Wild Harvest Life - Winter Family in PNW

Have you ever seen a plant with enormous maple-like leaves, clusters of berries, and sharp spines covering nearly every exposed stem? I recently stopped to film one of these remarkable plants in a moist forest here in Washington State. From a distance, its wide green leaves were the first thing I noticed. They looked almost like giant maple leaves spreading across the forest understory. Then I moved closer and saw the feature that makes this plant impossible to forget: sharp spines along the stems, leaf stalks, and even the veins on the undersides of the leaves. The plant was also carrying a long cluster of developing berries. Some were still green, while others had begun turning pink. As they mature, Devil’s club berries become a vivid red and stand out dramatically against the deep green leaves. This extraordinary Pacific Northwest native is Devil’s club , scientifically known as Oplopanax horridus . Devil’s club (*Oplopanax horridus*) growing  in the moist forest understory of W...

For several years, I did not really maintain my vegetable garden. I still grew a few familiar Korean vegetables and herbs in containers on the porch—perilla, lettuce, minari, dolnamul, and tomatoes—but I mostly left the garden itself alone. Before long, volunteer plants began filling the open ground. Some people might look at them and see only weeds. I do not really think of them that way. Curly dock and broadleaf dock appeared, along with oxeye daisy, plantain, two kinds of thistle, common vetch, bird’s-foot trefoil, self-heal, and many other plants that had found their own places in my forgotten garden. Then one especially large plant caught my attention. A Common Mullein plant in my Washington garden as its central flower stalk begins to develop. Its broad gray-green leaves were covered in such dense, soft hairs that they looked almost like velvet. The leaves spread outward around the base, but the center of the plant was beginning to change. A tightly folded structure was ri...

Cow Parsnip (Heracleum maximum), a beautiful native plant that can easily be confused with Giant Hogweed. Some wild plants make you stop immediately. Cow Parsnip is one of them. When I saw these tall white umbrella-shaped flowers growing along the green forest edge here in the Pacific Northwest, they looked so beautiful. The flower clusters were bright, soft, and almost elegant against the deep green background. But this is not a plant I want to introduce casually. This is Cow Parsnip, Heracleum maximum . It is a native plant in North America and belongs to the carrot family, Apiaceae. It can grow in moist areas such as streambanks, damp meadows, roadsides, and woodland edges. It is also one of those plants that can easily make people nervous because it looks similar to Giant Hogweed, Heracleum mantegazzianum . And that is exactly why careful identification matters. This Is Cow Parsnip, Not Giant Hogweed The plant in my photo is Cow Parsnip. It is not Giant Hogweed. That diffe...