I've also personally seen ragweed mixed in with cilantro at my local grocery store! Have you ever seen a grocery store mislabeling like this? Be safe out there!
In the 1960s me my dad and brother went to pick wild mushrooms in the forest in Germany and stir fry them, they were delicious my mother would not eat them she's afraid they were poisonous, after awhile she started to eat them, the mushrooms had to be certain size, shape color no markings and no gills.I don't know if I was fortunate or my father knew what he's doing, he seemed to know what he was doing. Stay away from cow patty mushrooms!! That's another story.
I wouldn’t put it past them. In these times, when people can easily mistake nightshade berries for blueberries, it’s more than true that blissful modern ignorance leads to a most horrendous death. A co-worker’s wife almost ate the nightshade berries before he warned her off; I later showed him that he made the right decision.
@My Dixie Wrecked🔨 The cops are stupid they can't tell up from down the plants look completely different from one another, they really couldn't be that ignorant,I think they wanted to lock some one up.
There's a story that Roman soldiers used to carry Narcissus bulbs with them into battle. If they were mortally wounded or captured, they would eat the bulb as a last resort to poison themselves. Etymologically there is a connection to the Greek word, Narkissos. The root is "narkē" which means numbness, perhaps in reference to the narcotic effects. Whether or not this info has been verified depends on who you talk too. Interesting nonetheless. Thank you for another great video!
They also used Onion Soup to determine if a wounded soldier could be saved or not. After he drank the soup. a medic would smell the wound. If it smelled of onion, the soldier had a perforated bowel, and was, at that time, given the more merciful death.
@@TimeSurfer206 Roman soldiers knew onions were good for them, they would eat the broth and then soak their wounds in it because it had healing properties for cuts and bruises but as for soup wounds, it was probably a Norse invention with the only mentions being when explained it was a technique used by Viking Raiders.
I've been in this situation before. I was visiting the home of my deceased grandmother to clean up the house. It was the fall and I thought I was digging up onions from her garden. Thankfully I was well aware of the possibility the bulbs could be daffodils but my nose was stuffy so I kind of thought I could smell onion. I cleaned the bulbs, coated them in olive oil and tossed them in the air fryer. As soon as I tasted the first one I knew right away they werent onions and spit it out. I'm an experienced forager and knew the possibilities before I even decided to dig them. But, I could easily see how a random person who is starving could make the mistake, especially if they ground them up into a curry or sautéed them into a sauce that hides the bitter taste.
if youre an experienced forager then youre pretty stupid one at that any real forager will tell you if youre not 100% sure then DONT EAT IT. plus onions dont even look that close to the bulbs....
@@vincent67239 - No recovery was needed. I didn't swallow anything. Just chewed it for a few seconds and spit it out. I rinsed my mouth with water and didn't experience any mucousal discomfort. I then sat down to eat something else for lunch.
One thing I've come across when harvesting wild onion, is my hands get to smelling like onion too. Where I live, we have death camas that looks very similar to wild onion before it flowers, and grows right among the onions. When harvesting onion, everything, even the death camas bulbs, winds up smelling like onion! So, because the top growth has some characteristics that make it possible to tell the death camas from the onions, we only ever keep bulbs that still have the top growth attached, and we always confirm that they are onions before cooking with them.
Deathcama leaves don't really look similar to onion leaves though. Onion leaves are round, tube-like, or U shape, and deathcama leaves are very clearly not tube-like and V shaped, and more spread outwards. So even without the smell, once you see pictures of both of them you can tell them apart rather easily.
@@rdizzy1 that's why we make sure that the top growth is attached. We want to make sure that the kids and students who are learning how to ID note all of those characteristics and don't accidentally harvest a death camas bulbs. And if you take the top growth off, the bulb alone doesn't have those differences you described. So we keep the leaves on so we can use exactly those features to be sure we won't poison ourselves!
My dad almost did this once. He was claiming we had wild onions growing around our house, but finally relented when we said not to eat that. It was the daffodils coming up again.
Literally almost ate this one year. I moved into a new place where the previous owners planted a ton of stuff. I was going around harvesting garlic at the time and then completely uprooted a small bed so I could plant something else there and found a bunch of garlic and what looked like onions. We took over our harvest to our friend's place to make food for dinner. Then after closer inspection, I noticed they didn't have an onion smell and threw them away. Thank god! I had no idea what they were. But now it makes sense, they have daffodils planted all over my yard! Never knew that's what the bulbs looked like.
I learned that early in order not to mistake a wild onion for a death Camas. If it smells like an onion and taste like an onion it's an onion. If not, beware.
It's interesting. In the video I saw about death damas, the wild onion looked nothing like the camas once they were both picked. Field garlic, on the other hand, looks very much like death camas. Thankfully we don't seem to have death camas where I grew up, so I managed to survive my childhood foraging expeditions. 😂
some years ago in the UK an elderly man with severe visual impairment bought daffodil bulbs thinking they were onions and cooked them. sadly he did not survive. it is so important that better labelling be used and that the visually impaired are thought of when doing displays (also people with different literacy levels)
I was wondering why my daffodils had prominent do not eat warnings on the label but despite seeing how much they look like green onions with a bulb it never occured to me that this was an issue until now. Goes to show that this can potentially trip people up who you'd think would know better. My school had both an edible onion relative and daffodils growing and I ate the former frequently. Dumb luck or instinct I will never know.
