10 Wild Foods I'm Eating This Spring

riverflows (72)in #health • 6 years ago

Walking in Somerset is like walking through a green grocers. Whilst veggie boxes seem predominately tuber based - please don't mention potatoes to me - the woods, lanes and hedgerows provide more nutritious greens that you can shake a hazel walking stick at. Every day we go out with a bag we call our 'finds' back and a knife, and collect wild foods to supplement our diet - from dandelions to wild mustard, wild garlic to tiny purple violets. Even the tender young leaves of the beech are beautiful, if you adjust your palate a little. Sadly the primroses are nearly over, but can still be found. Cowslips have begun to show and shake their pretty pale yellow heads. It's an edible landscape that we simply don't have in Australia, and I'm constantly boggled why it isn't normal to do a bit of foraging for your food.

I'm also loving going out and photographing the wild plants. It gets you observing them at a really close level, more so than usual, and helps you remember them more as you're really getting up close and personal! It's wonderful to be in England in the Spring and collecting photos that I have taken myself, storing for future blogs about these amazing plants! Whilst I list ten here, as I go deeper into the landscape, I'm sure I can come up with another ten plants without even thinking about it - it's just these ones have stolen the show so far.

Here are no less than TEN wild foods - and medicines - we have supplemented our meals with. The flowers always go in salads - I'm very keen to try to make a flan or a foccaccia decorated with them, and might do this tomorrow, that is, if I can get hold of some yeast!

1. Beech Leaves

Jamie picking beech leaves for lunch

Beech leaves are best eaten very young and tender - now, they are almost too tough to eat. You can eat beech nuts, although I never have. These are the first wild edibles my husband introduced my son to - he thought he was quite impressive, this man eating forest leaves, being 5 at the time. Apparently you can ferment them in gin - a beech leaf noyau - or more an infusion. Why, or how it tastes, I have no idea - some research to be done there methink!

2. White Dead Nettle

Whilst nettles are very common and everyone knows you can eat them, white dead nettle isn't as well known. However, it's still very edible and has the added bonus of not being so prickly! It's used for inflammation of the upper airways, sore throats, and as an uterine tonic, heavy periods - thankyou, nettle, for yesterday, where I sat in the back of the van and drunk a whole pot of nettle tea. It's meant to contain chemicals which break up mucus and reduce swelling. Young leaves are great in salads. How pretty is this one, caught in the morning sunrise?

Lamium album

3. Violets

Violets are kick-ass garnishes. They look gorgeous on cakes and pastries and quiches, and are so pretty on salads. Who could resist peppering their dinner with these gorgeous purple flowers?

4. Cowslips

“Where the bee sucks, there suck I; In a cowslip’s bell I lie.”
—William Shakespeare, The Tempest, act 5, scene 1

Cowslips are a kind of primrose. Medicinally, it's used for sinuses and bronchitis, and it's a calmative, so good for sleeping and headaches and other conditions - although there's little research to support it, and I've never used them in any other way but salad.

Primula Verus - the first flower of spring.

5. Wild Garlic

Ah, my favourite. Everyone's favourite. I think everyone I know is making wild garlic pesto at the moment. It's the plant I miss most in Australia. We wrap fish in it, add it to stirfries, salads and stews. It causes less stomach aches than traditional or more well known garlics. It's begun to flower now, and I'll use the seed pods in mustards and vinegars when they come out. The woods are absolutely redolent with them. They're mainly flowering now, or just about to, depending on what micro climate you're in.

Allium ursinum - 'bear' garlic

6. Gorse

I've always loved gorse, forming dense thickets along the roadside down where I used to live in Dorset. Although like many wild foods regular use isn't recommended (this one can cause arrhythmia, increasing the heart rate) it's very pretty in a salad or as a garnish. The wood itself used to be used in baker's ovens. In Bach flower remedies, it's used against hopelessness, which seems apt at this time as we worry about what will happen with this pandemic. It's usually for those who have been told there's not much more that can be done to help them.¹.

Ulex

7. Wild Mustard

Wild mustard's a little bit bitter now, like most wild greens as the Spring moves along, but early on it has a lovely mustardy peppery taste. Like nettles, they're high in nutrients and have anti inflammatory properties. It's also known as jack by the hedge. There are many sorts of wild mustard - make sure you identify any plant you eat correctly! This one is quite garlicky as well.

8. Dandelions

Whole fields become yellow with these bright drops of sunshine. I tear the petals into salads, dip them in batter to fry them, and use the leaves in salads, soups and stews. There's over 200 varieties of dandelion. Now, the dandelion clocks are out, looking gorgeous in the late afternoon sunshine. How anyone can loathe them as an unwanted weed is beyond me, but my mother in law does spent an awful amount of time ripping them from the roots from her lawn.

I have heard tell of dandelion honey - a syrup made of boiled sugar, dandelions and lemons. We've made dandelion wine before, in our country wine making days. I marvel at people over the years making do - finding ingredients from the wild woods to supplement diets and to creatively cook with.

9. Cleavers

Cleavers are ever so good for the lymph, and I love how they appear in Spring just when your system is super sluggish. I've never bothered with a tincture of them, as I suspect they are best fresh, but I make a tea from them. I have read that it's best to do a cold infusion rather than a hot one, but I've yet to have anyone confirm it either way. They are also good blended into smoothies. Some people call it sticky grass - lots of fun to stick on an unsuspecting person's jumper so they walk around covered in greenery all day.

10. Plantain

I love plantain - it's my go to with any ailments concerning bleeding - think UTI or hamhoerrids or post operative pain. I love young plantain leaves in Spring thrown into stews along with nettle and cleavers and any other greens I find. I love making a tea from it. It's also great for bleeding gums and for wrapping around cut fingers in the garden when you don't want to run inside for a bandaid.