hey guys is Joshua trillium wild edibles today I want to do a short little video on identification of chickweed and in this video we're going to go through three different kinds of chickweed that you're probably going to be finding two of them are going to be found in your yard or around barns or mulching or landscaped areas and one is going to be commonly found in the woods and the Eastern woodlands especially so without further ado let's get started now these very small and low delicate plants that we're looking at are called chick weed this is common chickweed and a good thing about common chickweed is that it's not only very common but it's also edible and extremely delicious this is a plant that you can very easily teach your children about and it's very easy for them to identify and it's also very quick to collect now here if we look really close on this chick weed you're going to notice one thing first and foremost about the leaves if we look at this plant from the top one thing that we're going to notice is it has very simple leaves these leaves are landscape and they also grow opposite just like you can see here how they grow up on opposite sides of the stem now if you look very closely these opposite growing leaves we're also going to notice that they clasp the stem meaning they don't really have a petiole or any leaf stem that attaches them to the main stem or the main stalk of the chickweed plant you may also notice on the edges or the margins of these leaves how they're simple there's no teeth they're absolutely smooth there is nothing on the sides of these leaves they have no lobes the underside of the leaves is just a normal underside of a leaf it's very lightly green there's no discerning features on the underside of this leaf however there is a look-alike a toxic look alike to chickweed that's called scarlet pimpernel it doesn't grow where I live however it might where you live the discerning feature is on the underside of the leaves so any time you're picking chickweed make sure you take a look at the underside of the leaves because scarlet pimpernel has red spots on the underside of its leaves whereas chickweed does not just like you can see here now at the top of this plant here you can see these little buds these are what's left of the flower buds because this plan is already flowered so this plant is in the process of producing seeds or it's in the process of getting ready to flower just depends on which stage to particular plan is that however whenever it comes to chick weeds flower now one thing you might notice about the flower is not only is it white but it looks like it might have ten petals however there's actually only five petals on this flower they just have a divide that makes it look like there's ten now another thing you might notice on this chick weed is how large these leaves are this is growing in a much more shaded environment that also receives a little bit more moisture however it's right next to my trashcan so I don't eat it but this just goes to show that sometimes chick weed can be very very large in size no one really nice thing about chick weed is that it adapts itself very easily to all kinds of soils so you can very easily grow this in a container if you wanted to all you have to do is simply find some chick weed that has passed its flowering stage like you see here with all of these buds then you would simply pull the tops of them up like this all you simply have to do once you have these is like I said simply to shake the plant inside of a bag or a container and then you can collect the seeds and plant them wherever you want to grow chick weed alright so now that we've taken a look at common chickweed let's go take a look at the second type of chick weed that's called mouse ear chick weed okay here we are a little further down in my yard towards the middle of the lawn actually and here is a huge rosette or a huge clump of this mouse ear chick weed now all intents and purposes mouths your chick weed is just as edible and most of it looks the exact same you might be able to notice a difference here in the way that it grows this looks kind of scraggly one other major difference with mouth your chick weed over common chickweed is the fact that mousie or chick weed like you can see here has all these little hairs and little fuzz running along the side of it one issue about these is that it doesn't make it as palatable whenever you go to eat it roll and I also find that Mountie or chick weed is also a lot tougher and taste on my opinion a little more like hey smells everything on Mouse here chick weed is almost the exact same as common chickweed - the hairs the flower is the exact same shape as you can see it does look like it has ten petals however it's just because of those splits within the petals its leaves as you can see here right behind the flower grow opposite of each other if I pull this little piece up you can also see these hairs a lot more you can also notice that the stem on Mount Seir chickweed is red whereas on common chickweed it's just green but here you may be able to see that the split in these petals isn't complete it doesn't go all the way down and there are only five petals now the third type of chickweed that we're going to be talking about today I like to call great star chickweed however you can also call it star chickweed this chickweed is very common anywhere within the Eastern woodlands one thing you may notice is that its growth structure is very similar to regular chickweed it doesn't form the same dense clumps as you can see the small little rosette right in front of me however the flowers are very large as you can see these flowers are much larger than chickweed they're about the size of my thumbnail they do grow the same way and they are white they do have five petals that looks like ten because of those splits and just like regular chickweed delese are simple they're Lance shaped the margins are smooth and they also grow opposite of each other now a similarity between star chick weed and mounsieur chick weed is the red Sten like you may be able to see right here this is a very small low growing plant the stamens on the end of each pistols as you notice are red specks so they're much larger than regular chick weed so it's a lot easier to notice you can find this anywhere in the woodlands within moist low environments and also on sloping hillsides where it receives a lot of drainage and runoff you can see that this one is starting to produce some little buds right here so this one is probably about ready to go to seed soon and here's a little bit of a further back view so you can see just this one chick weed plant and what I mean by it doesn't grow in the same dense clusters that regular chick wheat or mouse your chick weed do so I thank you guys for watching this video I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you learned just a little bit of something do you want to learn more about edible or medicinal plants please make sure to subscribe