The challenge of the immigrants who overran this country is now to grow up and settle down, reflect, and naturalize—to become part of the land we have built our homes upon. We can’t do that unless we learn to see the treasures who live here with us.

The American settlers who tamed the Plains looked with disdain upon the prairies they destroyed. They came from a land of trees, and saw nothing of value in the diverse community they plowed and grazed into oblivion. All they wanted was the thing that this community had spent thousands of years building: the rich soil beneath it. But the settlers were missing something. They had never tasted prairie turnip, prairie parsley, prairie clover tea, or poppy mallow root. Let us taste them now, close our eyes and dream, and admit our oversight. Listen hard enough, and you can still hear the hooves of bison, pawing in the dirt of soybean fields.

Samuel Thayer, Incredible Wild Edibles, p. 308.