I did not harvest this plant, but the friends that did were told what they had by a native to these mountains. That person claimed that branch lettuce was becoming rare due to over harvesting. It can be eaten raw in a salad, or cooked in bacon fat.
I harvested about a pound of ramps down along a dry creek bed up on White Top. It was a cooler, rainy day and I noticed a lot of the ramps in the area I was foraging already had flowers up.