Forage for food in your backyard (Edible Wild Plants)

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at the point when you scour your own lawn or backyard, you may be shocked with the accessibility of food that is openly given by Mother Nature.

Below is an incomplete list of Philippine Plants that are edible and can be freely harvested from backyards or even open spaces.

Uray (Pigweed: Amaranthus palmeri)

Found throughout the Philippines at lowlands and low altitudes, in open waste place, gregarious and abundant along sand bars and margins of streams.

Uray is a stout, erect, smooth, branched herb, 0.4 to 1 meter high. Stems are armed with slender, axillary spines. (The presence of spines differentiate it from kolitis (Amaranthus viridis). Leaves are glabrous, long-petioled, oblong to oblong ovate, or elliptic-lanceolate, 4 to 10 centimeters long, obtuse, alternate.

Flowers are very numerous, stalkless, green or greening-white, about 1 millimeter long, and borne in dense, axillary clusters and in elongated terminal axillary spikes. Sepals are 5 or 1-3, ovate to linear, often aristate. Petals are scarious. Bracts are linear, bristle-pointed and as long as the sepals or longer.

Fruits are utricles, wrinkled, nearly as long as the sepals. Seeds are minute, black and shining.

Pugahan (Fishtail palm: Caryota urens)

Found in forests, near streams, at low altitudes in Palawan. Cultivated for ornamental pot plants in the Philippines.

Pugahan is a palm, differing from other Caryota species in having many suckers and producing clusters of small-sized palms, up to 7 meters tall. Stems are solitary or clustered, slender to massive, with conspicuous nodal rings. Petioles, leaf-sheaths and spathes are scurfily villous. Leaves are 1.2 to 3 meters long; leaflets are obliquely cuneiform, erose and toothed; the upper margin acute. Spadix is scurfy, axillary and pendulous. Male buds are cylindric; male flowers are small, about 5 millimeters long. Fruit is 10 to 13 millimeters in diameter, bluish-black when ripe, containing a single globose seed.

Gulasiman (Purslane: Portulaca oleracea)

A very common weed found throughout the Philippines in settled areas.

Olasiman is an annual, prostrate or spreading, succulent, branched, smooth, often purplish herb, with the stems 10 to 50 centimeters long. Nodes are without appendages. Leaves are fleshy, flat, oblong-obovate, 1 to 2.5 centimeter long, with obtuse apex and wedge-shaped base. Flowers are yellow, stalkless, axillary and terminal few-flowered heads. Heads are solitary or cymose with compressed buds. Petals are five and yellow, about as long as the sepals and notched at the tip. Flowers open only for a few hours in the morning. Fruits are capsules which dehisce horizontally containing many minute, dark brown, heart-shaped seeds.

Kangkong (Water Spinach : Ipomoea aquatica Forsk)

Throughout the Philippines in stagnant streams, fresh-water swamps, and pools.

Kangkong is a smooth, widely spreading vine, with the stems trailing on mud or floating on water. Leaves are oblong-ovate, 7 to 14 centimeters long, with a pointed tip and heart-shaped or arrow-shaped base, long petioled, the margins entire or angular, and sublobed. Peduncles are erect, 2.5 to 5 centimeters long, with 1 or 2 flowers, borne in the axils of the leaves. Sepals are green, oblong, about 8 millimeters long. Corolla is narrowly bell-shaped, about 5 centimeters long, and purplish; limb nearly white or pale pink purple, about 5 centimeters in diameter, the tube deeper purple inside. Capsules are smooth and ovoid, about 1 centimeter long.

Alugbati (Red vine spinach: Basella alba)

Found in settled areas, in hedges, old cultivated areas, etc., throughout the Philippines.

Alugbati is a succulent, branched, smooth, twining herbaceous vine, several meters in length. Stems are purplish or green. Leaves are somewhat fleshy, ovate or heart-shaped, 5 to 12 centimeters long, stalked, tapering to a pointed tip with a cordate base. Spikes are axillary, solitary, 5 to 29 centimeters long. Flowers are pink, about 4 millimeters long. Fruit is fleshy, stalkless, ovoid or nearly spherical, 5 to 6 millimeters long, and purple when mature.