Kathy Keeler

One of the most visually interesting plants in my garden is lungwort, Pulmonaria officinalis, in the borage family, Boraginaceae; the flowers are both red and blue and the dark green leaves have white spots, making it an easy plant to recognize. It is low-growing and has spread as a pretty ground cover. Lungwort is native […]

It is winter across North America and gardens are frozen. Yet we eat vegetables, not all of them imported from warmer regions. Squashes are traditional winter vegetables, with dozens of distinctive varieties. The word squash is from the Narragansett tribe of Rhode Island. European settlers had never seen squashes before and had no name for […]

Lettuce is one of the most common and recognizable vegetables. And, surprisingly, one we under-use.  Lettuce is Lactuca sativa, an annual plant in the daisy family (Asteraceae). Since we eat the leaves before it flowers, we rarely notice the small yellow flowers or the seed heads with whitish wind-carried seeds. The name lettuce is derived […]

My last post (Houseleek, Jupiter’s Beard, Sempervivum tectorum Part 1) described the characteristics of the houseleek, Sempervivum tectorum. This post talks of its healing history and folklore.  The Ideal Houseplant of the Ancients Sempervivum means “live forever.” The species epithet of the common houseleek, tectorum, means “of roofs.” Its odd common name, houseleek, also means “of […]

One of the most widely-planted succulents is the houseleek Sempervivum tectorum (Crassulaceae, stonecrop family). Grown since Roman times, it has many common names. You might know it as hens-and-chicks, bullocks eye, Jupiter’s beard, Thor’s beard, syngreen, sengren, liveforever, or something else. The name hens-and-chicks or hens-and-chickens (a name also applied to other plants which make little replicates […]

This is the time of year that people with maple trees (genus Acer, maple family Aceraceae) are the envy of their neighbors. Maples, especially American and Japanese maples, turn bright red in the fall. The Many Maple Offerings But, maples have more to offer than that. If the maples are sugar maples (Acer saccharum), of […]

Dandelions, Taraxacum officinale (sunflower family, Asteraceae) are perhaps the most widely recognized  U. S. weed. Huge amounts of money and time are spent killing dandelions. How the Dandelion got its Name No one knows why the scientific name is Taraxacum. In 1600 pharmacists called it Taraxacon, but whether that word is based on the  Arabic words […]

We eat stalks of celery, raw and cooked (see Part 1), but the celery plant (Apium graveolens, parsley family, Apiaceae) is the source of three other foods: leaf celery, celery seed. and celeriac.  Leaves of Celery Some celery, particularly in Asia, is raised for its leaves, not its stalks. Leaves of most celery plants are […]

According to kitchen folklore, you can lose weight eating celery because it takes more calories to chew and digest than it contains.  Which gives you a clue that celery doesn’t get much respect. Celery is related to dill and carrots but unlike dill, where we eat the seeds and leaves or carrots where we eat […]

As noted in part 1, we eat only the leaf stems of rhubarb, not leaves, flowers, fruit or roots. Disclaimer: Rhubarb leaves are quite poisonous. They contain dangerous concentrations of oxalic acid compounds. In low concentrations, oxalic acid tastes good to people, but the concentration of oxalic acid compounds in rhubarb leaf blades is much […]