Myths and Legends: Ramps
In a shady woodland somewhere in Eastern North America there is a forager harvesting Ramps at this very moment, and due to the last five years on social media, he or she is probably debating the topic of sustainability in his or her head. Do I harvest just one leaf per plant? Do I take a shovel out and dig every single Ramp I see? Do I harvest on public land? Do I harvest only on private land? All of these questions swirl around in his or her head because of the abundance of debate around this species.
In the time that I have been foraging, 17 years or so, I have seen this topic go from rarely, if ever discussed, to don’t make a post about Ramps on social media because you don’t want to deal with the outrage. Much of this has to do with outrage culture in general on social media and the way that people choose to communicate with one another when they are presented with ideas they may not agree with. I love debate. But it is in the debate itself that things are figured out and solidified in a respectful, even loving way. So in that spirit please remember that this article may ruffle your feathers, but that doesn’t mean that I advocate mowing down forests and harvesting everything there is available to eat.
Tidying up
I need to address this issue first and foremost so that it is right at the beginning of the article. Some people that read my yearly posts about Ramps and how they are not endangered often comment, or act as if I am issuing a license to all to go out and pillage the Ramps of the world until every last one has been removed. This issue emerges because people often read social media posts emotionally rather than logically. I have never once said that I think it is ok to irresponsibly dig entire patches of Ramps. In fact, I have been advocating for years now to not harvest them on public land.
So I say this for all the world to see: I believe that we should seek a strategy to keep Wild Leeks in great abundance and off of the Endangered Species List, and I think that in order to do so we should seek a variety of strategies that both allow harvesting to continue and allow them to thrive. I believe that this is possible. I believe that with enough information and a patience to show people the correct ways to harvest in your ecosystem that we can turn this subject from a debate into a thriving celebration of a delicious wild edible. The ‘One Leafers’ can sit with ‘Whole Planters’ and enjoy each others company. That is my dream anyway.
How widespread are Ramps anyway?
Allium tricoccum can be found in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota and in Canada it can be found in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.
That list constitutes 27 U.S. states and 4 Canadian Provinces. Because I believe in the raw data collection power of every day citizens I gleaned that range map from iNaturalist.org. In my own home state of Michigan, the well-respected source of information called Michigan Flora, which I absolutely love, has a terribly incorrect range map for Michigan in regards to Allium Tricoccum. I have personally witnessed this plant in far more counties here in Michigan than Michigan Flora has on their range map. This is why I take the word of nerdy plant people all over the country reporting their observations rather than a few individuals that might not even have the power to explore as far and as wide.
Twenty seven states (some sources say twenty nine) have populations of Allium tricoccum, and of those states only one state has this species listed as rare; Alabama. A state that is on the very bottom edge of its natural distribution and would in almost all scenarios have been rare even before Europeans visited these lands. Source. The only other mentions of this plant being rare or being overharvested come from Maine and some of the mountains of Tennessee. Both of these locations however do not have these plants federally listed or even listed at the state level as being either endangered or threatened. In fact on Maine.gov it lists the rarity of this species as being partially a result of unsuitable habitat for its growth. Source.
Tennessee has Allium tricoccum listed as rare but, Allium burdickii, the narrow leaved Ramp, listed as a threatened species. source. Allium burdickii, in my experience, is always the ramp that is represented less in the woods. It seems to be more naturally rare, and so it does not surprise me in the least that in the bottom end of its distribution a species which is already rare in the heart of its range would be a species listed as threatened by the state of Tennessee. I personally take the stance that the narrow leaved Ramp needs to not be harvested unless it is in overwhelming abundance on ones private land.
So why is it the popular consensus that this species is rare, hard to come by, and overharvested? Well for starters; group think and an inability to see species for how they behave in the real world. Plant distributions of any species are highly dependent on a variety of factors such as wind, soil ph, soil makeup, annual precipitation, annual high and low temperatures etc. Michigan, the state I live in, has a very unique geological feature called the ‘Floristic Tension Zone’ and this 60ish mile wide band across the middle of our mitten represents and area in which the soil changes dramatically. The soil change is so dramatic in fact that the plant life in the northern half of the Lower Peninsula is almost completely different from the plant life in the southern half. It should come as no surprise to you that where I live (the northern half) ramps behave completely different than they do in the southern half.
All of this is to point out what is obvious to me and has been for a very long time: Saying that Ramps are rare or endangered because one cannot find them in a place in which is not hospitable to their growth is like going to a thrift store and being surprised at the fact that there are not that many new clothes. You will occasionally find new clothes at a thrift store, but that is the exception and not the rule. If you want new clothing, you go to a store that sells new, you do not go to the thrift store.
Likewise, an ecosystem predominated by species that hinder the growth of ramps is not the appropriate place to look for them, and to become angry at those of us that have an abundance of them for taking some is just flat out ignorant. I love coconuts, but I do not go around Northern Michigan expecting to find them, then go online and angrily write in the comments sections of someone who has them how rare they are and how he or she should not harvest them. Because that would show an ignorance of the reality of species distribution. So instead I am happy for people that are lucky enough to have access to Coconuts.
The distribution of Ramps is, if anything at all, probably increasing slowly because of the fact that forest cover itself is increasing steadily across the country as the logging industry slows. During the 1800’s it was absolutely horrific what was done to our country ecologically speaking. While we will absolutely never get back to the place we were (because the species present now are not the same as then), there is still hope to be had because the forests are slowly regenerating.
