When spring comes, the cold wind falls and the warm wind blows.
The mountains and fields are covered with the different kinds of flowers and many plants put out the green sprouts to show their revival.
Among many kinds of plants, our people used some of them as the material of side dishes, which were called edible grass. When spring came, our people collected them and made the different kinds of foods according to the emotion of the beautiful season when everything came back to life and all kinds of flowers were in full bloom and by means of such foods, they filled up the vitamin which had been consumed through the winter.
And they dried and pickled many kinds of edible grasses much to use for the holiday and great things and to serve the honored guests.
There are many kinds of edible plants such as pick purse, wormwood, bracken, leopard plant and so on.
Each plant has its peculiar taste and fragrance.
According to the song titled “Nonggawolryongga” written in the 19th century, our people ate Korean lettuce, Artemisia, giant garlic and so on in the lunar Feburary and atractylodes japonica, aralia shoots bracke and so on in the lunar March.
There were the lower order plants including mushroom and the wild fruits for the dietary life in the mountains and rivers but our people traditionally did not put them into the list of edible plants.
Our people named the edible plants the edible mountain ones whether they grew in the mountains or the fields.
Our country has the hundreds kinds of wild plants for the dietary life, 80% of which grow in the mountains.
Now some edible plants are cultivated by people and as the greenhouse farming develops, the number of kind increases but the wild edible plants are mainly used for the dietary life.
Such dietary custom is our people’s peculiar one that can not be found from other nations.