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| The frosty leaves of Silverweed (Argentina egedii) |
Yesterday Katrina and I went to Chuckanut
Bay to harvest Pacific Silverweed (Argentina
egedii). We packed our yew wood
digging stick and binoculars, and set out on the cloudless day for Mud
Bay. Mud Bay is on the North end of
Chuckanut Bay and has marshland where Chuckanut Creek and a smaller, nameless
creek that drains Chuckanut Village enter the bay.
Five years ago Nancy Turner got me excited
about Silverweed while discussing a potential research project for my Master’s
Degree that would involve close work with Kwaxsistalla, a Kwakwaka’wakw elder
and Clan Chief. Before moving to
Victoria, I searched around Bellingham for a place to experiment with
Silverweed and found it growing in the Chuckanut Village salt marsh.
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| Silverweed roots resting on my digging stick |
The roots of Silverweed might not seem
like the best candidate for a food plant: they are only about as thick as a
pencil, are difficult to harvest because they often grow entangled with the
woody rhizomes of rushes, and have a bitter flavor. However, those observations are based on “wild”
Silverweed. Native Americans living on
the coast between Washington and Alaska carefully cultivated and weeded garden
patches every year to increase the size and abundance of Silverweed and other
root vegetables like Spring Bank Clover (Trifolium
wormskioldii). Flavor was also
improved by harvesting the roots in the fall, and storing them until the winter
when they were an important feast food.
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| At work in an estuarine salt marsh |
Returning to the marsh now and harvesting
Silverweed, I realize how much Kwaxsistalla has taught me, and how much more
there is to learn. My thesis experiments
only tested the effect of tilling and weeding on Silverweed abundance over a
very short time period. I didn’t have
time to explore how long-term harvesting alone may be enough to eliminate less
disturbance-adapted vegetation. Before
leaving the Chuckanut Village salt marsh, I couldn’t help but drive a few
stakes in the ground that I tended so that I can return and monitor the
ecological impact of my meal from the marsh.
I wanted to show Katrina one of the places
that Garry Oaks (Quercus garryana) still grow so we went further around
Mud Bay to Woodstock Farm. A few Garry
Oaks cling, desperate for sunlight, to the rocky shore of the bay. I recalled how I recently learned from a
Lummi woman that their word for the Chuckanut Mountains means “fires in a line.” Perhaps the name is an indication of an Aboriginal fire history that
would have favored Garry Oaks over the now dominant Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii). A few pit house depressions and a shell
midden exposure around the root ball of a wind-thrown Fir were further evidence
of the previous productivity of Mud Bay.
It is easy to see the destructive nature of clear-cut logging, but what
of the destructive nature of human inactivity….
Fire suppression and fallow gardens choke the biodiversity of this place.
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