Going to seed, our wild plants offer us new delights to forage throughout August as we step into late summer, as fruits and mushrooms too make an appearance.
As the summer matures, and the flowers fade, the ovaries under the falling petals fill with seeds or swell into fruits. August 1st, celebrated in the traditional calendar as Lughnasadh, marks the half-way point between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox. It is the beginning of harvest time.
Hogweed
The seeds of many umbellifers will be ripening ready to gather. Hogweed seed (Heracleum sphondylium) is a particular favourite, known as golpar in Persian cuisine (from H. persicum). Like many of its Apiaceae family relatives (that include parsley, cumin, and dill), it has a pronounced flavour all of its own — as if a mixture of coriander and cardamom has been infused in sweet orange peel oil.
I toast it and use it in marinades, as coatings for meat, in sauces and as an indispensable part of a wild curry blend. Other Apiaceae seeds to add to the spice cupboard are wild fennel (Foeniculum vulgare), wild carrot (Daucus carota), wild angelica (Angelica sylvestris), spignel (Meum athamanticum), rock samphire (Crithmum maritimum) and Scots lovage (Ligusticum scoticum), to name but a few.
Grasses
Humans have been collecting cereal grains from grasses for thousands of years before farming was introduced. They are now ripening and can be harvested on a dry, sunny day. Many grass, sedge and rush seeds can be milled into flour or used whole. Many will be gluten free. One of the most abundant and easiest grains to gather — although not a grass — is pendulous sedge (Carex pendula) with its distinctive drooping catkins bursting with seeds. A small patch of three or four pendulous sedge plants can yield a small bucket of grain. Once gathered, it needs to be dried and winnowed to remove as much of the chaff as possible. I use sedge seed as a wholegrain to add crunch to breads and biscuits, or grind it into a flour.
When collecting any grass grain you must be vigilant and look out for signs of the black ergot fungus (Claviceps purpurea). This grows on the individual grains and replaces them with its long purple black sclerotia. The sclerotia will grow over five times the length of the grain and protrude from the ear of grain. Even a few can cause severe illness as ergotamine constricts your blood vessels and gangrene was a common side effect of infected grain in the Middle Ages. Pharmaceutically, ergot was developed into ergometrine to prevent bleeding after childbirth, but it is rarely used nowadays. Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) is a strong hallucinogenic drug synthesised from ergot alkaloids using toxic chemicals. Luckily ergot doesn’t grow on sedges. If you’re not sure of the difference remember the rhyme about stems:
Sedges have edges
Rushes are round
Grasses have nodes from their tips to the ground
Other grass seeds will also be ripe for harvesting. Each species needs its own method to harvest. With Yorkshire fog (Holcus lanatus), you simply run your hand up the stem collecting the tiny seeds in your hand as you go. Although small, Yorkshire fog grains have a delicious nutty flavour and the chaff is easy to winnow from the grain. With crested dog’s tail (Cynosurus cristatus), I cut the stems with a sickle and then hang them upside down in a paper sack to let the grain fall out. Other species may need threshing to separate the grains from the stems, before winnowing.
Dock
Another abundant seed to collect is dock seed (Rumex sp.). Docks produce their seed as nutlets surrounded by reddish brown bracts. The shape of the bracts can be used to identify the exact species but all are equally good to use. Many species, like broad-leaved dock (Rumex obtusifolius) are very prolific. A mature plant will yield several handfuls of seeds. It’s not so good as a flour but increases the roughage in oatcakes. A less common sight these days are fields full of poppies. However, if you are lucky enough to have a field near you, the seeds can easily be shaken out of their pepper pot capsules.
Berries
Following quickly on the heels of July’s raspberries (Rubus idaeus), are blackberries or brambles (Rubus spp.). There are nearly 500 species in the UK so one can be found in almost every habitat. It’s not important to identify each species as all are equally edible but it does explain why some bushes have distinctly sweeter or tastier berries than others.
Blaeberries, bilberries or whinberries (Vaccinium myrtilis) will still be going strong this month too. You might also catch some of their less common relatives the crowberry (Empetrum nigrum), the lingonberry or cowberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea) and the cranberry (Vaccinium oxycoccus).
