>>2169241>Is it possible to live off of [wild] edilblesYes
>like nettles, dead nettles, garlic mustard, dandelions and other stuff like that? No. What you lister are whats called the "european farmer folk knowledge" plants. Essentially weeds that have a tradition of being eaten by european peasants and those plants and traditions were exported to america where they remain. These plants are very nutritious but are not staple foods. Nobody, not even the peasants survived off these plants. They acted as free food. Being weeds, they required no extra land to grow and they very importantly supplemented the primarily grain diets of the peasants. But they weren't staples.
The actual wild foods that you can survive off of were demonized by the european colonists who didn't need them and wanted to delegitimize the lifeways of the natives. thats why the foraging literature is primarily those european "FFK" plants.
Some of these staple foods were eaten by colonists usually in times of need. Otherwise they were eaten but not as staples. Some were completely forgotten.
These include:
Nuts such as acorns, hickory, Black walnut, lotus and more.
Seeds such as wild rice, goosefoot, sunflower, golden club and more.
Roots such as sunchokes, groundnut, lotus root, camass, jack in the pulpit and more.
Of lesser importance are fruits, emphasis on larger fruits with more sustenance value and that can be gathered in quantity like pawpaw, perssimon and wild plums.
Most of these foods require lots of processing to make edible and these techniques are being forgotten.
These are foods you can really live off of. Obviously with other foods like meat, greens and mushrooms.
