Spring Beauty, Appalachian Cuisine

Spring Beauty, ©A. Rutherford

This may be a delicacy that only a few families like mine eat any more . . . hog tater. 

Some people call it tanglegut, the more sophisticated among us call it branch lettuce, but no one back through the generations in my family ever knew what it really was. All they knew was that very early in the Spring in the Appalachian mountains, these little shoots would spring up and tender green leaves would emerge, followed by tiny pale pink buds and flowers. After a long winter of eating nothing but what had been canned from last year's garden and the contents of large sacks of various kinds of dried beans, they were starved for something fresh and green. 

So they would go out in the woods to the spots where they knew it grew, as soon as they could reasonably expect that it was "hog tater pickin' time." Every family guarded the secret of the patches where they could count on finding it.  However, its growing season is only two to three weeks and then it is gone. Kind of like the rarity of truffles in Europe. 

I remember when I was a little girl and living in the city with my family, the relatives would pick a sack and pack it up nicely and put it on the Greyhound bus and the driver would make sure it got to us still fresh. It would travel through the night to us, much faster and safer than UPS or FedEx can ship anything today. 

The aunties would call us to let us know it was on its way, and we would go to the bus station to pick it up. 

In recent years after the family "back home" were either gone or too elderly to gather and ship it, I have longed to have it again. A few years ago my brother and I made it our mission to find a place where it is still growing. Three or four years ago we did! 

And here it is, on my mother's kitchen table—last year's bounty. 

Served as it is traditionally with boiled potatoes, bacon fried crisp, and fried corn bread patties. 

The hog tater itself is washed well (although it "picks" very clean), and is wilted in hot bacon grease with a little vinegar and salt added to it, which is then poured over the top of the fresh greens. 

I wish I could express to you what it tastes like . . . how heavenly it is to have it a for a couple of meals each Spring . . . if Emeril only knew . . . 

Here are some scenes from our private “stash” we found on a hillside down a country road a few miles out of town.

After some research, we discovered that our little plant with the colorful names actually had a lovely name: Spring Beauty. Even its botanical name is quite nice: Claytonia virginica. 

Don't know how this evolved into hogtater and tanglegut 

But I think these mountain folk names are quite wonderful, don't you? 

Spring Beauty—A Woodland Wildflower With Tasty Tubers 

Plants & Gardens News Volume 21, Number 1 | Spring 2006 

by Scott D. Appell 

One of our prettiest and earliest-blooming wildflowers—spring beauty (Claytonia virginica)—is also a delicious vegetable. It may be the definitive tater tot. Native to moist woodlands, sunny stream banks, and thickets in eastern North America, this low-growing plant has tiny underground tubers that can be prepared and eaten just like potatoes. Indeed, another common name for the spring beauty is the "fairy spud." 

A member of the Portulacaceae, or portulaca family, and a cousin to other well-known wild edibles such as purslane (Portulaca oleracea) and miner's lettuce (Montia perfoliata), spring beauty is one of about 15 species in the Claytonia genus. The genus is distributed throughout North America and Australasia and has long been a source of good snacking. Both the Iroquois and Algonquin dined on the boiled or roasted tubers of Claytonia virginica. 

A perennial herb, spring beauty usually grows about six inches tall and eight inches wide. It sports grasslike, succulent, dark green leaves. In early spring, dense racemes of star-shaped, pink-tinged white flowers appear and last for about a month. 

When spring beauties blossom in large drifts across the landscape, the effect is stunning. 

The tubers are found about two to three inches under the soil and measure from a half inch to two inches in diameter. In his classic culinary field guide, Stalking the Wild Asparagus, Euell Gibbons wrote a charming chapter on these wild edible treats. He remarked that the "spuds" don't really taste like potatoes at all but rather are sweeter in flavor, like boiled chestnuts, though with a softer, smoother texture. 

However, even back in 1970, Gibbons sounded a note of caution and restraint. He warned against overharvesting the tubers in the wild and diminishing the plants' flowering display. "The tubers are good food for the body," he wrote, "but after a long winter, the pale-rose flowers in early spring are food for the soul." 

These days, wild collection of spring beauty and other native plants is controversial, due to issues of sustainability. (In at least one state—Massachusetts—spring beauty is now listed as endangered!) 

We never knew that one could eat the tubers; we only harvested the leaves and the flowers which were small and delicate. 

If you are by this way this week stop by and sit a spell! I'll treat you to a mess of hogtater with all the trimmin's! 

I'll leave the latch out for you . . .

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