Inland Samphire

To the untrained eye driving through inland Australia you wouldn’t think there was an abundant supply of nutritious greens just waiting to be savored but the inland Samphire (Tecticornia sp.) makes up a lot of the vegetation in this tough dry country. I haven’t actually had the inland species before now and I think I like it better than the Tasmanian estuary Samphire (Scalicornia sp). You can see they are two different Genus the Scalicornia sp is a low sprawling plant the Haloscarica sp is more like a bushy shrub you wouldn’t think it was a samphire until you get up close to it and can see the actual individual succulent leaves on the many branches.

At the camping ground I also foraged some wild mustard green (Barasica sp.), a very spicy one at that, I just cooked it up into a veggie stew with some other fresh veggies I bought a few days before. The only thing I found with it was it was a bit stickyer than the estuary one which just means it was a bit like eating fish you have to pull the sticks out as you eat it like the bones from fish but it was still very worth while and it kept for a few day traveling in the van too much better than any conventional green do.