Friendly reminder: ALWAYS keep some activated charcoal nearby in case of food poisoning. When Im camping and eating things I foraged from the woods I make sure to keep activated charcoal in my bag. One time when camping I got salmonella poisoning from some contaminated chicken. The usual food poisoning symptoms occurred (confusion, dry throat, body switching between hot/cold, nausea). I put 1 tbsp of charcoal in some water and chugged it. Within an hour all symptoms pretty much went away. I've used this to stop food poisoning on several occasions
@RealSweetKid - haha, I've gotten food poisoning 4 times. And yea, confused. Each time it happens there's a period where I start to feel a little "off" but Im not quite sure what it is thats different. Then the feeling gets stronger and I suddenly realize somethings not quite right in my gut. Then it grows and grows until I realize, "Ok shit, I definitely ate something bad. Im either going to have to make myself throw up or drink some charcoal. Thank God I've got some charcaol".
@@kobrapromotions - It works for anything that's inside the digestive tract. It's what most hospitals use now to treat a number of orally ingested poisons. Obviously if you eat a berry with cyanide in it the cyanide is water soluble and will absorb into the bloodstream very quickly. So it's not going to help in those types of situations.
This is something I learned pretty quickly on my own. I noticed I had wild garlic growing in my yard and things that looked like it but lacked the scent, so I left those and took the ones with it. Some months after, they grew flowers that didn't match the 100% garlic plants.
The problem when foraging with scent based queues is that a patch of daffodil or death camas can be right next to a patch of onion grass, and to you everything will just smell oniony because you have also been pickin onion.
When I was little, we visited a friend of my mom had her entire yard overtaken by wild field onions. I kid not when I say she had more onions than grass. It was impossible to mow and even walking up to her door you could smell that distinctive onion aroma from leaves and plants that were inevitably disturbed or crushed. This was back in the 80s and the friend lived in a very poor and rural part of town so just let it be (without complaints from anyone) and would just let anyone who wanted some to take them.
This why like my mentor would tell me when in doubt don’t put it in your mouth! Always be 100% confident with what you are identifying and have atleast three hardbacked sources to prove you have what you have!
@@LovingDeantheGodMachine333The rule of three is really good. I remember hearing the advice that you should find three sources for something before sharing it as a way to prevent spread of obviously disprovable misinformation.
I liked this report very much. It was extremely informative on the subject including showing samples in foraging. I will subscribe to this channel for sure. Thank you for the information. Tony from Toronto Canada 🇨🇦👍
When I was young and new to the area, someone told me how wild onions grew everywhere, I remember grabbing one with a big bulb and chewing it for about 2 seconds before spitting it out. It clearly tasted like something you shouldn't eat. I don't remember getting sick, but yeah, you can definitely tell by taste.
Hi new to your channel, ive been foraging for many years in the UK I remember my mum taking me out to the woods and meadows I must of been about 6 or 7 at the time, showing me what I can and cant eat she would crush them in her hands so I could smell them which is often the only way with some look alike plants , truly people out there learn what you can and cant eat where ever you happen to be in the world.
In Germany, daffodils and other types of flowers that shoot out at the very beginning of spring are literally called "Frühlingszwiebeln" among other names, which roughly translates to "spring onions", so I always knew that they shoot out of an "onion"-like structure ^^°
from the Philippines here, My mother and Grandmother loved planting flowers in their mini garden. Due to reasons, we had to remove most of the flowers and relocate them in pots... We saw a Bulb-ish plant and thought it was a different type of Onion because its leaves were flat, wide and long. Cutting it, it didn't hurt the eyes and there was also this sticky, gooey substance and yes... We Ate those. Lo and behold we were nauseous and vomiting a few hours later. It was quite a bad case of food poisoning but thankfully it subsided the next day.
💚Your content is absolutely fantastic and such a breath of fresh air! As someone who shares a passion for foraging and has a small channel in this niche, I find your work super inspiring. Keep up the incredible job and continue making a massive impact! 🌿
Wild scallions are great too. They grow wild on my grandfathers land. I pick them whenever I go up there. They make your eyes water a if you hit some while mowing the lawn though.
I actually went camping in texas and found what i thought to be onions and I made sure to look it up and thankfully I did because later that day i found another plant that looked the exact same but it didnt have the same onion smell. pretty cool how nature can create plants so similar yet so different
This is a great video! 🙂👍There is another plant that is very similar to the allium family and will make you very sick. I made that mistake myself back when I was not so informed. That plant is called DEATH CAMASS. I ate some thinking that I was eating wild onion, and I didn't die, like the name of the plant suggests, but... let's put it this way... IT CAME RIGHT BACK UP, and I'm fortunate that it did. If you are an amateur forager, please do a video search on DEATH CAMASS and inform yourself.
@@davidthedeaf David, in the event that there is ever a time when the grocery store shelves go bare this is a survival skill that can be learned by researching and by doing it carefully. Some of us find it challenging and fascinating.
