Boundaries
by Jack Nisbet

Jack Nisbet is the author of The Mapmaker's Eye, Sources of the River, Purple Flat Top, Singing Grass, Burning Sage and Visible Bones. His newest, The Collector, won a 2010 PNBA Award.

Last Meal
May 2010

Every plant tells a story, and the ones that present food in different forms, that are adaptable, that somehow travel to cut across cultures and continents, end up telling many more than one. Chenopodium is a genus of weedy plants that originated in Eurasia. The Latin name comes from the Greek words cheno for goose and podos for foot, and indeed the roughly triangular leaves of several of its species do resemble geese tracks. Chenopodium album adds the Latin word for the color white because tiny scales give the leaves and stems of mature plants a dappled grayish-white appearance.

White Goosefoot or Frost Blite works as a common name to describe that pale cast, but does not begin to touch the deeper attributes of a plant whose seeds and leaves have long been used for food. Ancient Romans, probably relating it to the August harvest season, knew it as lammas quarter, which in turn gave rise to the confusingly tasty common name Lambsquarter. English country folk have long called it Fat-hen or Mealweed because its odorless leaves and seeds are good for fattening up chickens. Early Americans named it Pigweed or Baconweed for the same reason, as hungry hogs ingested whole plants and then spread seeds across the continent. I learned it as pigweed and hated to hoe it out of gardens, first in the Carolinas and then in Stevens County -- a weed just as vigorous in the hundred percent humidity of the South as it is on bone-dry August days here.

But now I think I underestimated the lowly pigweed. Its form might vary anywhere from a thick-stemmed six-foot soldier to a loose open lattice draped across a handy wall. The tiny grayish-green flowers appear in great clusters on the top, reminding many people of purple amaranth. These blooms quickly transform into tens of thousands of poppy-seed-sized kernels; you have look closely to notice a distinct light comma etched across each shiny brown globe. The tiny grains resemble South American quinoa, commonly sold in health food stores, because both belong to the same Chenopodium genus.

Any plant that has managed to travel from the Mediterranean across Africa, Australia, the most remote Pacific Islands, and all of North America must have a close connection with humans. The leaves of pigweed, which vary in size and shape depending on conditions and time of year, are widely used as greens by people as well as animals. Just as Incan people in the Andes grew Chenopodium quinoa for its nutritious seeds, so Chenopodium album has long been cultivated in India. Napoleon Bonaparte, who always paid close attention to the diet of his troops, employed ground pigweed seeds as a flour supplement for his army's endless bread. The kernels have also been used as both a seasoning and a coffee substitute. In hard times, pigweed will be there for you.

H. Godwin, in his History of the British Flora writes that "[n]ot only has the plant been used as a green vegetable but until recently the seeds were widely used as food in times of famine." Several neolithic archaeological digs in England have turned up pigweed seeds preserved in earthenware pots. More spookily, archaeologists have found Chenopodium and other "weed" seeds in the stomach contents of humans buried in Danish bogs, where the highly acid soils can preserve remains for thousands of years. Tollund Man, an Iron Age body found hanged in just such a peat bog, ate pigweed cereal for his execution breakfast.

All this early goosefoot lore leads directly to a question that has long intrigued Northwest plant and garden enthusiasts: When did pigweed begin to get into local gardens? That is very hard to know, but it was certainly here before your grandmother's potato patch. Scottish naturalist David Douglas kept a running list of the plants he collected throughout the Columbia drainage in 1825 and 26, and #410 sounds very familiar.

Chenopodium sp.; annual; plentiful in all rich soils; fertile banks of rivers; grows very strong and abundant around Indian villages and camps

The notion of pigweed sprouting around tribal encampments intrigued the curious collector, and Douglas, who had grown up in a small Scottish village, obviously was familiar with eating the leaves of the familiar white goosefoot himself. But this Chenopodium must have been new to native people, because Douglas was confounded by the way such resourceful plant users ignored a well-known (to him) food source.

among the numerous vegetables used by them, it is rather singular they should omit one which is almost universally used in every country; even the tender shoots of several species of Rubus [currants, raspberries, and thimbleberries], and sprouts of a species of Equisetum [horsetails] and Scirpus [rushes] are greedily sought after, used and considered good, while this wholesome plant is left untouched.

Of course people like to eat what they are used to, but they are also willing to adapt. Almost exactly a century later -- halfway between Douglas's collection of pigweed on the Columbia and our own 21st century garden-weeding woes -- an anthropologist named James Teit again recorded the cultural presence of pigweed. Teit married an Interior Salish woman (of the nlaka'pmx or Thompson tribe based in the Thompson River country of British Columbia) and had extensive experience with tribal plant usage. As a man of British upbringing, he referred to Chenopodium album as lambs quarters instead of our more vulgar pigweed. But they are both the same troublesome or nutritious plant, depending on how you look at it.

com. lambs quarters was called 'stuwituimax or stuwituimax a sama' [sama is a Salish word for white men]" wrote Teit. "[They are] weeds introduced by whites, a plant with no particular name or use especially annuals...[lamb's-quarters] now used as a green boiled no doubt learned from whites...

It's clear Teit thought that pigweed had no particular name or use for the Thompson tribe until white people, who brought it in with them, were seen boiling and eating the leaves like spinach. In time some family, very possibly part of a mixed marriage like Teit's own, included the plant in its diet, and connected it to its European origin with a fitting name.

Interestingly, Teit made no mention of any use of the seeds, despite their long history as an important source of nutrition on several continents. There are plenty of sunflower and biscuitroot family plants in the north Columbia country that produce bigger, tastier seeds, and these have remained a preferred food for many tribal families. After two centuries, some might view pigweed as a newcomer to their world; others, who travel the globe as well, might think of it as a familiar old friend.

Pigweed or lambsquarter (Chenopodium album). Illustration by Emily Nisbet

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