Edible Weeds in Your Yard: Sow Thistle

Thistles are plants that look like they want to eat you. But the good news is you can eat them.





Chances are when checking out your weeds, you refer to sow thistle as "the scary, ugly one." The thistles as a group have a menacing appearance. The leaves are spiky-shaped and often sharp with prickles or thorns at maturity.

The young leaves, however, can be picked and cooked up for a tasty sidedish. You can cook the older leaves, but it takes longer. And if they've become prickly and you have to knock all the prickles off, then it's typically more effort than it's worth. My backyard has some big thistles growing in it, which I will eventually throw in a pot.

If you ever got lost on a hike and didn't have any more food, it would be nice to identify a nearby thistle and set to cooking. So how to identify? The sow thistle has been annoying lawn owners as long as we've had grass, so most of us instinctively know what it looks like - even if we don't know what it's called. But the thistles that make the greatest impression on us are the mature, scarier ones. It's helpful to be able to ID the tastier young plants.

Fortunately, baby thistles resemble the dandelion, the most common and well-known weed. Dandelions and sow thistles both produce little yellow flower poofs. The trick is: dandelions produce a single yellow flower. Sow thistles produce multiple yellow flowers. The dandelion structure is also very ordered. The leaves form a circular, organized base and the flower sticks up from the center. The sow thistle is the drunk uncle of the dandelion. It's rougher around the edges and less symmetrical. It overgrows. It flops here and there. It gets ugly.

But how does it taste? Green Deane claims that it's delicious with some olive oil, spices, and a little grated cheese.



I hope to draw my own conclusions soon and report back!