@@notmyworld44 but if you have the skill to save seeds and plant things in your garden yourself, you do not need to go seeking unknowns. I think the last sentence you said says it all, this is just a thrill seeking thing for some, something “cool” but not needed.
I used to live in Cleveland, near a park. Those little onions grew along the path through the park. There was no mistaking them for anything else, I could smell the onion odor wafting up from the soil. I pulled some up and cooked them, they were SO delicious! Best onions ive ever had.
Wild nodding onions are edible, native in the northern United states and has the classic onion taste and smell. I harvest the leaves, chop them up and use them in my cooking. The bees also love the flowers. They grow wild in my yard and I have no plans to get rid of them. And I've never seen a daffodil with leaves that resemble anything close to an onion.
This is so good to know. Our new homestead came with well established daffodils, so I need to keep any onions we plant away from that area. We also harvested wild prairie onions today and will be having them at supper.
This was interesting. I never would have expected that people could confuse daffodil bulbs with onions… But I suppose I see the similarity. people probably think they struck gold finding some giant wild onions lol.
How about you do a video on onions, garlic and leeks and how deadly they might me if…. In 2004, I got with my then fiancé and her three kids. At this time, I was teaching myself how to cook. One of the cool things I did was to make an herbal infused olive oil. I bought a large bottle of olive oil and scrubbed the label off so i had a shiny glass bottle of oil. I then chopped a few bulbs of garlic into quarters and added a few sprigs of rosemary. I cooked with this oil for weeks. And had no idea why my fiancé and kids and I were getting sicker and sicker. A month or so later, by divine intervention, I read a newspaper article talking about the dangers of room temperature oils and garlics, onions and leeks. I had accidentally poisoned all of us with botulism. We were all lucky to survive. Nobody tells you about this in school.
I have found tons of wild garlic on our property while plowing up fields for planting. They are about the size of a shelled peanut and break apart like a garlic bulb does. They have a mild garlic taste that is great right out of the ground.
Thank you! Great information! I forage and love it! It's an amazing adventure thru the gorgeous fields under the amazing sun In Algarve,. Portugal 🇵🇹 😊.
There are daffodils in odd places around my big family family house. Grandmother used to tell me the gophers dragged them their lairs to eat later, then decided after all they didn't like the taste. So there the bulb sits, blooming year after year. 😁😁
I grew up with both daffodils and wild onions growing around my yard. We never worried about a mix-up because they look entirely different. It wasn't until I saw this video that I realized... No, they actually do look quite similar. I can easily see how someone unfamiliar with them might mistake one for the other.
Thankful info 👍; just reminded me of a healthful Japanese root vegetable I ate long ago (looks like a cross between those American tiny white onions and a garlic clove) .
I like it here, especially after setting the speed on .75... really good content well presented and packaged! Especially loved the insert of laughing man healed from daffodil poisoning, and the one of researcher surrounded by books. I will start foraging now, for Lactuca ... errrr, gotta go back to the wild lettuce video.
I very nearly ate death camas that I found on my property one time. It looks very similar to wild onions, but also lacks the onion smell. I had just gotten over covid so I didn't know if the lack of smell was on my end or the bulbs. Decided to err on the side of caution and I'm glad I did.
Quite interesting. I used to work as a florist at a garden center and always thought how similar those flower bulbs of looked to onions or garlic at a first glance. I can definitely see how people could easily make this mistake.
Yearly I have "wild onions" push up in one of our shrubbery beds. They smell like onions, but equally could be wild garlic. I merely pull them up and get rid of them, not wanting to take any changes... Thumbs Up!
I must share a very important warning with you all: The young sprouts of many plants, edible and poisonous, tend to look so alike to the point that I avoid them altogether unless I can make future use of them when identification is certain. For example, the young shoots of milkweed, dogbane, and pokeweed look alike, with dogbane being poisonous and pokeweed later so. By God’s Holy Grace, I know enough about other stuff so I can avoid potentially poisoning myself.
Still feels weird to me that so many people don't know that MANY flowers grow from what we call "onions" in German(underground plant bulbs). Hell, I know since my mum always dragged me to plant/gardening/floral stores, I thought every mum did that I just realized how bizarre it is that we call plant bulbs the same word as onions and yet this video is the first time I hear of any forager making this mistake.
In Austria, specifically in Vienna, there's even a tradition of eating Bärlauch (wild garlic) (allium ursinum). In that case you only pick the leaves when they are freshly showing up tho, and you can easily distinguish them from other poisonous plants that may look similar, because of the rather distinct and intense smell of garlic they give off. If you smell garlic, it's okay to eat. (I'm not sure, but I think the bulbs themselves may be poisonous, but not the leaves? Or you never pick the bulbs in order to ensure there will be more wild garlic next year, maybe that's the real reason?)
Please show one on wild onion (large ones, not small scrawny specimen like some other videos I have seen by other people), wild garlic, wild leek vs. look alikes. Some of us do not have a good nose anymore and need visual clues.
