{"id":2158,"date":"2019-10-09T04:54:22","date_gmt":"2019-10-09T04:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/greenmanpublishing.com\/?p=2158"},"modified":"2019-10-09T04:56:12","modified_gmt":"2019-10-09T04:56:12","slug":"great-plantain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greenmanpublishing.com\/index.php\/2019\/10\/09\/great-plantain\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Plantain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Plantago major<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0Plantaginaceae<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This species has followed\nEuropean explorers and settlers all around the world. This fact was not\nunnoticed by indigenous people in several countries, who named the plant\n“White Mans Foot”, “Englishman\u2019s Foot” or similar names. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greens: In spring the tender,\nnewly emerged leaves can be used in sandwiches and salads, or boiled as a\npotherb for 10 \u2011 15 minutes. They are rich in vitamins A and C and quite\nnutritious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Older leaves tend to be hairy and\nsomewhat tough, but can be used as a potherb if you strip off the tough veins.\nThey are better used in soups and stews (it may help to put them in blender for\na few seconds). They can also be improved by covering them with an opaque\ncontainer for a few days to blanch them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seed: Native Americans boiled the seed like\nRice, added it to soup, or dried and ground it to meal for baking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emergency wound dressing: The leaves have long been used to treat\nwounds, Poison Ivy rash, insect bites, grazes and minor burns. It was sometimes\ncalled Rattlesnake Weed because of its use in treating Snakebite.  Crush a handful of clean leaves to a pulp and\nbind them on to the affected areas.  An\neven more effective method is to chew the leaves to a pulp, as human saliva has\nadditional healing properties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Medicine: The mucilaginous seed of the\nrelated Psyllium (P. ovata<\/em>) is very widely used as a laxative. It is one\nof the commonest commercial bulk laxatives, and has even been added to commercial breakfast\ncereals for this. The seed of this species can be used in the same way though\nit is not as effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Animal\nfood: The seeds are an important food for birds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cultivation: Plantain is such a common plant\nof disturbed soils that it seems absurd to even think about planting it (there\nare few places where it’s completely absent). Nevertheless it can be grown from\nseed or division. If that is too difficult simply transplant some from the\nnearest lawn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Garden uses: Despite its abundance I don’t\nconsider Plantain a bad weed, though people who absolutely must have a perfect\nlawn will probably disagree. It is one of the lawn lovers worst enemies. The\nplant even has its good points; it protects disturbed land from erosion,\nprovides food for many forms of wildlife and attracts birds to the garden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related species: Many species are palatable\nin spring and none are poisonous, so you can experiment with any species you\nfind. The best include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

P. fastigiata<\/em> \u2011 Indian Wheat<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This species gets its common name\nbecause it bears  mucilaginous brown\nseed. This is edible and may be used as above. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

P. maritima<\/em> \u2011 Sea Plantain<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the names suggests, this is a\ncoastal species, though I is also found elsewhere. Its fleshy grass\u2011like leaves\nare good raw or cooked and have even been pickled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

P. macrocarpa<\/em> \u2011 Sea Plantain<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This northwestern species may be used\nas above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

P. coronopus<\/em> \u2011 Buckhorn Plantain<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This species is a good enough salad plant to be cultivated commercially in parts of Italy. You may have noticed that the picture at the top of this post is this plant, not Broadleaf Plantain, because I don’t have a picture of that plant, which is somewhat ironic as it is incredibly common.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plantago major \u00a0Plantaginaceae This species has followed European explorers and settlers all around the world. This fact was not unnoticed by indigenous people in several countries, who named the plant … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-useful-weeds","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/greenmanpublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Plantain.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenmanpublishing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenmanpublishing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenmanpublishing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenmanpublishing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenmanpublishing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2158"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greenmanpublishing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2161,"href":"https:\/\/greenmanpublishing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158\/revisions\/2161"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenmanpublishing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenmanpublishing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenmanpublishing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenmanpublishing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}