On collecting carob pods

Christopher Nyerges

Today I was collecting carob pods from a frontyard in the Glendale

area. I was on a street lined with carob trees, those large, stately

trees planted during the Depression that drop tons of the brown carob

pods to the ground each season. The ripe carob pod is a tasty treat and a

nutritious food.

“What’s that you’re doing?” a lady yelled from a car.

“I’m collecting these to eat,” I responded.

“You’re kidding, right?” she responded in shock as she drove away.

I was filling two shopping bags of these flattened brown pods from a

lawn area that I could almost call the Mother Lode. The pods were not the

dry flat ones you sometimes find, but rather thick, tender and sweet.

It is amazing that people pay such a price for the carob in the health

food stores, and so often they are not even buying the pure product. I

bit into a pod while I was collecting, and I chewed this candy bar that

grows on trees. It was good, and as I filled my bags, I knew that I’d

have many evening snacks for my family, which includes Otis our

pot-bellied pig.

But not everyone has a high regard for this tree. On the street where

I was gathering, there had already been several of the old carob trees

cut down, and replaced with the somewhat pointless carrotwood tree.

A man came out while I was collecting on his front lawn.

“Is it alright that I collect here?” I asked him. “Or were you going

to collect these for yourself?”

The man let out a loud, nearly stunned laugh.

“Take them all!,’ he bellowed. “I don’t want them. They stink. I wish

you could take the whole tree!

“Take them all,” he loudly and derisively responded.

I considered our different sense of values. Here is a grand tree that

provides ample shade and home for many animals. It is a drought-resistant

tree from the Middle-Eastern deserts thatcan survive without our care or

attention. And every fall, it drops a nearly perfect food -- those brown

leathery pods thatare rich in sugar, rich in the B vitamins, and contain

three times the calcium of milk. They can be eaten as is, or collected

and ground to be added to drinks, or cakes, or even used as a sugar

substitute.

But the reality is that few people want a free and highly nutritious

food in a society that prides itself on appearances. To be caught picking

pods off the ground is to have your neighbors think you are poor. Thus,

it is regarded as better to buy all one’s food, and to eat from the fast

food eatery.

By our choices, we are losing our floral heritage. We are viewing the

world around us through our shallow eyes and choosing to destroy a most

valuable tree.

Several cities have announced that they will gradually remove their

carob trees and replace them with the similar looking carrotwood trees.

Carob trees crack sidewalks and result in lawsuits. Limbs fall from

rotten branches, usually the result of poor pruning practices.

I move down the street a few houses and collect a bright yellow and

orange mushroom that grows in horizontal layers on the carob trees.

“What are you collecting that for?” a lady asks.

“I’m going to have it for dinner,” I told her.

“What?” she yells in shock. “You mean you eat that stuff?”

It turns out that this particular fungus is quite good, when properly

prepared. You can’t eat it raw, but a process of boiling and frying

results in a food that tastes remarkably like chicken. In fact, it is

commonly known as chicken-of-the-woods mushroom.

In my short hour of collecting, I have enough carob for two months,

and enough mushrooms for several meals. I have been ridiculed by at least

seven people -- two directly to my face. I also had the opportunity to

slow down, to participate in the miracle of nature right here in the

city.

I looked at the changes in the trees since the last time I’d been

there, and I observed bird nests, squirrel nests and ant nests. I

marveled that these trees persevere all around us, providing us with

lessons and the needs of everyday life. But these are not lessons and

needs that the people of today seem to care for. In a world where

external appearances and tidiness counts for everything, the carob is an

endangered tree.

We need to begin to concern ourselves not only with tomorrow, but with

the next generation, the next decade, the next century. To remove carob

trees -- indeed, to remove any trees -- is not in the best interest in

the next generation, nor the generation after that, or the one after

that.

We may not know it yet, and we certainly don’t believe it, but our

ecological and cultural salvation lies to a large degree in the quality

and quantity of trees that we plant and nurture.

CHRISTOPHER NYERGES is the author of “Guide to Wild Foods,” “Enter the

Forest,” and “Urban Wilderness.” He has led wild food walks since 1974.

He is the co-director of School of Self-Reliance. Information about his

classes and books is available from School of Self-Reliance, Box 41834,

Eagle Rock, CA 90041, or on-line at www.self-reliance.net.