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[Bumber]

I do like how redroot has more of a name that you'd expect from a RPG [than from real life] than hideroot.

Its other name, 'bloodroot', also sounds very RPG. Scientific name is Lachnanthes caroliniana.

[WanderingKid]

I've updated the first post for a more complete list of all the plants, and have marked them with some colors for reference.  Appreciate the help guys, keep the ideas coming! 

Also, yes, once I get this compiled and nailed down I'll share the raw for it, as well as the expectations.   

[wierd]

I nominate verbena as valley herb.

It has a similar habitat and growth habit, and has been historically linked with herbalism and subernatural abilities.  Specifically, it's supposed to be effective against witches and vapires, and to overall ward against evil and magic.  It is also basically a placebo, as far as modern medicine is concerned, but makes a good essential oil for perfumes. (Golden salve does nothing! How apropos!)

The fact that many wild varieties are not very hardy only adds to the mix. (You can't collect seeds from valley herb.)

[smjjames]

That list is very much incomplete.
(Dyestuffs are an interest of mine.)

One of the most important native yellows in my neck of NA is heartwood from osage orange. When boiled with alcohol, a powerful bright sunny yellow dye is released. More lightfast than several of the yellows on that list, and more intense too.

Indians from the great plains regions used it, along with yellow dock, and a few others as sources of yellow pigment.  The roots of the tree also yield the dye, but can be harder to harvest.

Oh I know the list is very much incomplete, and this is just looking at North America.

[Imp]

For fisher berries, how about cranberries?  They grow in bogs, a fine fishy spot, no?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranberry

[wierd]

I am havng difficulting thinking of a vine that is starchy enough to make a flour.

I can think of several pseudo-cereals, like buckwheats, that can make a suitable, high nutrition flour, but not any vines.


**edit
Upon further reflection, I nominate kudzu vine as the whip vine analog.

Apparently, the starches in their roots can actually increase metabolic absorption of alcohol, and has been frequently used as a food stuff in china and japan for centuries. Being a starch, I can clearly see this being made into booze. Wouldn't call it "wine", but meh. (Being a starch, it would need to be malted. This would make it more a malt liquor, and less a wine. Though sake is "rice wine", and likewise comes from starch. So, I suppose we can let it slide. Whip wine is a high power alcohol in the game, so this makes a good analog if you cross your eyes and look at it just right.)

[smjjames]

I am havng difficulting thinking of a vine that is starchy enough to make a flour.

I can think of several pseudo-cereals, like buckwheats, that can make a suitable, high nutrition flour, but not any vines.

I don't know of any vine plants that has any seeds that can be made into flour. Whip vine might not even have a RL association, at least none of the usual food plants.

[wierd]

See the edit above.

Here's a recipe for kuzomochi, a japanese dessert made com kuzuko, the flour made from kudzu vine roots.

The roots of the vine are rich in high-quality and expensive starches, and have apparently been shown in some clinical studies to enchanve alcohol absorption of individuals who consume it.

Looks about as good as we can hope for as an analog. It likes sunny, warm, moist localities, and cannot tolerate frost.

[smjjames]

Yea I suppose kudzu is close enough of an analog, and I was speaking from what I knew. Didn't think of kudzu as a food plant besides for goats.

What about rat weed? The prefstring 'hanging leaves' suggests a grass or a reed (or herb)with large or long leaves, is one of DFs 'poor dwarfs liquors', and is perhaps a swampy plant. Nothing comes to mind, though I'll try a google search of some kind.

Edit: Corn/maize??? It has hanging leaves, just a thought which isn't likely to be it and I was trying to look on wikipedia and since corn/maize is used....

[wierd]

Given that it is a low quality alcohol, and not a sexy one like whiskey or burbon, I wouldn't pick corn or maize.

I'd be more apt to pick one of the weedier amaranth species, like redroot pigweed instead.  Those can also be cooked as a pottage green if you are starving to death, but don't taste very good.

[Imp]

Given that it is a low quality alcohol, and not a sexy one like whiskey or burbon, I wouldn't pick corn or maize.

I'd be more apt to pick one of the weedier amaranth species, like redroot pigweed instead.  Those can also be cooked as a pottage green if you are starving to death, but don't taste very good.

Or how about dandelions for rat weed?

Selected less for it's appearance, as to the fact that it's commonly considered a weed, but it is edible (and nutritious - though in most of the US at least is culturally held to be unfit to eat), can be made into two types of dyes (a yellow from the flower, and a purple/red dye of really poor quality from the roots - note some strains of dandelion may give a better dye), and of course can be fermented (dandelion wine has some following - though most people would probably turn up their noses at it).

Neither of those dyes are an ugly green, but we've already established that green dyes from plants are very hard to find.

So, it's a common weed that few want to eat, few want to dye with, and few want to brew into alcohol, but it can serve all of these purposes - sounds like the functional demands of rat weed to me.

[smjjames]

Yeah it was an off the wall idea and you know more about plants than I do anyhow.

Bloated tuber could be either potato or cassava and cassava is even a really drought resistant plant. The prefstring seems to describe potato better though.

[Gentlefish]

I've got a blackberry bush. The plants grows like mad but only bears fruit late summer to autumn.

[wierd]

Yeah it was an off the wall idea and you know more about plants than I do anyhow.

Bloated tuber could be either potato or cassava and cassava is even a really drought resistant plant. The prefstring seems to describe potato better though.

One of the (un)fortunate consequences of having an impoverished childhood, is having learned about wild edible vegetables, as a practical food source. 

On a positive note, when the zombie apocholypse happens, I won't starve to death. I can usally find 1 to 2 edible plants every square meter of random roadside I look at. May not be "choice", and certainly not "tasty", but "edible".

"Survival stew" was a staple food product in my childhood. (Made from toasted and sliced prickly pear cactus pads, young cattail shoots and tubers, salsify, wild rabbit meat, and a few other ingredients I don't rightly remember anymore.)

Now I make good money as an engineer/NC programmer, and don't need to eat such things. There WAS a time though... (we lived on less than 10$ a week.)

[Imp]

Bloated tuber could be either potato or cassava and cassava is even a really drought resistant plant. The prefstring seems to describe potato better though.

The thing that seems most distinctive about bloated tubers to me is that you cannot grow them.  If this trait is intended to be kept about them, that makes me lean far from considering them as potatoes or cassavas, these plants are widely cultivated.

In fact, most plants can be cultivated.

But there are some types of mushrooms which are really impractical to cultivate, and would be even harder in DF than real life, like chantrelles, cepes, and matsutake.  Most of these mushrooms need to interact with the roots of specific types of still living trees and have some complex, or at least poorly understood, additional requirements which makes it easier to try and find them in the wild than it is to try and prepare an orchard of their preferred tree type and successfully farm them.

Of course, in real life, rare and hard to mass produce things gain increased value from this, unlike DF's low value but hard to get many of bloated tubers.  But I'd still lean towards some sort of highly specific symbiotic condition mushroom rather than an easily farmed plant for the RL equivalent for these ones.