In our second to last Plant of the Week posting for the season, we have a double whammy.
A great foodstuff, plantain packs a nutritious punch yielding many vitamins and minerals. Their leaves can be eaten raw or cooked, and their seeds can be used in soups.
In addition to their edibility, they have also been used for their medicinal properties by both Europeans and First Nations alike. Commonly found all over Thetis (and now much of the world!), they are surprisingly not native. They have been around since the arrival of the first European settlers and are now considered naturalized.
In the book, Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer refers to them as “White Man’s Footstep”:
“Our people have a name for this round-leafed plant: White Man’s Footstep. Just a low circle of leaves, pressed close to the ground with no stem to speak of, it arrived with the first settlers and followed them everywhere they went. It trotted along paths through the woods, along wagon roads and railroads, like a faithful dog so as to be near them.”
www.thetisislandnatureconservancy.org/single-post/plant-of-the-week
Charlotte Fesnoux,
ThINC Program Coordinator
