Botanical atlas

Bog Asphodel

Narthecium americanum

Bog asphodel does not carry a folk-medicine or kitchen history the way many herbs in this atlas do. It is, instead, a plant whose story is written in rarity: a small, golden-flowered relative of the Old World bog asphodels, found almost nowhere on earth outside the acid bogs of the New Jersey Pine Barrens and a handful of neighboring sites. Botanists have watched over it since the nineteenth century as a marker of pristine, undrained wetland, the kind of ground that tells you a bog has never been ditched or filled. Its charm has always been in the finding of it, a spray of tiny yellow stars rising from sphagnum moss, rather than in any basket or teapot.

Safety.

Bog asphodel has no history of human food or medicinal use, and its close relative is known to poison grazing sheep and cattle. It is also globally rare and protected in its native New Jersey Pine Barrens habitat, so it should never be picked or eaten.