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Wild Eats: Ponderosa Pine LbNA #57380

Owner:Adoptable
Plant date:Apr 5, 2011
Location: Freeman Cemetery
City:Spokane
County:Spokane
State:Washington
Boxes:1
Planted by:The Fat Lady
Found by: Disney-Fan
Last found:Aug 16, 2012
Status:FFF
Last edited:Apr 5, 2011
Wild Eats: Ponderosa Pine

When the day comes that we’re all starving--whether it’s because Nature knocked us down, or because the nutcases took over, or merely because we got lost while letterboxing--we’ll be looking at every scrap of leaf or twig and asking ourselves, “Can I eat that?” Some wild eats (huckleberries!) get an instantaneous and enthusastic “Yes!” while others are so labor-intensive that you gotta wonder if you’ll spend more calories gathering them than you’d get from the meal. Ponderosa pine seeds might be one of these foods.

The seeds are located inside the female pine cones (yes, there are male and female cones; the females are woodier with protective spikes on the outsides). Ponderosa seeds are a favorite of birds such as chickadees, finches, and jays, and any area hiker has probably seen squirrels scavenging them enthusiastically. All summer, squirrels break the pine cones from the branches, hurl them to the ground (the Fat Lady once got a dent on her car in one of these incidents) and take them away to be dismantled.

The problem for a hungry human lies in acquiring the cones; if you’re neither a squirrel nor a chickadee, you have to haul yourself bodily up a tree that can grow 100 feet tall. That, or wait for a squirrel to drop a cone from on high, and hope that the impact doesn’t kill you.

Nonetheless, Native peoples traditionally managed to gather and prepare Ponderosa seeds as part of their diets. According to the Utah State University Extension Service, tribal people also ate the phloem, the sweetish inner bark of the tree. It’s important to note that the needles of Ponderosa should not be considered as food; pregnant cows and other animals have experienced miscarriages when they’ve browsed them.

This letterboxing excursion will take you to an area full of Ponderosa pines, and you might consider searching for dropped cones to see if you can locate the seeds. The box lies in the Freeman cemetery, south of Spokane, Washington. From I-90, take the Pines Road exit and head south for 11.6 miles. Just past milepost 75 (on your left), turn left onto First Avenue, cross the railroad tracks, and continue on into the cemetery. Drive through the cemetery, past a cockeyed sign reading “cemetery parking,” and exit your vehicle. (Turn it off first.) Return to the parking sign and from there walk 15 steps at 340 degrees. Peer into the Ponderosa forest at 70 degrees and see, partially obscured by grasses, a large moss-covered rock at the forest’s edge, about 6 steps from where you’re standing. Just beyond that rock, about two more steps into the woods, is a second large rock, also covered in moss. The letterbox lies under the northeast edge of this second rock. Fortunately, the trees here are not terribly tall, so if a squirrel does drop a pine cone on you, you’ll likely survive.

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NOTE: The above prose is for entertainment purposes only. Fat Lady cannot be held responsible for the consequences if anyone chooses to ingest wild, non-FDA-approved plants, animals, or minerals. Just sayin’.