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Harmless🍽️ Edible

🌱 Chia

Salvia hispanica · Lamiacées

🏜️ Desert🍁 North America
🧠 To remember it"A seed that drinks twelve times its weight" — soaked in water, the chia seed swells into a gel that made this plant valuable in the desert long before it became a modern superfood.
Chia — Salvia hispanica

🔍 Identify it without mistakes

Annual herbaceous plant reaching up to 1.75 m, with opposite leaves of 4 to 8 cm and purple or white flowers grouped in dense spikes at the stem tips, typical of the mint family. The seeds, oval and tiny (about 1 mm), are mottled with brown, gray, black, and white. They are hydrophilic and absorb up to twelve times their weight in liquid by swelling, forming a characteristic gel.

  1. square stem typical of Lamiaceae, opposite leaves 4-8 cm
  2. purple or white flowers in dense terminal spikes
  3. tiny oval seeds (~1 mm), mottled brown-gray-black-white
  4. hydrophilic seeds, forming a gel by absorbing up to 12 times their weight in water
Sizeup to 1.75 m
Floweringsummer
Habitatnative to central and southern Mexico and Guatemala, now cultivated in several arid to semi-arid regions of the world, including the American Southwest

⚠️ Not to be confused with

Other wild salvias (Salvia spp.) (Salvia columbariae)aucun (edible too, also called "chia")

To tell them apart: several wild Salvia species from the North American desert (including Salvia columbariae) are called "chia" locally and share the same square stem and dense floral spikes; all Salvia with mottled seeds harvested when mature are edible without known risk, which simplifies identification for food use

🍽️ Eating it

Partsseeds
Seasonlate summer-autumn, when spikes are mature
Tasteneutral, slightly nutty; gelatinous texture once soaked

Preparation : seeds harvested dry and consumed as is, ground into flour, or soaked in water to form a gel used as a drink (the famous Mexican "chia fresca"); require no cooking

486kcalEnergy
17gProtein
31gFat
42gCarbs

Wikipedia, dried seeds, per 100 g (primary USDA source not directly consulted)

💊 Healing with it

rich in omega-3 fatty acids (about 55% of total lipids), B vitamins, and minerals (magnesium, phosphorus, manganese)

Level of evidence : limited studies — Wikipedia — Salvia hispanica

⚠️ no specific precautions known at normal dietary doses

🪓 Other bushcraft uses

  • cultivated since Aztec times as a major food crop in central Mexico
Sources (1)

No entry replaces a certain identification in the field, or medical advice. When in doubt: don't eat it. If ingestion is suspected: poison control or 112/911.