Foraging is a fascinating skill that both deepens our relationship to nature and empowers our health. This article shares some interesting plants you can forage here in the UK in January.
Foraging is a wonderful way to connect both with nature, and nourish our health. We also want to spread the word about safe and ethical foraging, so please also read our article “A guide to safe and sustainable foraging” to learn how to practise foraging sustainably.
A useful link with images that can help with identification as well as botanical information is Wild Flower Finder.
Here Robin Harford shares some edible plants you can safely harvest from the wild in January.
Please note: Under Section 13 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, uprooting any wild plant without landowners’ permission is illegal (1).
Hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta)
In a collection of Anglo-Saxon medical texts and prayers called the Lacnunga, the plant is listed, along with eight other herbs, as an antidote to poison (2).
The gardener’s bane, Hairy Bittercress, is one of the tastiest wild greens and can be found even during heavy frost.
It is more a salad green than a cooked vegetable; its flavour is peppery between cress and rocket.
Apart from adding as a spicy garnish to salads in a similar way that shop-bought cress is, the raw greens can be finely chopped and mixed with butter or cottage cheese (3).
You can also add them to pickles and lacto fermented dishes. Cardamine hirsuta is a rich source of iron and potassium (4), as well as calcium (5).
In the province of Izmit in Northwest Turkey, villagers cook the leaf up with onion and serve it as a dish (6). The leaves are an edible staple in parts of India.
Lesser celandine (Ficaria verna)
Warning: Lesser Celandine contains protoanemonin. Do not eat raw. Only eat cooked.
The toxin can be destroyed by cooking or drying (11), but freezing and defrosting the raw plant increases its protoanemonin content.
As a result of the toxin, it’s not a good idea to eat the plant raw, even when picking very young shoots, regardless of what many wild food authors and foragers recommend.
Shoots can appear as early as January in southwestern England and must have been a welcome blessing after the long, dark winter months.
Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist in the 1700s and founder of the modern classification system for plants and animals, states that you may eat the young leaves in the Spring with other potherbs (7).
In a small village called Frisanco in the Val Colvera of Western Friuli in north-east Italy, a traditional peasant dish is prepared each Spring. Called ‘pistic’, it uses the leaves and shoots of over 50 wild edible plants that have been gathered from woods and meadows (8).
The plant was considered a potherb in some countries in central Europe, for example, Slovakia, Romania and Ukraine (9). In Russia, the young parts of the plant were used as a salad and condiment (10).
Mahonia (Mahonia aquifolium)
If you like sherbet, try Mahonia flowers this month. Initially, the experience is a super sweet nectar that gives way to a lemon tang.
Try them sprinkled over salads, on muesli, or snack on them as a wayside nibble. You can often find mahonia bushes in towns and cities. The berries are usually eaten later in the year, and the flowers are a little-known secret snack.
Three-cornered leek (Allium triquetrum)
Found throughout England, Wales and Ireland but rare in Scotland, A. triquetrum was first cultivated in England in 1759 (12).
The young, delicate leaves of A. triquetrum have traditionally been cut up and used in salads. They are a subtle substitution for spring onions because their flavour is not so oniony.
The leaves are not as strong in flavour as Ramsons. Juicy and sweet, they go perfectly in salads. Try them as a garlic butter substitute which pairs perfectly with seaweed.
The various uses of garlic species apply to Three Cornered Leek. For example, garlic species are often harvested from root to tip for use as a flavouring, condiment, salad leaf or pot vegetable. You can add them to soups, stir-fries, stews, bakes and tarts, among many other dishes.
Violet (Viola spp.)
In January, it is the leaves of violet that we focus on, with the flowers coming a little bit later at the start of Spring.
The Tudors ate the leaves with salads and pottages (13). The leaves were used in Elizabethan salads known as Grand Salletts (14).
Violets continued to be a favourite among royalty even up to Victorian times (15).
English writer and gardener John Evelyn (1620–1706) described an “agreeable herbaceous dish” of violet leaves fried and eaten with lemon or orange juice and sugar. (16)
Today an extract of the leaf is used for flavouring ice creams, candies and baked goods (17).