From 1982-2012 we had an annual loss of one million acres of forest due to development, but in that same time frame we had a gain of 1.3 million acres back to forest land. That is a gain of 1/3 of a million acres per year for 30 straight years. in other words, nearly 10 million acres were gained. Source. I would be dishonest if I said that all of that gain was in forests that support the growth of Ramps, but surely some of the regrowth of the forest accounted for woodlands that were ramp friendly.
Take a Leek?
This is the question of the century as far as foragers are concerned these days. I certainly think that taking them, bulbs and all, is fair game so long as your ecosystem allows for a lethal harvest. But this is where we get into the weeds of the discussion, because this topic is extremely nuanced. In the majority of places where I harvest, private land in which I have acquired permission, the Ramp population is out of control in its spread. I have access to a 100 acre Beech-Maple forest that is almost completely dominated by ramps in the understory. The neighbors have the same issue on their land, and so do their neighbors.
Obviously, this sort of insane rate of growth is not found in places like Maine, where my fellow forager Arthur Haines talks of there being less than thirty places to even find Ramps in that state. This is exactly why I think that Arthur advocating for only taking one leaf per plant or not taking any at all is probably the correct way to manage this species in Maine. But where I live, the one leaf thing is completely unnecessary. Let me be perfectly clear, ‘where I live’ doesn’t mean Michigan. It means Grand Traverse and Leelanau Counties in Michigan. There are many counties in the southern third of the state that cannot sustain even the harvest of leaves because there are so few Ramps.
This is where it comes down to the individual forager making these important choices for his or herself so that the ecosystem where he or she lives can be not only alive, but thriving! I think a good place to start is honestly assessing how big the population of Wild Leeks you have actually is. Is it only a few plants? Then maybe what you need to do is encourage the few that you do have to grow rather than harvesting any part of them. This could mean taking a trowel and loosening the soil around them so that any seeds that do form will drop into loosened soil and will have a better opportunity to germinate.
If you do have a place that you can harvest from, whether that be leaves or the whole plant then you really do need to assess if you are the only harvester or if there are 1000 other people that will come in after you. Wild Leek patches that get completely overharvested usually suffer from the ‘death by a thousand cuts’ scenario wherein the harvester mutters that he or she will only take a few and then every other harvester also says the exact same thing. This leads to forests that were once covered in Ramps becoming devoid of them almost completely.
The good news is that this sort of thing almost exclusively happens on public land and there are a few basic rules that we can all follow to make this sort of thing never happen. First and foremost, get permission to harvest on private land if possible. This is not generally as hard as you might think if you set up rules for harvest, and limits ahead of time with the landowner. If finding private land is not available, and you feel that you absolutely must have the flavor of Ramps on your tongue this season, then I would suggest buying from a farmer at the Farmers Market.
Farmers are incentivized to keep these populations up on their land because otherwise they would not have a crop to sell in the future, and the last thing they want to do is take away future earnings. This is why it is important for people to stop insisting on social media that buying Ramps at the farmers market is a bad thing to do. If you are buying from a farmer that is harvesting them from his or her own property, there is nothing to worry about.
If that is not an option, and you are legally allowed to harvest Ramps on public land, then a few basic steps are in order so that they can thrive.
Leave any single plants alone, this is usually a plant that came from a seed and it is very young still.
When harvesting from clumps do not take any that show the little sprout that will eventually become a flower and later seeds.
Never harvest so that there are less than five per square foot, and that is probably still too little.
Harvest only what you actually need, don’t harvest plants that will have a slow agonizing refrigerator death.
Do shake off as much of the dirt from the roots as possible out in the woods, and if you used a shovel to dig a hole move the dirt back into place near the remainder of any clump harvested from so that there is loose soil nearby for future seeds to germinate into.
If you follow all of these steps, and you tell all your amigos to do the same, then Ramps cannot be overharvested. This is the genius of the square foot rule. If you go out to a Ramp patch and only find 5 per square foot everywhere in the woods then that means you cannot harvest any. One leaf may be an option in that situation, but not digging whole plants. As with most things regarding wild foods, I have, and always will advocate for wildtending these plants as much as humanly possible so that this issue becomes a moot point in the future.
Wildtending and Farming Ramps
As far as I can tell, the future of this movement will be the farming or the wildtending of these species. Ramps are, under good growing conditions, an insanely productive crop that one can have on his or her land. As mentioned above, a farmer cannot overharvest his crops because then he would jeopardize future earnings, or even future meals. The same can be said about the wildtender in her tended forest. She takes special care to observe the flow of the plants year by year and she notices what things work and what things do not on her specific piece of land.
There are tons of places that sell Ramp seeds if you don’t have a way to collect your own, and if you were able to read last week’s post with Sam Thayer’s interview then you can actually get a lot of valuable information about what sorts of leaves hamper or help the growth of ramps. Here is an article all about growing these species in your own special plot. Here is a link to Ramp seeds for sale on Dropseed Ecology, an amazing website that specializes in selling awesome native food crops.
Educate yourself on this topic. Do not allow yourself to be like the mindless masses that repeat the same old boring information that every other forager repeats ad nauseum each and every year. Discover for yourself if your area can actually sustain a lethal harvest or not. If it can’t, then figure out a way that you can make it that way for the next generation. Ultimately, that is what matters most, and most people are bickering past each other about this topic because most of us do actually want a better world.
I believe that Ramps are a sustainable food source and can be commercially exploited. I think that this statement is backed by everything that I have written above and a lot of what was said in the 3 interviews that I did last week. I tend to side more with Sam on a lot of these issues, but what I am really writing all of this for is so that you decide on your own what stance to take on this issue.
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