bird’s toe n sAppalachians
An unidentified edible green.
1952 (1964) Ritchie Swapping Song 78 seKY, Jack and Judy and Joy go into the woods and gather wild flowers to make May baskets for their friends. Fire pinks, black-eyed susies, . . birds-toe, sweet-smelling arbeauty blossoms. 1956 in 1980 Still Run for Elbertas 80 KY, Wild greens spelled the pintos and rabbit. We ate branch lettuce and ragged breeches and bird’s-toe and swamp mustard. And again the beans and rabbit when the plants toughened. 1969 DARE (Qu. I28b, Kinds of greens) Inf KY40, Bird’s toe—not synonymous with crow’s-foot; KY42, Bird’s toe—small white root, pink blossom, grows in rocky places. 2005 (2006) Crowe Zoro’s Field 136 cwNC (as of c1980), I remember a conversation that took place on the back porch of an old mountain sawmill shack looking out into the woods, not long after I had arrived in Polk County. . . The talk was about gardening, mountain farming, and the old days—of garden sass and wild greens, bird’s toe, fiddleheads, speckled dick and lamb’s-quarter.