Silvertops

[AJP]

An elderly lady was telling me she would make some good greens from weeds that grew NEAR the garden.

They called them silvertops, and tasted sort of like spinach, but a little more tender.

Does anybody know what this plant was??

Art

[SugarChile]

Never heard them called 'silvertops', but odds are she was talking about lambsquarters, aka Chenopodium album. See:

or take a look at the nutritional information: used to eat them when I was a young and had no money; as I recall, they were rather tasty.

Cheers, Sue

[Ray Drouillard]

It sounds a whole lot like lamb's quarters.

The seeds are good to eat, too. Also, unlike many green, they don't get bitter or tough with age.

Ray Drouillard (who often has better weeds than garden plants)

[Jim Elbrecht]

If the other folks are correct -- and I think they probably are- you're in for a treat with Lambs Quarters. I used to have them as a pernicious weed in my garden, but I seem to have ammended my soil & eaten them into oblivion. Now I have to look for them.

I'm surprised they aren't cultivated - at least I've never seen seeds for sale. They are good raw in salads or wilted in a steam bath for a minute or so. I prefer mine with a dab of butter & what must be a companion plant/weed as I find them together often-- Purslane.

just learned that Purslane has Omega 3 fatty acids as well as its concentration of Vit. C]

Purslane is more of an acquired taste-- it has a mucilaginous texture and an almost citric flavor. [the above site calls it peppery. . . I'll have to think about that next time I see some] But it goes well with the very muted flavor of the lambs quarters.

Either are good by themselves.

Jim

[Ray Drouillard]

Purslane actually was brought over as a cultivated plant -- by the French, IIRC.

I like my lamb's quarters and purslane steamed. I generally add a little salt and pepper vinegar [1].

Ray Drouillard

[1] I like to soak cayenne peppers in basalmic vinegar and use the vinegar. When the bottle gets a little low, I add more vinegar. After a few cycles of that, I dump the whole mess into the blender and make hot sauce.

[Janice]

You could always plant some seed from a plant you like, start selectively saving seed ;-)

I haven't seen much of those in my yard lately either, but I have an unlimited supply of red root pigweed! I'd even seen seed for that for sale along with the dandelions. No shortage of either in my yard! LOL

I wanted to grow some amaranth..of a more cultivated sort, but I figured it would be diseased here because one year I had some red root pig weed here where the backs of the leaves were covered with a very cottony fungus..not just a few.. all of them! Wasn't an insect infestation. I didn't spend time figuring out what it was as I was busy pulling them all out of the driveway, just thought it very odd. Never saw it after that, so I'm going to try some other amaranth this year if I can get it planted. My garden help has deserted me!

Purslane like my driveway. I had them growing among the moss rose too .. since they both liked the same sort of growing conditions. There are some purslane that have been developed as ornamentals now.. I think I saw some 2 or 3 years ago in a seed catalog.

Janice