Ocoee (Passionfruit) And Stuff...

Mistwalker

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Dec 22, 2007
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Work has had me out in the field gathering illustration images to document specific characteristics of some plants, animals, and insects. So I thought I'd share a few personal pics from recent days out here :)

I think he thought he was camouflaged...
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Someone has the munchies, but at least they're eating healthily :)
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Looks like something squirrely has been going on in these woods.
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This plant has several names. One of them is North American Passionflower, but my Cherokee ancestors called it Ocoee and they named a river and an entire river valley here in East Tennessee after it. I like the tangy citrus-y flavor of it.
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I've been gathering a lot of wild edible, useful, and medicinal typoe things, but more on all that later.
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.
 
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Work has had me out in the field gathering illustration to document characteristics of some plants, animals, and insects. So I thought I'd share a few personal pics from days out here.

I think he thought he was camouflaged...
1.jpg



Someone has the munchies, but at least they're eating healthily :)
2.jpg


Looks like something squirrely has been going on in these woods.
3.jpg


This plant has several names. One of them is North American Passionflower, but my Cherokee ancestors called it Ocoee and they named a river and an entire river valley here in East Tennessee after it. I like the tangy citrus-y flavor of it.
4.jpg


5.jpg


8.jpg


I've been gathering a lot of wild edible, useful, and medicinal typoe things, but more on all that later.
6.jpg


.

Love these photos and thank you for sharing them with us. Wild edibles is always something I snack on whenever I can find them.

Didn’t know that we had a native passion flower/fruit species in North America. The ones I buy in the store are already quite delicious so I can only imagine how good the wild ones taste.
 
Great photos !! Nice job you have there.


Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed them!! Yes, I love the work I have the privilege of doing much of the time these days. Sometimes I get to use all the knowledge I gained from my mentors in my childhood and youth, and what I learned from my crazy life experiences raising other kids as a kid orphaned on the streets myself after my mother was killed, combined with all I've learned in my continued studies the last forty years since then inspired by those days, to teach people how to avoid or survive some of the extremely deteriorated types of circumstances I have lived, seen, and studied over the last four decades. For years I tried to just forget the past, while still studying the old situations, because parts of the past were pretty horrific and I didn't want to remember those days but I wanted to be able to cope with similarf happenings if they occurred again.... But then having to reinvent myself in my thirties after an accident at work ended my career as a union carpenter, then having to do it again in my forties when the housing bubble busted and screwed up my metal working career...I decided to just embrace it all and try to do some good with all the bad I had seen in my childhood and youth. So today, part of my work is to take the knowledge I have, and the images I take now and some I have collected over the last twenty years of creating my own flora fauna database for my classes and lectures, and produce various content for various publications. And since I am already out in the field anyway, I have always tried to take at least a few personal images, for staring threads and discussions here on BF as well. I have been doing that for most of the last 12 years, I just went quiet for a year or so. I needed focus on sorting out the end of a toxic marriage and some toxic working relationships, and then focus on starting my second round of single fatherhood. But that is done now and I am mostly back to being myself again :)

Love these photos and thank you for sharing them with us. Wild edibles is always something I snack on whenever I can find them.

Didn’t know that we had a native passion flower/fruit species in North America. The ones I buy in the store are already quite delicious so I can only imagine how good the wild ones taste.

Thanks man, I'm glad you enjoyed them :) I do the same thing. It goes back to my father, who grew up during the depression before joining the Marines in the 50s, teaching me all he could about living off the land during the recession of the 70s, as well as growing food covertly and stretching food as far as it can go, when he was a single dad like I am now. He had already seen economic collapse in the 30s, and had no idea how bad things might get when the gas lines were going around blocks and the cold war had gotten intense a few times.. As it turned out, I was very fortunate he started all of that early on and got me hooked on gaining more of that sort of knowledge and those skill sets. He gave me the solid foundation and self confidence I would need to not only survive myself when everything turned upside down years later, but also look after other kids who didn't have such a solid beginning, when I was living on the streets.

Technically it is Passiflora Incarnata. It is passionflower and passion fruit, but it doesn't turn brown like the tropical ones in other places like Australia. It stays green and just gets dark green when ripe. Once it is yellowed it is well past ripe and gone to seed. It also has a slightly different flavor but I still love it. I have been munching on them in the summers here in the southeast for many years now.
 
My life has been going though a terrible change in the last year too. Let's just say I don't have much money but I still plod on with my interests. Fortunately, I'm still healthy. As I mentioned in the other thread, I have learned to protect myself, my body. No more jumping off fallen logs or big rocks as you don't know what the footing is like when you hit. One big mistake and you're done and all of a sudden you're scrambling just to get out of the woods alive.

I have had to ration my time in the woods. Yeah, I went to Blade this year and spent some money that I probably shouldn't have. But you can't stop being YOU.

A friend of mine has been in the hospital. It is serious and it makes me thank "the the big guy upstairs" for my health and my life.

When I moved to KY from the Northeast, Passion Flower was one of the first really showy plants that grabbed my interest. I later ended up in Tennessee and i'm glad I did. Interesting about the name Ocoee.
 
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Yes, our lives have weather, and seasons to them too. And as Rob Thomas so eloquently put it, some of them are mad ones..,

I have learned that the hard way as well and am fortunate to be where I am I suppose. lol, I'll explain that in the other thread :)

It was that accident that made me unable to venture into the woods for nearly two years and unable to cope with the pain of uneven ground for a while and having to find new approaches for my work for a while just to be able to do it. I will never take that sort of risk again. I turned 54 two weeks ago. Because of the things that happened to me after my father had his accident from ages 13 to 15, at 15 I never expected to see 16 or 17 and thanks to the trauma and PTS caused in those days that has been an issue for me all my life. I have learned to try to plan for a future I can't even imagine happening. I can't even picture my daughters older. My brain just doesn't work that way. I see nothing but the present when I try to picture a future. But I have lost a few friends, and seen friends lose children to things that have given me a great many reasons to be very thankful for the health I have and the health of my children. I give thanks for that daily, and have done so through teary eyes in the middle of the night more than once. Two years ago, when I first found myself immersed in single parenthood and seriously injured, I would sometimes find myself overwhelmed and sitting in a chair my daughter's room, watching her sleep and pleading with God to help me not fail in this. Today I still sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed but it gets easier on some levels as time goes by...though she just turned 14 two weeks ago, and also have a daughter 26 I know the teen years are never exactly easy no matter what.

I remember the first time I saw one, I thought it looked like an alien flower from another planet. But then learned some of their history studying my own family history. I love the hills here, and the fields and the rivers and streams, but I still miss the Gulf where I lived from age 8 to 12.
 
May pops! That's what we called them when I was a kid. We used to have "wars" with them in our woods in South Carolina. Great fun to peg your buddy with one! Never knew they were edible. That flower looks a lot like what a Clematis vine produces. Beautiful flower.
 
May pops! That's what we called them when I was a kid. We used to have "wars" with them in our woods in South Carolina. Great fun to peg your buddy with one! Never knew they were edible. That flower looks a lot like what a Clematis vine produces. Beautiful flower.

Yes, a lot of people in Georgia call them may pops too. I think because of how they bloom and that they just may pop while you're looking at the pods lol. In my youth, in her trying to protect me, my grandmother would tell me anything she didn't know about was either bad or dangerous. My dad and a few mentors helped me defeat all of that teaching at an early age thank goodness. It does look a bit like Clematis, I have seen both growing together before and makes for a nice colorful scenery.
 
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