1. Take a very small pinch of the part of the plant you wish to test, crush it and rub it on your lips. Wait 15 minutes.
2. If no irritation occurs take a minute amount and chew it but do not swallow. Spit it out and wait another 15 minutes.
3. If no irritation occurs, take a minute amount and swallow it on an empty stomach. That is, do not eat anything 8 hours prior to taking this step. I normally do it when I wake up in the morning and before eating anything else. Then you wait another 4 hours without consuming anything else.
4. If by this time you are not dead or sick, it means the part of the plant you tested is most likely edible.
It is also important to know and remember that some parts of a plant could be edible while other parts of the same plant could be poisonous. So that even if you tested the flower and found it to be edible, it does not mean that you can eat the leaves or the roots without subjecting each one of them to a separate test.
Another important thing to know and remember is that some edible plants can be very similar to some very poisonous plants. One example is Angelica whose flowers and leaves and stems are identical to those of Poison Hemlock. They can only be told apart by careful identification of their roots. Since I am not an expert on the subject, I abstain from eating any plants that I know have poisonous �doubles�. Poison Hemlock is the plant that was used to kill Socrates. It grows abundantly in southern Florida.
