Of course we can ! It is a wonderful wild herb, can be found nearly all non-winter year around and can be eaten as salad, can be juiced, dried and used as a herbal infusion. It can be added to your coffee too !
It has no, bad taste at all, non-bitter, crunchy and very easy to identify ! Instead of claiming all the health benefits, don't even think about it ! Just drink a little juice, a little tea, hide a couple of leaves in your regular spinach-watercrest salad and off you go, you used wild herbs !
It is sticky as ! You can throw it on your fellows and it will stick to their clothes and hair ! When eating use only leaves, when making a juice, just juice all !!! However like nearly all wild herbs, it is best to use the top 3rd as fresh leaves are present mostly there and if cut properly, next time you go there, it will regrow again and you can harvest your new "sprouts" !
Many people even started growing them, however, I do not see a point to cultivate a wild herb. It is wild ! This is the point ! Depends where it grows, it will be rich in different nutrients ! This is why our ancestors did never have nutrient overload ! When animals ate certain plants at the beginning of the year, their meat contained nutrients in completely different proportions, that at the end of the year winter time! Also herbs and plants collected from one place, would be different from another Not only taste, but color texture, time of flowering, length and stem thickness and so.
Do not freckin' cultivate wild plants, but collect when available. Do not cut them out totally, do not pull out the root, except if it is edible and when it is seeding, just shake the pods around to let more grow for next year !
You cannot really overdose or overload from cleavers if you follow a common rule of thumb. Eat a bit here and there. Do not make a full salad of half a kilo cleavers ! While I am not sure it would do any harm, I am not sure either that it would be healthy. Add like 30 leaves of cleavers, some dandelion greens and flowers, maybe 2-3 mint leaves, stingy nettle, mallow leaves and off you go. You mix it with yoghurt, salt, lemon juice, black pepper and 1 dl of olive oil ! Add two eggs and a wild caught fish, off you go.
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| Cleavers |
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| Cleavers |
Do not over complicate it or think that you found the magic cure for something. Have a bit every second day, maybe twice a week and use other tonic herbs on the other days ! Be smart about wild herbs and about anything in general !
I also dry them up together with other herbs, completely ! I use a single auger juicer with a blank screen to make a fine powder, so when I travel, I have a mixed high energy vitamin powder !
Similar plants
You can easily mistaken, if not attentive with Rubia Peregrina or wild madder ! (Of course, for this, it has to grown on the same spot)
However it won't be a big mistake ! It is nearly the same and can be used the same. Get a few leaves, eat it, drink it, make coffee from it. So normally it can be so similar, that people even make photos on their websites of one or the other and totally just mix up the two ! Also, wild madder is listed as a galium or cleaver.
So both has, square stem, often hairy and climbing, 4 to 8 leaves in circles, leaves can be soft or hard, plain or shiny, hairy and sticky and wen they are really fresh, it is brutal hard to make the difference !
However when the plants are older, the Rubia Peregrina, becomes slightly reddish around leaf stems and the bottom of the stem , slash root ! This is the reason for the name and can be used to dye clothing or even to paint and is sold in powder form as a dye too !
The galium / cleaver has a hairy bizarre seed pot while the wild madder will grow black fruit like berries.
I did not find a lot of info about wild madder, but I think it is a perennial plant and the Galium is surely an annual plant, so dropping a seed, die and regrows next year !
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| Can you see the red hue on the older leaves ? This is a rubia peregrina |
What I have found about the wild madder is, that when used as a medicainal or salad plant, just have to use lower doses surely than the cleaver and that is it. I would not bother to eat the roots of any of them or really use the stems, flowers or pods and berries. I am sure the leaves are edible, I use the leaves in salad, I am sure the stem is also edible and use it in my juicer. That is it. Common sense is applied !