Wood avens (Geum urbanum)
The roots and rhizomes of Wood Avens are aromatic with the scent of cloves, which has led to one of the plant’s common names being ‘clove root’ (18).
The rhizomes bring a hint of clove and cinnamon to soups, broths, sauces, fruit pies and stewed fruit.
‘Clove root’ can be combined with orange peel and added to wine, which produces a pleasant Vermouth or other mulled drinks, gin and beer (19).
The German Augsburg ale, for example, has a bag of clove root added to the casks to flavour the drink (19).
Traditionally, the herb was used to flavour ales and prevent the ale from souring (20).
The roots of wood avens can also be boiled in milk to make a tasty Indian-style chai tea (21).
The leaves can be infused to make a hot, mildly spicy cordial.
References
- Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Accessed September 14, 2022. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1981/69/section/13
- Harland G. The Weeder’s Digest: Identifying and Enjoying Edible Weeds. Green Books; 2012.
- Fleischhauer SG, Spiegelberger R, Guthmann J. Enzyklopädie Essbare Wildpflanzen: 2000 Pflanzen Mitteleuropas; Bestimmung, Sammeltipps, Inhaltsstoffe, Heilwirkung, Verwendung in der Küche. 12. Auflage. AT-Verlag; 2020.
- Basumatary S, Narzary H. Nutritional Value, Phytochemicals and Antioxidant Property of Six Wild Edible Plants Consumed by the Bodos of North-East India. Mediterranean Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism. 2017;10(3):259-271. doi:10.3233/MNM-17168
- Seal T, Chaudhuri K, Pillai B, Chakrabarti S, Auddy B, Mondal T. Wild Edible Plants of Meghalaya State in India: Nutritional, Minerals, Antinutritional, Vitamin Content and Toxicity Studies. Pharmacognosy Magazine. 2020;16(68):142. doi:10.4103/pm.pm_369_19
- Kizilarslan Ç. An Ethnobotanical Study of the Useful and Edible Plants of Izmit. mpj. 2012;3(16):194-200. doi:10.12991/201216398
- Sturtevant AH. Sturtevant’s Edible Plants of the World. (Hedrick UP, ed.). Dover Publications; 1972.
- Paoletti MG, Dreon AL, Lorenzoni GG. Pistic, Traditional Food from Western Friuli, N.e. Italy. Econ Bot. 1995;49(1):26-30. doi:10.1007/BF02862273
- Turner NJ, Łuczaj ŁJ, Migliorini P, et al. Edible and Tended Wild Plants, Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Agroecology. Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences. 2011;30(1-2):198-225. doi:10.1080/07352689.2011.554492
- Komarov VL. Flora of the U.S.S.R. Volume VII: Ranales and Rhoeadales. Vol 7. Smithsonian Institution; 1970.
- Ammon HPT, Schubert-Zsilavecz M, Hunnius C, eds. Hunnius Pharmazeutisches Wörterbuch. De Gruyter; 2014.
- Irving M. The Forager Handbook: A Guide to the Edible Plants of Britain. Ebury; 2009.
- Rohde ES. A Garden of Herbs. Philip Lee Warner; 1921.
- Mabey R, Blamey M. Food for Free. Collins; 1974.
- Small E. Culinary Herbs. 2nd ed. NRC Research Press; 2006.
- Le Strange R. A History of Herbal Plants. Angus and Robertson; 1977.
- Kunkel G. Plants for Human Consumption: An Annotated Checklist of the Edible Phanerogams and Ferns. Koeltz Scientific Books; 1984.
- Facciola S. Cornucopia II: A Source Book of Edible Plants. Kampong Publications; 1998.
- Uphof JCT. Dictionary of Economic Plants. H.R. Engelmann; 1959.
- Hatfield G. Hatfield’s Herbal: The Secret History of British Plants. Penguin; 2008.
- Couplan F. The Encyclopedia of Edible Plants of North America. Keats Pub; 1998.