One of my friends in the UK could have been that very case. She posted on FB how the whole family got sick by eating daffodils instead of spring onion.
i was wondering if you might have mentioned bluebells as well, as they can be mis-interpreted in a similar way and are also toxic. both daffodils and bluebells start poking up in spring, similar to wild garlic and onion, and often grow in the same areas
A pal of mine's wife was away for a few days and he accidentally ate some daffodil bulbs when cooking. He was seriously ill in hospital, but the Doc reckons he should be out in the spring !😂
Now imagine spending your life building tolerance to this "onion" so one day you invite your worst enemy over to prepare them some of that delicious "onion" dish.
Actually pretty cool channel. I always feel in need to touch and squeeze leaves i find in the forest when taking a walk. I sometimes find balm (melisse? I am german so some words i dont know), sage, mint, fennel (not dill, i hate dill), woodruff or different wild spinache and i love taking them home for cooking (or just eating raw even though its quite dangerous...). Though i am quite scared of foraging wild garlick, yarrow and onions, because of similar plants that are extremely toxic.
when i got to my new house, i had a bunch of chive onion growing in the garden in the backyard, and luckily, i knew it was chive because of its distinct purple flowers and delicious onion aroma. i harvest it every spring and summer as it just grows like hair and add it to my ramen instead of buying onion from the store. I find chives to be delicious, but i also used to use chives to keep my foster parents from knowing i was smoking as it has a heavy aroma and can mask smoke on your breath, i think the positive connotation from the taste makes me like them more than i like spring onion
I found this beautiful wild carrot in the garden section today, with it's cute white flowers in their little separate bunches. Making some tea right now
Lol soon as you showed the flower & said how they mistake that for an onion! Well this year when I was digging up for the garden my moms plants had reproduced a lot I kept pulling up these huge bulbs that resembled onions. Before they sprout flowers they look like onions
In Britain the most common wild Alliums are A. ursinum [ramsoms] and A. schoenoprasum [chives]. A. usinum has a strong scent of garlic and white flowers, whilst A. schoenoprasum has a much milder scent and purple flowers.
I've also personally seen ragweed mixed in with cilantro at my local grocery store! Have you ever seen a grocery store mislabeling like this? Be safe out there!
@My Dixie Wrecked🔨 awful ■ terrible
Some times I wonder if they mix toxic plants with food deliberately.
In the 1960s me my dad and brother went to pick wild mushrooms in the forest in Germany and stir fry them, they were delicious my mother would not eat them she's afraid they were poisonous, after awhile she started to eat them, the mushrooms had to be certain size, shape color no markings and no gills.I don't know if I was fortunate or my father knew what he's doing, he seemed to know what he was doing. Stay away from cow patty mushrooms!! That's another story.
I wouldn’t put it past them. In these times, when people can easily mistake nightshade berries for blueberries, it’s more than true that blissful modern ignorance leads to a most horrendous death. A co-worker’s wife almost ate the nightshade berries before he warned her off; I later showed him that he made the right decision.
@My Dixie Wrecked🔨 The cops are stupid they can't tell up from down the plants look completely different from one another, they really couldn't be that ignorant,I think they wanted to lock some one up.
A store putting daffodil bulbs in the same area as food was just asking for trouble.
this is why walmrt have garden section at the complete opposite end of the store from grocery
This is common but most stores keep the bulbs in LABELED SACKS
Could that be sufficient justification to sue the store for negligence?
I definitely would sue.
Not everyone gets their veggies from stores
*_"If it does not smell like an onion, it is not an onion"_*
This will save my life one day
There's a story that Roman soldiers used to carry Narcissus bulbs with them into battle. If they were mortally wounded or captured, they would eat the bulb as a last resort to poison themselves. Etymologically there is a connection to the Greek word, Narkissos. The root is "narkē" which means numbness, perhaps in reference to the narcotic effects. Whether or not this info has been verified depends on who you talk too. Interesting nonetheless. Thank you for another great video!
Thank you for sharing this! I love etymology stories.
They also used Onion Soup to determine if a wounded soldier could be saved or not.
After he drank the soup. a medic would smell the wound. If it smelled of onion, the soldier had a perforated bowel, and was, at that time, given the more merciful death.
@@TimeSurfer206 I believe this is a old Norse technique.
@@SmokingLaddy You might be right.
It COULD be both.
But, I can admit I might be wrong.
But I AM sure it's a technique that SOMEONE used.
@@TimeSurfer206 Roman soldiers knew onions were good for them, they would eat the broth and then soak their wounds in it because it had healing properties for cuts and bruises but as for soup wounds, it was probably a Norse invention with the only mentions being when explained it was a technique used by Viking Raiders.
I've been in this situation before. I was visiting the home of my deceased grandmother to clean up the house. It was the fall and I thought I was digging up onions from her garden. Thankfully I was well aware of the possibility the bulbs could be daffodils but my nose was stuffy so I kind of thought I could smell onion. I cleaned the bulbs, coated them in olive oil and tossed them in the air fryer. As soon as I tasted the first one I knew right away they werent onions and spit it out. I'm an experienced forager and knew the possibilities before I even decided to dig them. But, I could easily see how a random person who is starving could make the mistake, especially if they ground them up into a curry or sautéed them into a sauce that hides the bitter taste.
if youre an experienced forager then youre pretty stupid one at that
any real forager will tell you if youre not 100% sure then DONT EAT IT.
plus onions dont even look that close to the bulbs....
