is sublime, somewhat sweet and aromatic, delicious enough that you won’t want to go back to big-ag grown greens! With complete respect for this plant as an important traditional food and medicine amongst the native Tribes of our region, we take great care to pick lightly from our vast stands, and to spread the abundant seeds as they ripen in the late summer and into fall.
This plant, like so many others, is largely forgotten here in modern times. We suggest cultivating your own patch to explore this amazing wild food! In fact, this plant would have certainly been cultivated and tended for thousands of years along with other diverse crops by the people inhabiting this place long before European settlers ever arrived. We find it occurring in areas known to be large population centers and growing in stands amongst dozens of other valuable food crops that would have been central in the diet of these ancient cultures.
While standing strong with Nettles and Spring Beauty for abundant nutritional value, Sochan as a relative of Echinacea, offers an ideal and natural boost to immune health and to our bodies ability to resist disease and infection. Further, as a mild lymphagogue, Sochan helps to safely flush out unwanted toxins. As a “food herb”, we appreciate that these medicinal effects are deep and sustaining, while being gentle and safe enough to be used as a daily routine.
Solomon’s Seal: The shoots of Solomon’s Seal, also known as Polygonatum biflorum are one of the earliest wild foods to emerge from the wintry soils. This member of the asparagus family rises well before spring asparagus and dominates its more common cousin in the categories of flavor, texture and health. Having a rich and slightly nutty flavor reminiscent of sweet peas, Solomon’s Seal shoots are a substantial source of nutrition and a powerhouse food with medicinal properties. It is worth highlighting the power of Solomon’s Seal to promote a healthy gut. In traditional herbalism, this herb is considered to be of great value towards reducing inflammation throughout the body, but primarily in the digestive tract. We further value the ability of this herb to promote healing of wounds throughout the digestive system as well. While we typically utilize the root of the plant in herbal medicine, the spring shoots carry all of these wonderful medicinal effects in a gentle and safe bundle along with its unique additions to the nutrient profile.
Kentucky Mint: Famous as the unique flavor of a traditional Mint Julep, there is a unique form of peppermint common throughout Kentucky that often gets identified commercially as ‘Kentucky Colonel Mint’. Peppermint essentially being a hybrid between wild water mint and European spearmint, Mentha x aquatica occurs in spring fed streams throughout Kentucky. Each stand has its own unique flavor notes, since the amount of wild mint vs spearmint (amongst others since Mentha spp. readily hybridize) in each stand varies from place to place. The variety we utilize in the Wild Greens formula comes from a pristine limestone spring-fed stream flowing in our local woodlands, and has what we find to be a particularly delightful aroma and flavor. Beyond ‘sweetening’ the flavor profile of this blend, of course mint is as much cherished of a digestive herb as any other we can name. Valued as a soothing digestive herb safe enough for children, we find that a bit of wild Kentucky hybrid mint is the perfect final touch of this carefully crafted nourishing blend!
