All plants /Tree /Honey Mesquite
Honey Mesquite
Prosopis glandulosa, legume family. Abundant in West and Central Texas.
At a glance
- What
- Whole dry pods (not the seeds alone)
- How
- Grind dry pods into sweet flour; simmer for syrup
- When
- June through September
- Where
- Everywhere ranchers wish it wasn't
- Value
- Natural sugars, protein, fiber; gluten-free flour
Caution: Harvest pods straight off the tree, dry and unblemished; ground-collected pods mold fast, and moldy pods are unsafe. Taste one first, sweetness varies tree to tree.
Harvesting
Pick straw-colored pods that snap cleanly, from the branch rather than the dirt. Dry them brittle in a low oven or a hot truck dashboard, which is the traditional West Texas dehydrator.
Mesquite flour
Blitz brittle pods, sift, repeat. The flour is sweet with a cocoa-coffee edge and swaps for a quarter of the flour in pancakes and cornbread.
Photo: Don A.W. Carlson, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons.
Forages well with
Forage safely. Never eat a wild plant on this site's word alone. Confirm identity with several sources, learn the look-alikes, and when in doubt, leave it in the ground.