Remember that A healthy person can easily go for more than 7 days without food.
The Women of the Lahkota Soiux used to save rawhide scraps in case of winter famine - they can be boiled down into a horrible soup that is better than starving ( thus the stories that they were reduced to eating their moccasins) . If they
made it through till spring, those scraps would be cooked down into rawhide glue for seasonal repairs .
The Souix names for the months sound romantic - until you know what the mean! The Moon Of The Popping Trees is February, when it is so cold in the Northern Prairie ( sometimes below -40 F ) that the remaining sap in the trees freezes, expands, and the tree explodes!
When foraging, watch what the animals eat. Mice, Prarie Dogs, Coyotes and Bears especially. Do not trust what Deer or birds eat, they can tolerate stuff that gives humans montezumas revenge from both ends.
When in doubt, don't eat it, or at worst, if desparate and starving, taste a little bit on the tip of your tongue and see what happens in half an hour. If that goes well, eat a nibble and wait again. Make absolutely certain you have a good source of clean water for "flushing" and dilution of any poisons, because if you are wrong and start vomiting you *will* die of dehydration.
Unidentified Roots can be questionable - is it wild carrot or Osha Root or poisonous hemlock ? The same for mushrooms.
Berries also must be clearly identified - pokeweed, mistletoe, holly, yew berries and ivy berries can kill you. Monseed looks like grapes and birds tolerate it well but it is toxic to humans.
Almost all pine nuts, esp pinon are edible, if you can find and harvest them. Out of season, you are out of luck.
some need to be cooked before eating.
eastern white pine needle tea: use long green fresh needles, make an infusion with very hot water, but do not boil.
eastern white pine inner bark can be harvested, roasted, and ground into a flour, as done by the algonquins.
bear in mind:
be able to identify your trees and needles with certainty!
The hemlock trees ( not the hemlock flowers) are said to be safe.
Yew is extremely toxic.
"The junipers and cedars are safe for most people in moderate amounts; that said, many of them do contain relatively powerful compounds. Eastern White Cedar (Thuja occidentalis) for example is one of the richest sources of thujone, which is a stimulant at low doses but at higher doses toxic to the nervous system and liver."
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Thujone is in culinary herbs like sage and rosemary, and can be toxic or hallucinatory in quantity.
Beware of Wormwood - it is good ( ie topically for bruises) IF YOU ARE WELL TRAINED .
Essential oil of wormwood contains more than enough thujone to kill you
The levels available from White Cedar may be risky for the young, or those pregnant or nursing.
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stolen from the webs:
"For regular consumption across a range of constitutions the true pines are the best, though. Almost all of them are quite benign, except perhaps (again) if you're pregnant, as they are reputed to be able to induce miscarriage (also probably dose-dependent, but who would want to mess around with a risk like that?) Ponderosa Pine, also called yellow pine, is the only one that I am aware of being potentially harmful, and this seems to be usually connected with pregnancy risks as well, but to a much greater degree, at least based on its well-known toxicity to cattle. Clearly there are plenty who use it, but if you have multiple pine species around it may be best to concentrate on the others. Couldn't hurt. White Pine in particular is pretty much unimpeachable. It's easy to positively identify by the needles, which are attached in clusters of 5. White pine is the only pine with this characteristic. A good primer on pine tea:
http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/3126/#b Anyone further interested in the ethnobotany and chemistry of human use of pine products for nutrition will find this paper a treat:
https://dspace.library.uvic.ca:8443//handle/1828/3248"
hope this helps
prof marvel