Tree fruits
Tree fruits will be starting to ripen too — early in the south and later in the north. Look out for cherry plums (Prunus cerasifera), you’ll often see these carpeting the ground under the tree in red or gold where they have been knocked down by wind and rain. These are the first of the plums to ripen, each fruit the size of a cherry. They will be followed by the other plums, both domestic and wild, such as damsons and bullace (both are called Prunus domestica var insititia). There are also wild cherries (Prunus avium) and small, black bird cherries (Prunus padus).
Lime or linden (Tilia sp.) fruits will also be ripe. Once roasted in the oven for about 30 minutes and ground into a powder they make a delicious cocoa powder but must be mixed with a fat, like a creamy milk, to show off the best flavours. Lime trees are in the same family as cocoa (Theobroma cacao) and kola nuts (Cola nitida) which is also in the same family as marshmallow (Althaea officinalis).
Rosehips
Rosehips will soon be ready to harvest. The Japanese rose (Rosa rugosa) is common on the coast and is often planted in hedges and gardens elsewhere. In my county of West Lothian, the council planted many long stretches of it beside some roads. I pick from the back of the bushes away from traffic pollution on minor roads — always mindful to find clean environments to pick from. The Japanese rose has large round hips, sometimes as big as golf balls. Cut them in half, scoop out the seeds and wash off the irritating hairs, and they can be used like a red pepper.
I like to drizzle olive oil over them and roast them in the oven with shallots. They easily adapt to both savoury and sweet dishes. The smaller hips of our native roses such as the dog rose (Rosa canina) I collect for rosehip puree and rosehip reduction. Cover the hips in a saucepan with water and boil until soft, then put them through a mouli mill to separate the seeds and hairs from the fruit pulp. Use the puree in place of tomato passata in sauces, stews and marinades.
Fungi
Chanterelles (Cantherellus cibarius) continue to form waves of golden nuggets while penny buns (Boletus edulis) are often out in their first major flush. An interesting relative of the penny bun is the extraordinary scarletina (Neoboletus luridiformis). It has a chestnut to dark brown cap that feels like moleskin, a yellow stem covered so heavily in tiny red spots that it looks red and bright red pores hiding under the cap. When you cut it in half — if you’re quick — you’ll see it has yellow flesh and tubes but it will rapidly change to a bright navy blue before your eyes! Thankfully, once cooked the colour will change back to a greyish yellow. Another colour changing mushroom out in August is the blusher (Amanita rubescens). Blushers blush rusty pink where bruised or nibbled by forest animals. This separates it out from its poisonous relatives, the panther cap (Amanita pantherina) and the probably toxic grey spotted amanita (Amanita excelsa var. spissa). Blushers and scarletinas will cause digestive upset if eaten raw so must always be well cooked. I would also emphasise that you must learn about edible mushrooms from a professional. Apps and novices often make mistakes and some mushrooms can be fatal, so never eat anything that you’re not 100% sure is correctly identified and edible.
Another group of mushrooms to look out for are the brittlegills, in particular the charcoal burner (Russula cyanoxantha) and the flirt (Russula vesca). Brittlegills are a large genus of fungi distinguished by their inflexible gills which shatter or crumble into flakes when gently rubbed and by their crumbly flesh which is never fibrous. (Of course there is always someone who breaks the rules and the tasty charcoal burner has flexible gills). Brittlegills have white or cream stems, gills and flesh with a coloured skin covering the cap which can be peeled off, at least around the edge. The flirt has a brownish pink skin, described as the colour of old ham, that doesn’t quite reach to the edges of the cap, exposing the gills at the very edge like the frills on a petticoat. The charcoal burner comes in a variety of colour forms, pink, green, blue or purple but always with yellow or tan mixed in giving the impression it has been scorched in the charcoal burners fire. These two brittlegills have a sweet nutty flavour. Other species in the genus can be hot and fiery like chillies or bitter making them less desirable to eat.
As always, when foraging, don’t be greedy and take just a little, being sensitive to other humans and species that share the land and resources.
