The readership of this blog seems to be packed with keen pickers of blackberries. I like the idea that you too have dark-stained fingers having come back from a visit to the hedgerows. This weekend is moving towards the end of the blackberry picking season and the weather forecast isn’t great. I think that a…
Category: Wild Food
Wild food (40) – Raspberry
Having completed almost a full year of local gleaning and browsing I thought I’d round off this series with one of the best of all wild foods – one that can be found widely, if rather sparsely, across most of the country. If they are not quite a match for the taste of wild strawberries…
Wild food (39) – Bilberry by Ian Carter
I used to think of the Bilberry (often Blaeberry north of the border) as an upland plant – something available for browsing in high summer when crossing wide expanses of heath or moor. In recent years I’ve found it along local hedge-banks and within deciduous woodland in the dairy and sheep country of the lowlands,…
Wild food (38) – Wild Strawberry by Ian Carter
This is a delightful plant, especially at this time of year when there is every chance it will be dripping with irresistible red berries. It has the sharply-serrated, trifoliate leaves typical of all strawberries, and delicate white flowers which give way to the perfect, albeit tiny, red fruits. In all respects it is a diminutive…
Wild Food (37) – Pignut by Ian Carter
Pignuts are umbellifers (in the carrot family) and are like miniature versions of the more familiar Cow Parsley. To help confirm the identification, look closely at the finely divided leaves, especially those towards the base of the plant. If you grow your own carrots you may notice the similarity in leaf structure. In favoured meadows…
Wild food (36) – Dryad’s Saddle by Ian Carter
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This is a common and widespread bracket fungus often found in the summer on dead or dying deciduous trees. It can grow to a huge size, perhaps as large and heavy as any British species. The problem is the large and easy-to-spot specimens are not much use as food as they quickly become tough and…
Wild food (35) – Mint by Ian Carter
The smell of mint induces a feeling of nostalgia in me that no other plant can match. One of the few jobs I was trusted not to mess up as a small child was to go out into the back garden to gather a few springs of mint for the Sunday roast. It must have…
Wild food (34) – Garlic Mustard by Ian Carter
As suggested by the name this cabbage-relative has two flavours for the price of one, though the garlic comes across rather more strongly to my mind. The leaves are actually tasteless until they are crushed or, if you will, ‘tasted’. The chemical reactions producing the strong flavours only take place (as a defence mechanism) once…
Wild food (33) – Cuckoo Flower by Ian Carter
Otherwise known as Lady’s Smock this is one of our most attractive spring flowers, brightening up damp pastures and roadside verges across the country with its subtle pink flower-heads. It usually starts to appear around mid-April, about the same time as the first Cuckoos arrive back from Africa – hence the name. It also…
Wild food (32) – Golden Saxifrage by Ian Carter
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There are two similar species of Golden Saxifrage known as ‘opposite-leaved’ and ‘alternate-leaved’, the names helpfully highlighting their main distinguishing feature. This one is opposite-leaved and it is very common locally, forming a low, dense carpet in patches of woodland with heavy, waterlogged soils. It acts as a handy warning that you risk a…