(Sorry this is late, I have been out of town and I forgot to bring my computer so I wasn’t able to view any of the assignments.)
I live around Seattle in Washington State. I enjoy hiking and backpacking but I don’t usually eat wild plants other than salmonberries and huckleberries as I am not confident in identification of plants that may be poisonous. While I would like to learn how to hunt and how to further identify plants so that I can eat them, circumstances have not been in my favor up to this point so I haven’t really been able to learn.
Recently I went backpacking on the western coast of my state in Olympic National Park. I saw a lot of seaweed and other sea plants as I was crossing rocky beach areas, and I wondered if they could be eaten. I have no idea if there are any species of seaweed that are inedible or poisonous.
My favorite plant is salal (picture not taken by me). It is a very pretty plant and is found everywhere in the forests here. Their berries are edible but I have not actually eaten them.
Welcome Sarah,
the Ericaceae in the Pacific Northwest are just so pretty and bountiful. There will be lots of berries on this plant later in the season. Salal, or shallon (Gaultheria shallon) is common in SE Alaska as well, but I have never collected it. I remember a different species of Gaultheria, Gaultheria procumbens from the nursery industry in Germany, it is native to the SE US, the berries have a strange chewing gum flavor. Tea berry is one of the common names, and its with a taste of mildly sweet wintergreen similar to the flavors of the Mentha varieties M. piperita (peppermint, Lamiaceae) and M. spicata (spearmint, Lamiaceae), but Gaultherias are in the Ericacecae (Heath family). Photograph by John Delano.