Let Medicine be Thy Food: Evening Primrose

I wrote a post back in october last year asking for help identifying a couple plants: https://steemit.com/ecotrain/@senorcoconut/please-help-identify-these-3-plants

That same plant from the photo above has come back in a slightly different form...

This WEED I was told it was by so many (mostly on some facebook plant identification group) turns out to be the **Common Evening Primrose, also known as King's cure-all. With a name like that it has to have something good!

In the first photo it took it's rosette form. As a biennial, the second year it will grow tall and make pretty edible flowers and nutritious seeds.

Here's a couple bits from Wikipedia:

• The seeds have a protein content of about 15%, an oil content of 24% and contain about 43% cellulose. The proteins are especially rich in the sulphur-containing amino acids methionine and cysteine, as well as in tryptophan - all essential amino acids. There is a relative deficiency in lysine and four other essential amino acids. The nutrient of greatest interest is gamma-linolenic acid (GLA), a polyunsaturated fatty acid.

• The leaves of the evening primrose can be used from April to June when the plant is not flowering yet. They can be eaten raw in salads or cooked like spinach or in soups. Several Native American tribes made tea from the evening primrose leaves and used it as a dietary aid. Evening primrose leaves contain flavonoids, mucilages, tannins, sugar, resin and phytosterols.

You see... I'm glad I can listen to my gut once in a while, this plant is food and medicine. Something was telling me this was one of those plants we don't want to pull out of the ground!

Always listen to yourself... and untill next time 😁, Know your Wilds, it could come in handy one day!