On the plus side it sounds like a plant that can thrive in salty conditions. Something to keep in mind when you consider that more agricultural land in CA is getting salty from irrigation. It might also be good for brackish areas and shorelines that cannot grow anything else.

Only because Unicornia hasn’t been officially established yet.

That said, these look tasty. I’m not sure how easy they are to get here in Georgia, though.

Like ramps (wild leek), it’s pretty abundant, has become a modestly popular garnish or ingredient in some upmarket eating places, but (IMHO) remains sufficiently esoteric that modest levels of harvesting are not going to impact populations. Probably saw far more harvest in the 18th century and before than at the present time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_saUN4j7Gw

Wild food is fine, but a certain amount of ‘respect’ is involved: in areas close to large human concentrations, the harvesting of wild food can be an AFD: entire ecosystems stripped of a single species, other species destroyed in the process.

And yes it is a “samphire” and one variant even grows in alkali sloughs in the prairies!

Makes a very nice pickle as well. Don’t tell anyone!

Local lore is that people used it to add salt to their diet when they first colonized that area. Dunno if it’s true, but it sounds plausible.

Here’s the good and bad.

Good: taste. Also, they grow really well in moist saline soil, which should be good news for, say, farmers around Bakersfield whose fields are too salty to grow conventional crops. Also they grow fast, which is good.

Bad: On the west coast, most salt marshes are a) small, b) home to endangered species. Yummy, yes, but please, please PLEASE wildcraft the weedy mustards, cardoon, fennel, etc., not the native pickleweed. It’s not endangered yet, but with all those uneaten weeds out there, why pick on a native that supports so much native life.

Worse: pollution. Most of the salt marshes are downstream from urban areas, and urban areas dump their sewage and (worse) their storm drains straight into the waters that these plants grow in. Most marshes were also used as dumping grounds, sometimes for toxic waste. Considering what’s on the bottom of most harbors on the west coast (radioactivity from Bikini? San Francisco Bay. Interesting heavy metals? every port. etc, etc etc), I sure as hell wouldn’t eat much from any salt marsh there.

Leave the Salicornia for the harvest mice and clapper rails. PLEASE.

What to do? If you want to be a trendy samphire farmer, purchase some salt-wasted land with a source of reclaimed (e.g. saline) water, and grow it yourself. With a fair amount of work, you might even get an organic certification, and the land will certainly be cheap.

Had to share.

We always steamed/boiled it very lightly then served it with a little butter and vinegar on it. In restaurants you often see just the tips, but it is better as the full stem, and you drag the ‘flesh’ off the woodier cores with your teeth.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2007/jun/30/features.weekend