So did you make a FULL recovery or just A recovery?
@@vincent67239 - No recovery was needed. I didn't swallow anything. Just chewed it for a few seconds and spit it out. I rinsed my mouth with water and didn't experience any mucousal discomfort. I then sat down to eat something else for lunch.
@@vincent67239 ☝️👀 i see what you did there
One thing I've come across when harvesting wild onion, is my hands get to smelling like onion too. Where I live, we have death camas that looks very similar to wild onion before it flowers, and grows right among the onions. When harvesting onion, everything, even the death camas bulbs, winds up smelling like onion! So, because the top growth has some characteristics that make it possible to tell the death camas from the onions, we only ever keep bulbs that still have the top growth attached, and we always confirm that they are onions before cooking with them.
This is a really good point! It's like, if I rub wild mint on my hands, the next 10 plants I smell will be wild mint. Thank you for this comment!
Deathcama leaves don't really look similar to onion leaves though. Onion leaves are round, tube-like, or U shape, and deathcama leaves are very clearly not tube-like and V shaped, and more spread outwards. So even without the smell, once you see pictures of both of them you can tell them apart rather easily.
@@rdizzy1 that's why we make sure that the top growth is attached. We want to make sure that the kids and students who are learning how to ID note all of those characteristics and don't accidentally harvest a death camas bulbs. And if you take the top growth off, the bulb alone doesn't have those differences you described. So we keep the leaves on so we can use exactly those features to be sure we won't poison ourselves!
Onions are extremely cheap, though. So unless endtimes come, I'll leave those plants alone and buy my onions on the market.
@@ulalaFrugilega totally fair!
My dad almost did this once. He was claiming we had wild onions growing around our house, but finally relented when we said not to eat that. It was the daffodils coming up again.
Yikes!
Lol
Literally almost ate this one year. I moved into a new place where the previous owners planted a ton of stuff. I was going around harvesting garlic at the time and then completely uprooted a small bed so I could plant something else there and found a bunch of garlic and what looked like onions. We took over our harvest to our friend's place to make food for dinner. Then after closer inspection, I noticed they didn't have an onion smell and threw them away. Thank god! I had no idea what they were. But now it makes sense, they have daffodils planted all over my yard! Never knew that's what the bulbs looked like.
I learned that early in order not to mistake a wild onion for a death Camas. If it smells like an onion and taste like an onion it's an onion. If not, beware.
It's interesting. In the video I saw about death damas, the wild onion looked nothing like the camas once they were both picked. Field garlic, on the other hand, looks very much like death camas.
Thankfully we don't seem to have death camas where I grew up, so I managed to survive my childhood foraging expeditions. 😂
@@coalcreekdefense8106 death camus looks like field garlic, but it doesn't smell or taste like field garlic/onions.
some years ago in the UK an elderly man with severe visual impairment bought daffodil bulbs thinking they were onions and cooked them. sadly he did not survive. it is so important that better labelling be used and that the visually impaired are thought of when doing displays (also people with different literacy levels)
Oh shit!
Why are flowers bulbs put next to the produce? I am in spain and I've never seen them together.
@@silviamagda no idea, idiots in charge probably
@@silviamagda a confused shelf stocker?
Source?
I was wondering why my daffodils had prominent do not eat warnings on the label but despite seeing how much they look like green onions with a bulb it never occured to me that this was an issue until now. Goes to show that this can potentially trip people up who you'd think would know better. My school had both an edible onion relative and daffodils growing and I ate the former frequently. Dumb luck or instinct I will never know.
Friendly reminder:
ALWAYS keep some activated charcoal nearby in case of food poisoning. When Im camping and eating things I foraged from the woods I make sure to keep activated charcoal in my bag. One time when camping I got salmonella poisoning from some contaminated chicken. The usual food poisoning symptoms occurred (confusion, dry throat, body switching between hot/cold, nausea). I put 1 tbsp of charcoal in some water and chugged it. Within an hour all symptoms pretty much went away. I've used this to stop food poisoning on several occasions
@RealSweetKid - haha, I've gotten food poisoning 4 times. And yea, confused. Each time it happens there's a period where I start to feel a little "off" but Im not quite sure what it is thats different. Then the feeling gets stronger and I suddenly realize somethings not quite right in my gut. Then it grows and grows until I realize, "Ok shit, I definitely ate something bad. Im either going to have to make myself throw up or drink some charcoal. Thank God I've got some charcaol".
This only works with "some" toxins, and on top of this, only usually has an effect if consumed within 1 hour of consuming the original toxin.
doesn't it (activated charcoal) not work for all poisonings?
it barely works for most poisonings. Still a good idea and can only help. Unless being given an antidote orally.
@@kobrapromotions - It works for anything that's inside the digestive tract. It's what most hospitals use now to treat a number of orally ingested poisons. Obviously if you eat a berry with cyanide in it the cyanide is water soluble and will absorb into the bloodstream very quickly. So it's not going to help in those types of situations.
Thank you for making this video straightforward and to the point. Too many youtubers would try to drag this out into a 20 minutes video.
This is something I learned pretty quickly on my own. I noticed I had wild garlic growing in my yard and things that looked like it but lacked the scent, so I left those and took the ones with it. Some months after, they grew flowers that didn't match the 100% garlic plants.
