Plant Foods

Bulbs

Bulbs of the soap plant were baked and eaten like a potato. Bulbs of the Brodiaea or Blue Dicks were eaten either raw or roasted.

Berries

Berries of some of the manzanitas were pulverized and mixed with water to eat or sometimes mixed with other foods for flavor. Eastern Pomo made the berries into a drink. Toyon berries were heated in hot ashes and then eaten, but berries of the huckleberry, wild grape, western raspberry, wild strawberry and thimbleberry were eaten raw.

Ferns

Young curled tops of the bracken ferns were eaten raw, but also roasted for a day and a night in hot ashes and then boiled. The root stocks where also boiled and eaten.

Tubers of the Arrowhead or Tule Potato were dug up in the marshes and either roasted or boiled, some being preserved after roasting for winter use.

Roots and Rootstocks

Rootstocks of the Yellow Pond Lily were dug up and baked, the seeds being used fro bread or soup. The Squawroot or Yampah has roots that were gathered in spring, washed, trampled, then washed again, and cooked as potatoes are. One kind was boiled until mealy, peeled and cooked as a soup. Cowparsnip roots were cooked like rutabaga.

Leaves

Leaves of such plants as Miner's Lettuce, early spring Cowparsnip, and some clovers were eaten raw. Others, such as the leaves of some lupines, Hedge Mustard and goosefoots were boiled in baskets with hot stones and water like spinach.

Flowers

Flowers of some plants, such as clovers and mallows were eaten raw.

Sugar

Sugar was made by cutting bark of Sugar Pine and gathering the sweet sap when it solidified.

Gum

Gum was made from pine pitch.

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