Important: Safety Warning
This page states that certain wild plants are safe to eat. Its identifications and edibility claims are more than a century old and in some cases simply wrong, and deadly look-alikes exist for many edible species. Never eat a wild plant on the strength of this text.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Wild Potatoes, Tubers, Bulbs and Bread Root
There are so many wild potatoes and potato-like tubers native to America that the Indians never lacked for spuds no matter where they roamed, although paleface campers are often unaware of the food wealth that surrounds them. Also, common yellow water lilies, called moose lilies or hog lilies, have edible bulbs, as has the arrow leaf, that grows along the shores of lakes and ponds, whose other name is green arum. Boil the roots of either, and they eat like potatoes.
Early French explorers wrote home about the wonderful pomme blanche that could be had for the digging, sweet as bread, and plentiful all along their Mississippi route and westward. It was the common prairie turnip or bread root, that the Indians cooked like potatoes, and it's just as good today.