A personal essay from Weimar by Jean Stipelcovich, TMNCPC member. Photos by Paula Dittrick, TMNCPC blogmaster.
Most days I go for a walk. I’ve been noting where the Antelope Horn milkweeds are growing, which ones have seed pods, and trying to revisit those to catch them opening before the seeds disperse. The collected seeds will be gifted to a friend who has a new pocket prairie in their yard. I am amazed and reassured by all the places I find milkweed growing in the wild. A lot of roadsides and pastures have several varieties of milkweed. I found and collected aquatic milkweed seeds recently. But right now, it’s the Antelope Horn that is most abundant and easy to find.
Getting to know wild things is fun. It’s not enough to be able to know its name. Just like people, it has a story, a history, and a relationship with its neighbors and environment. Asking the questions, seeking the answers through observation and by study is like making friends. I feel so much affection for the wild things around me and studying them will be an endless pleasure.
Undoubtedly, my dad was my first influencer. I was very young when I learned how to identify thistle. I was about 6 or 7 years old and at that funny age when kids want to help with things like weeding a garden. I was with my dad pulling weeds away from sweet peas that were growing on the chain link fence. Dad stopped me from pulling a prickly little rosette of a weed. He said that’s thistle and a tasty weed. We will let it grow and when it gets tall and ready, we will eat it.
Somehow, he knew a lot about edible plants. I don’t know if he learned it as a kid or as an adult. I do know that the knowledge of edible plants helped keep him alive when he was a prisoner of war in World War II. Thistle grows abundantly in Europe. Did he learn to eat thistle before the war or did he learn from a fellow prisoner during the war? But I digress.
So, back to the thistle growing next to the sweet peas on the fence. Weeks later, I walked into the kitchen and caught dad dressing some cut up stalks with oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper. I asked what he was doing. He said it was the thistle and he asked if I wanted to try it. I think back on that day, and I bet he intended to have it all for himself. It was not much. But there I was, and he shared. It was delicious.
Sadly, I didn’t see him harvest it. I never had a chance to learn how he harvested it or how he cleaned the stalks to make it so edible. I tried to learn from YouTube, and I tried eating various kinds of thistle through the years, but nothing tastes as good as that day eating thistle in the kitchen with my dad.
So, there it began—one of the many seeds about nature that he planted in my brain. The thistle seed he planted has grown through the years. I’ve learned that thistle is a lot more than just a prickly plant that can be eaten. It has a huge wildlife value as the flowers have copious resources for pollinators, like bees, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, and ants. Hummingbirds are attracted to the nectar. The seeds are nourishing for birds like goldfinches and sparrows. The soft down of the seeds are used by birds to line nests. Even the prickly leaves are food for butterfly larvae such as the Painted Lady.
I love me some thistle. But I have quit trying to eat it. These days I let the birds and the bees have it, and I simply enjoy the warm and fuzzy childhood memories along with all the new things I learn about thistle well into my adulthood and old age. Thistle is one of my dear friends. We have a history and a relationship that just keeps growing. It will never stop teaching me, and showing me it’s beauty, and gifting me with its ever-changing presence, and surprising me with its resilience.