Standing up for Nature
Many common garden ‘weeds’ are technically edible but hard to get excited about. The Dandelion is perhaps the most abundant and is no doubt very good for you but the leaves are undeniably bland. Common Sorrel, another widespread grassland plant prone to appearing on unkempt lawns, at least has a bit of bite to it….
Reviewed by Ian Carter There are plenty of books about wild food these days, describing how to find it and how to make best use of it. This one deals with a comprehensive selection of plants, including seaweeds. It also includes a handful of fungi (just 7 species) but, rather oddly I thought, it ignores…
Wild Garlic, or Ramsons as it is sometimes called, is one of the most eagerly awaited plants of the spring for its aesthetic appeal and for its flavour. By late April it carpets the floor of ancient woodland where conditions are right, a haze of white flowers among the long-established green leaves. It is often…
The second half of winter is perhaps the least productive time of year for foraging. Spells of cold weather have eliminated all but the hardiest of wild flowers. Most of the nuts and berries have been consumed or have rotted away. There are a few winter season fungi but many of those seem to fade…
I’ve taken a few calculated risks when eating wild fungi over the years but with this recent find I inadvertently pushed the limits well beyond my comfort zone. They were growing low down on a pile of cut logs at the edge of an old meadow. I initially thought they were Velvet Shanks, a common…
This distinctive member of the stonecrop family is common along hedgerows, pathways and springing up from crevices in walls and rocks. It is mainly restricted to the south and west, and seems to be especially abundant close to the sea – the long-distance south-west coast path is a great place to find it. If conditions…
These are, admittedly, towards the gimmicky end of the wild food spectrum but they are indeed edible (despite what some older books say) and they are so startlingly attractive that I think they deserve a mention. And, actually, they don’t taste too bad at all if cooked for long enough to soften them up a…
It’s taking a bit of liberty including this image under the wild food banner, but the Red Deer certainly qualifies as a species that can be eaten. Indeed, some would argue that along with other wild deer it is one of the most sustainable forms of meat available here in Britain, albeit one that is…
This small, delicate plant is easy to overlook with its diminutive stature and uniform pale-green colour, but once you start looking out for it you will start to notice it everywhere. The trifoliate, heart-shaped leaves can be found throughout the year in a wide range of habitats, though it is less common (and less palatable…
The Velvet Shank is unusual amongst fungi in that it is a true winter species, thriving in the coldest and darkest months of the year. It is named after the velvety texture of the stems, ‘shank’ here referring to these rather than the more usual meaning of ‘leg’ – as in Redshank for example. The…