The problem when foraging with scent based queues is that a patch of daffodil or death camas can be right next to a patch of onion grass, and to you everything will just smell oniony because you have also been pickin onion.
That's true. Common sense should definitely be exercised in those situations!
Supposedly the city of Chicago owes its name to an Illini word for the site, "place of the stinking grass."
That and some people have sensory deficits
@@am529 If that's the case then they probably shouldn't be foraging to begin with...
@@AirLancer I’m not disagreeing
When I was little, we visited a friend of my mom had her entire yard overtaken by wild field onions. I kid not when I say she had more onions than grass. It was impossible to mow and even walking up to her door you could smell that distinctive onion aroma from leaves and plants that were inevitably disturbed or crushed. This was back in the 80s and the friend lived in a very poor and rural part of town so just let it be (without complaints from anyone) and would just let anyone who wanted some to take them.
Wow. This is good to know. I'm sorry the people got sick because of others mistakes.
In Austria and South Germany this happens every year but to people confusing autumn crocus (Herbstzeitlose) for ramson (Bärlauch). It’s often deadly.
This why like my mentor would tell me when in doubt don’t put it in your mouth! Always be 100% confident with what you are identifying and have atleast three hardbacked sources to prove you have what you have!
@@LovingDeantheGodMachine333The rule of three is really good. I remember hearing the advice that you should find three sources for something before sharing it as a way to prevent spread of obviously disprovable misinformation.
@@GogiRegion Yes the rule of three is a good strategy for that!
I liked this report very much. It was extremely informative on the subject including showing samples in foraging. I will subscribe to this channel for sure. Thank you for the information.
Tony from Toronto Canada 🇨🇦👍
Thanks so much!
When I was young and new to the area, someone told me how wild onions grew everywhere, I remember grabbing one with a big bulb and chewing it for about 2 seconds before spitting it out. It clearly tasted like something you shouldn't eat. I don't remember getting sick, but yeah, you can definitely tell by taste.
Hi new to your channel, ive been foraging for many years in the UK I remember my mum taking me out to the woods and meadows I must of been about 6 or 7 at the time, showing me what I can and cant eat she would crush them in her hands so I could smell them which is often the only way with some look alike plants , truly people out there learn what you can and cant eat where ever you happen to be in the world.
In Germany, daffodils and other types of flowers that shoot out at the very beginning of spring are literally called "Frühlingszwiebeln" among other names, which roughly translates to "spring onions", so I always knew that they shoot out of an "onion"-like structure ^^°
this was amazing! i appreciate the short video with actual content!
Very welcome!
from the Philippines here, My mother and Grandmother loved planting flowers in their mini garden. Due to reasons, we had to remove most of the flowers and relocate them in pots... We saw a Bulb-ish plant and thought it was a different type of Onion because its leaves were flat, wide and long. Cutting it, it didn't hurt the eyes and there was also this sticky, gooey substance and yes... We Ate those. Lo and behold we were nauseous and vomiting a few hours later. It was quite a bad case of food poisoning but thankfully it subsided the next day.
💚Your content is absolutely fantastic and such a breath of fresh air! As someone who shares a passion for foraging and has a small channel in this niche, I find your work super inspiring. Keep up the incredible job and continue making a massive impact! 🌿
I’ve also eaten chives out in the wild. They’re great tasting as a member of the onion family!
Wild scallions are great too. They grow wild on my grandfathers land. I pick them whenever I go up there. They make your eyes water a if you hit some while mowing the lawn though.
Are you chive talking?
My parents have a garden completely taken over by field garlic..
I’ve no idea how to help them, lol..
@@Amen.22 Oh, the BeeGees are gonna come after you!
I actually went camping in texas and found what i thought to be onions and I made sure to look it up and thankfully I did because later that day i found another plant that looked the exact same but it didnt have the same onion smell. pretty cool how nature can create plants so similar yet so different
This is a great video! 🙂👍There is another plant that is very similar to the allium family and will make you very sick. I made that mistake myself back when I was not so informed. That plant is called DEATH CAMASS. I ate some thinking that I was eating wild onion, and I didn't die, like the name of the plant suggests, but... let's put it this way... IT CAME RIGHT BACK UP, and I'm fortunate that it did. If you are an amateur forager, please do a video search on DEATH CAMASS and inform yourself.
If my memory serves me right, the odor test prevails when it comes to death camass, because it CAN have white flowers instead of the usual blue.
Those don't smell like onions, so the same test can be used there as for daffodils.
But why forage if you are not starving and homeless? Be safe, eat from your garden.
@@davidthedeaf David, in the event that there is ever a time when the grocery store shelves go bare this is a survival skill that can be learned by researching and by doing it carefully. Some of us find it challenging and fascinating.
@@notmyworld44 but if you have the skill to save seeds and plant things in your garden yourself, you do not need to go seeking unknowns. I think the last sentence you said says it all, this is just a thrill seeking thing for some, something “cool” but not needed.
I’m allergic to everything in the allium family. I never thought the allergy could potentially save my life.
