What is this plant?
Lately, I often hear the debate between the difference between mixologist and bartender and I try to stay as far away from it as I can – as I find it to be a bit like politics or religion. You are never going to change the other person’s mind and you are just going to waste a lot of breath that could be better used for humming, yodeling, or just for plain ol’ breathing. But today, I really felt like a mixologist. Greg Robeson, from Oregon Bounty, asked me if I would like to go to Eastern Oregon along the Oregon Trail and find local ingredients to use in a cocktail that will be featured on their website. Today we spent the day driving across Eastern Oregon looking for places to shoot and ingredients.
Gorgeous bush that has a beautiful nose a bit like fresh tobacco.
Armed with three guidebooks about edible plants of the arid west, a camera, a four-wheel drive vehicle, and google we set out in hopes of finding the perfect ingredients in front of a picturesque setting. Let’s just say after today I know I made the right choice in profession, as botany doesn’t seem to be my strength. I spent most of the morning trying to figure out what plants we had seen to no avail – and quite honestly I recognized how few plant names I actually know.
Could this be Indian Paintbrush?
By early afternoon all Greg and I could think about is trying to find a berry and we soon found ourselves on marshy stream banks and in bramble bush only to find a berry – that if I did identify correctly is poisonous! So we carried on into the beginning of the Ochoco Forest and found some huckleberry bushes with no berries and some strawberry plants with no strawberries – still too early for fruit in the high country.
Could this be the poisonous bitter berry?
Nonetheless, I got plenty of flora and fauna to mess around with and I’m planning on making a bitters out of what I found (hopefully I won’t poison myself). Made me see into a tiny little piece of what life on the Oregon Trail was like as most people coming through this area at the turn of the century weren’t familiar with the plants around them. I’d like to think that they tasted the plants around them and tried to make tinctures and tonics out of them to see if they had any health benefits.
Here’s some photos of what we found – if you know what any of these plants are – please do tell!
This smells a little like dill – perhaps a relative.
There were a lot of these little flowers in the desert -
my guess is that they are meadowsweet.
No clue – but they smell like fresh cut grass with a hint of rose petal.
Gorgeous delicate pea pods.
No clue – but what a beautiful flower.
This flower was going to seed and it is the smelliest sample I got. These were all over the painted hills and I have the sneaking suspicion they will all be gone by the time we go back to shoot in August.
First time to The Painted Hills (after almost six years in Oregon) Just a little embarrassed I hadn’t been sooner.
Purple Thistle (can’t touch this thing
as it has so many spines, spikes, and pricks on it)
This is definitely sage and I will most likely use it in the drink.
I am a mixologist bartender and this is my blog.