nichepoetryandprose

The onset of plants in spring is overwhelming.  This year, I seem to see ferns everywhere, probably because the fiddlehead of the Ostrich Fern is a delicacy in New Brunswick.  The Ostrich Fern (Matteuccia Struthiopteris (L.) Todaro) grows in riparian (shoreland) areas all along the St. John River and its tributaries.

This time of year, car and trucks park in small roads off the old Trans-Canada, and you can glimpse people picking fiddleheads in lowlying places along the river.  They concentrate on what they are doing, their backs bent, hardly looking up from their picking.  People have favorite fiddleheading spots and usually follow a code, leaving a percentage of the fiddleheads to grow and sustain the ferns for future years.

I only picked a few fiddelheads this year.  They were a little older than they are ordinarily picked, but they were delicious.  The best fiddleheads are picked when they are just above the surface.  After picking they are cleaned, a very easy undertaking, and boiled or steamed until very well cooked.

The cooking liquor is discarded – its dark amber-red color is due to high concentrations of shikimik acid.  Once cooked, the fiddleheads are a flavorful green, served with butter or margarine.  When my husband was young, his family ate a meal of fiddleheads, new potatoes and shad at fiddleheading time.

In town, people are selling fiddleheads from trucks and at small stands, and there will certainly be Fiddleheads at the Farmer’s Market today in Fredericton.  Usually, the sellers do a brisk business, keeping the fiddleheads fresh in portable coolers and in buckets.  I watched a vendor bagging the green fiddleheads, giving the clear plastic bag a deft twirl to seal it before he handed it to the buyer.

Have you ever eaten fiddleheads?

~

~ 

waking from a dream

                        Ostrich Fern (Matteuccia Struthiopteris (L.) Todaro)

~

bottom-land thicket

naked in spring

a rumpled bed

the throws of hibernation

~

new growth cocooned

in dry leaves, bent skeletons

last summer’s fern

~

sun surge

insult

between curtains

~

green fiddlehead

uncoils

head down

hesitant fist thrust

between pillows and down

stretches fingers

filigreed shadow

new blocking of sun

~

brown coverlet

kicked

~

new green bedspread

new green canopy

green shade

~

~

Published www.nichepoetryandprose.wordpress.com  Nov. 9, 2011

© Jane Tims 2011