I used to live in Cleveland, near a park. Those little onions grew along the path through the park. There was no mistaking them for anything else, I could smell the onion odor wafting up from the soil. I pulled some up and cooked them, they were SO delicious! Best onions ive ever had.
Thank you for that well edited, informative video on the dangers of daffodil bulb consumption mistaken as onion .
Username checks out. Thank you! :D
Wild nodding onions are edible, native in the northern United states and has the classic onion taste and smell. I harvest the leaves, chop them up and use them in my cooking. The bees also love the flowers. They grow wild in my yard and I have no plans to get rid of them. And I've never seen a daffodil with leaves that resemble anything close to an onion.
THANK GOD FOR MAKING THIS SHORT AND CLEAR!!
Very high quality and informative video
Thank you!
Very interesting video. Yes, we can confuse plants easily especially if we don't have experience. Thank you!
Very welcome!
I just saw this as a short on my feed and came here right away and subscribed. Thank you for putting your link in the comments.
This is so good to know. Our new homestead came with well established daffodils, so I need to keep any onions we plant away from that area. We also harvested wild prairie onions today and will be having them at supper.
I love your videos man. You do great work. Thanks for sharing your knowledge here.
Very welcome. Thank you for the kind words!
Field garlic has a rather unique smell when cut, it's kind of like someone made an apple pie with onions added
I love picking field garlic to cook, but if we let it grow really big in our yard before mowing, the smell can just about gag me.
Cool
This was interesting. I never would have expected that people could confuse daffodil bulbs with onions… But I suppose I see the similarity. people probably think they struck gold finding some giant wild onions lol.
Yes, I have encountered someone excitedly making this mistake before!
How about you do a video on onions, garlic and leeks and how deadly they might me if….
In 2004, I got with my then fiancé and her three kids. At this time, I was teaching myself how to cook. One of the cool things I did was to make an herbal infused olive oil. I bought a large bottle of olive oil and scrubbed the label off so i had a shiny glass bottle of oil. I then chopped a few bulbs of garlic into quarters and added a few sprigs of rosemary.
I cooked with this oil for weeks. And had no idea why my fiancé and kids and I were getting sicker and sicker. A month or so later, by divine intervention, I read a newspaper article talking about the dangers of room temperature oils and garlics, onions and leeks.
I had accidentally poisoned all of us with botulism. We were all lucky to survive.
Nobody tells you about this in school.
Does that mean allium oil needs to be let in te fridge?
I have found tons of wild garlic on our property while plowing up fields for planting. They are about the size of a shelled peanut and break apart like a garlic bulb does. They have a mild garlic taste that is great right out of the ground.
Great!
finally, a video explaining 3 things that doesnt take atleast 12 minutes
Great information. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing this.
Thank you .
Thank you .. learning something new everyday!!
Thank you! Great information!
I forage and love it! It's an amazing adventure thru the gorgeous fields under the amazing sun In Algarve,. Portugal 🇵🇹 😊.
Glad it was helpful!
There are daffodils in odd places around my big family family house. Grandmother used to tell me the gophers dragged them their lairs to eat later, then decided after all they didn't like the taste. So there the bulb sits, blooming year after year. 😁😁
I just ate field garlic just earlier today about the same time this video was posted lol found and harvested it myself
Damn. You got better?
@@jfsmarcelino1124 Field garlic is edible. I pickled some with some herbs and spices in honey. It makes a great savory glaze!
I grew up with both daffodils and wild onions growing around my yard. We never worried about a mix-up because they look entirely different.
It wasn't until I saw this video that I realized... No, they actually do look quite similar.
I can easily see how someone unfamiliar with them might mistake one for the other.
Thankful info 👍; just reminded me of a healthful Japanese root vegetable I ate long ago (looks like a cross between those American tiny white onions and a garlic clove) .
God saved me from illness by sending your video to me
so timely!!!!
thank you for the useful and interesting info
Very welcome!
I like it here, especially after setting the speed on .75... really good content well presented and packaged! Especially loved the insert of laughing man healed from daffodil poisoning, and the one of researcher surrounded by books.
I will start foraging now, for Lactuca ... errrr, gotta go back to the wild lettuce video.
Awesome! Glad to hear that.
I very nearly ate death camas that I found on my property one time. It looks very similar to wild onions, but also lacks the onion smell. I had just gotten over covid so I didn't know if the lack of smell was on my end or the bulbs. Decided to err on the side of caution and I'm glad I did.
Good information.
Thanks!
Thank You‼️
Very welcome!
Excellent and informative video
Quite interesting. I used to work as a florist at a garden center and always thought how similar those flower bulbs of looked to onions or garlic at a first glance. I can definitely see how people could easily make this mistake.
Yearly I have "wild onions" push up in one of our shrubbery beds. They smell like onions, but equally could be wild garlic. I merely pull them up and get rid of them, not wanting to take any changes... Thumbs Up!
I must share a very important warning with you all: The young sprouts of many plants, edible and poisonous, tend to look so alike to the point that I avoid them altogether unless I can make future use of them when identification is certain. For example, the young shoots of milkweed, dogbane, and pokeweed look alike, with dogbane being poisonous and pokeweed later so. By God’s Holy Grace, I know enough about other stuff so I can avoid potentially poisoning myself.
