May 15, 2009 – Fiddleheads or fiddleheads have been available in grocery stores for a few days. They are appreciated for their special taste and also for taking advantage of their antioxidants … Fiddleheads are picked in the wild in the woods. By buying them, are we emptying the forests of this plant designated as vulnerable in 2005?
Gisèle Lamoureux, botanist and author1, is worried. She doubts that commercial pickings will be done with respect for the plant: “I have seen many tillers decrease. According to her, trade threatens the plant. “But I can’t prove it scientifically,” she laments.
Harvesting a fern stick causes an effect on the plant, which must then draw on its reserves. Which can harm him in the long run. You must therefore moderate your ardor and pick only a fraction of the 3 to 12 sticks present on a plant.
An agroforestry specialist in the biology department at Laval University, Line Lapointe is familiar with fiddleheads. For picking, she recommends taking no more than 33% of the sticks, if the habitat is unfavorable, and no more than 40% if it is favorable. To simplify things, Gisèle Lamoureux suggests, for her part, only one stick per fern. When we follow the rule, the plant tolerates picking well, provided that we abstain from it if someone has served it before us.
Gisèle Lamoureux fears that professional pickers, who are not subject to any control, do not respect these rules. Line Lapointe worries less. To his knowledge, even if a colony undergoes intensive harvesting, it does not die. “The plants decrease in size and become fewer in number, but the pickers are no longer interested in going back,” she argues. It saddens him anyway: “It is a magnificent plant when it is healthy and forms rugs. It takes 10 years for a population to return to its former state.
What if we cultivated the fiddlehead in the fields or in a greenhouse?
In the fields, it is almost impossible since the wind breaks the fronds. In the greenhouse, “it will not be profitable as long as we go looking for it in the forest,” explains Gisèle Lamoureux. Picking is obviously less expensive than growing and lowers the price of fiddleheads at the grocery store. According to the botanist, the solution is to encourage and develop the cultivation of this plant, while regulating its trade.
It is not because of its rarity that the fern butt (Matteuccia struthiopteris) was designated vulnerable in 2005 as the plant is quite abundant2. Gathering pressures for food and ornamental horticulture dictated this choice, and led to the ban on trade in whole plants or its underground parts.
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Fiddleheads: never raw, always boiled Improper cooking of fiddleheads can cause gastroenteritis, recalls Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food3. Any problem can be avoided by following the instructions below:
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Marie-Hélène Croisetière – PasseportSanté.net
1. Lamoureux Gisèle, Flore springanière, Fleurbec 2003.
2. For more information: www.mddep.gouv.qc.ca [Consulté le 14 mai 2009]
3. For more details: www.mapaq.gouv.qc.ca [Consulté le 14 mai 2009].