I harvest the field garlic litterly by the pound in Georgia almost all year round. Never had an issue. Got a 3 acre field of the stuff by my house
Awesome!
@@FeralForaging I was happy for it. Sadly I have to move fast, before city mows it down
Still feels weird to me that so many people don't know that MANY flowers grow from what we call "onions" in German(underground plant bulbs). Hell, I know since my mum always dragged me to plant/gardening/floral stores, I thought every mum did that
I just realized how bizarre it is that we call plant bulbs the same word as onions and yet this video is the first time I hear of any forager making this mistake.
That is strange indeed! Yes, when I say "onion" here I mean a member of the Allium genus.
Very informative.
Glad to hear that!
In Austria, specifically in Vienna, there's even a tradition of eating Bärlauch (wild garlic) (allium ursinum). In that case you only pick the leaves when they are freshly showing up tho, and you can easily distinguish them from other poisonous plants that may look similar, because of the rather distinct and intense smell of garlic they give off. If you smell garlic, it's okay to eat. (I'm not sure, but I think the bulbs themselves may be poisonous, but not the leaves? Or you never pick the bulbs in order to ensure there will be more wild garlic next year, maybe that's the real reason?)
Please show one on wild onion (large ones, not small scrawny specimen like some other videos I have seen by other people), wild garlic, wild leek vs. look alikes. Some of us do not have a good nose anymore and need visual clues.
One of my friends in the UK could have been that very case. She posted on FB how the whole family got sick by eating daffodils instead of spring onion.
Yikes!
Greetings from the UK. I'd forgotten about that supermarket incident.
"If it dont smell like an onion, it's not an onion" i feel that that silly phrase is going to save my life one day
i was wondering if you might have mentioned bluebells as well, as they can be mis-interpreted in a similar way and are also toxic. both daffodils and bluebells start poking up in spring, similar to wild garlic and onion, and often grow in the same areas
A pal of mine's wife was away for a few days and he accidentally ate some daffodil bulbs when cooking. He was seriously ill in hospital, but the Doc reckons he should be out in the spring !😂
Very good, thank you very much, important!!
"can you smell that familiar onion smell? that's because onions contain onion"
I have chives that look a lot like daffodil foliage - mixed with daffodils. I avoid that patch until well after the daffodil foliage has died back.
I would like to recommend you making a video about usage of dock seed .
Dock seeds can be found everywhere .
I love your videos, Good luck . ❤
I use dock seed and flour every year. Not a bad suggestion!
Thanks bro, for the info!
Now imagine spending your life building tolerance to this "onion" so one day you invite your worst enemy over to prepare them some of that delicious "onion" dish.
Great video!
Back in the 60s and early 70s some people try to get high off of daffodil bulbs some of them died painfully.
Yikes. Hopefully people don't try that now!
Thanks
Very welcome!
Good to know!
Agreed!
People ate tulip bulbs in a famine in Holland. Many rare varieties were lost due to this….But,tulips are not Daffodils,of course.
I remember eating a field garlic bulb when i was younger. The scent was so strong it made my step mother retch.
Yikes! It is strong
And that's why I only get onions from the supermarket I work at.
Wow that's crazy! I grow both and there is no way that they are similar.
Actually pretty cool channel.
I always feel in need to touch and squeeze leaves i find in the forest when taking a walk.
I sometimes find balm (melisse? I am german so some words i dont know), sage, mint, fennel (not dill, i hate dill), woodruff or different wild spinache and i love taking them home for cooking (or just eating raw even though its quite dangerous...).
Though i am quite scared of foraging wild garlick, yarrow and onions, because of similar plants that are extremely toxic.
when i got to my new house, i had a bunch of chive onion growing in the garden in the backyard, and luckily, i knew it was chive because of its distinct purple flowers and delicious onion aroma. i harvest it every spring and summer as it just grows like hair and add it to my ramen instead of buying onion from the store. I find chives to be delicious, but i also used to use chives to keep my foster parents from knowing i was smoking as it has a heavy aroma and can mask smoke on your breath, i think the positive connotation from the taste makes me like them more than i like spring onion
I found this beautiful wild carrot in the garden section today, with it's cute white flowers in their little separate bunches. Making some tea right now
They're already coming up now in GA
I thought you were going to say shallots. I love onion but it seems I’m allergic to shallots. Great video! ❤
Good video, informative.
Glad to hear that!
Lol soon as you showed the flower & said how they mistake that for an onion! Well this year when I was digging up for the garden my moms plants had reproduced a lot I kept pulling up these huge bulbs that resembled onions. Before they sprout flowers they look like onions
✍Furiously takes notes: *"If it doesn't smell like an onion, it's not an onion".* Got it👌
great video
Thanks!
I straight away before he got to it said WTF it wouldn't smell like an onion, otherwise we'd be accidently chomping down on many bulbs
In Britain the most common wild Alliums are A. ursinum [ramsoms] and A. schoenoprasum [chives]. A. usinum has a strong scent of garlic and white flowers, whilst A. schoenoprasum has a much milder scent and purple flowers.
This guy should be hired by the health service for advice.
Wild onions are a staple when I'm backpacking.
-and cattail stem bottoms. Can't forget those.
Very true