Alexanders is a member of the apiaceae family or carrot family which has some of the best wild
edibles but also has some of the deadliest plants found in the uk so extra care has to be taken
when foraging these plants and just make sure that you can identify the deadly poisonous
hemlock water dropwort if you're going to forage alexanders. But once you're 100 percent sure of
your ID then alexander's is a great plant to forage, so it mostly grows around the coast
and around estuaries but it can also be found inland occasionally,
and it's quite an early growing plant it'll be in full bloom by around mid-march
the whole plant is edible this time of year i'm looking for the unopened flower buds
and they're a bit like a wild broccoli.
Also the stems can be used in a similar way to
celery when they're young when they go a bit too old they can go very fibrous
but ones like this should be fine as long as they're still quite pliable
and they're very nice candied. The leaves grow in groups of three, they're quite glossy
when you crush the leaves you'll get a mild peppery smell.
The leaves are bluntly toothed and if you look very closely at the very tips of the
leaves you'll see a little white pinprick and that is quite a good ID feature for alexander's
the stems are thick and quite strong
and where the leaf stems come and meet the main stem there's a very
distinctive looking protective shroud which is white with red veins
and that is another quite good ID feature for alexander's
and alexanders has small dense umbels of yellow flowers
generally i don't eat the flowers once they've opened it's these unopened ones that i eat
and as i said just use them in the same way that you would broccoli
alexander's has quite a strong and unique flavour a lot of people
can find it a bit overpowering but yeah i really enjoy it
i like eating these flowers of these primrose when i'm out walking in early spring
so in my area in the southwest of england these start to appear right at the beginning of march
so they're a really good sign that spring is on the way
their name primrose comes from the latin prima rosa or first rose
and if you catch them in the morning just as they're opening they can be really nice and sweet
the flowers grow one flower per stem and they have five petals which have notched lobes
so they're a pale yellow colour and they're darker yellow in the center
the flower stems are either green or with a bit of a red tinge
and they are slightly hairy
leaves grow in a basal rosette
they're oblong and have a very crinkly texture and they're quite furry
on the underside they have a very pronounced white midrib
the only plant that you may mistake this for
are the closely related cow slips which they're edible as well
This is a common sow thistle now they're not actually a thistle they're
a member of the asteraceae family the same as daisies and
sunflowers they'll grow just about anywhere on roadsides and recently disturbed soils
and they will grow up to about one and a half meters this is quite a small one here.
I generally don't eat them when they're at this stage they're not quite as nice they're a bit
bitter but i like them when the rosettes are just starting to appear and they're
quite young and fresh and the leaves are a lot brighter green
you can find them pretty much all year but around march april is when they're at their best
there are several types of sow thistle this is the common sow thistle (Sonchus oleraceus)
and this one is a prickly sow thistle (Sonchus asper) which looks more like a true thistle.
the leaves form a basil rosette on younger plants and as the plant matures it will grow
a central stem
the leaves higher up on the plant will be clasping the stem
the leaves are deeply lobed and look very much like dandelion
which they're closely related and the stem is hollow and has a milky white latex when cut.
You can eat the whole plant, the leaves, the stem, the root, and the young flower
buds but it's best to eat the basal leaves as the upper leaves are a bit too bitter
just use them like lettuce or you can fry them and they're very high in antioxidants. The only
plant you really mistake this for is dandelion but sow thistles grow a lot bigger and also dandelions
will only grow one flower per stem whereas sow thistles will grow several flowers per stem.
A walk through open woodland in spring is a good time to see violets
for me they come up around mid-march and then last throughout april and when you start seeing the
lesser celandine, these, the violets usually follow a few weeks after these.
The flowers and leaves of violets are edible but the roots and seeds are toxic.
There are several species of violet in the uk but as long as the
flowers are like a purplish blue or white then they're edible. I've read a few sources that say
yellow violets can cause a bit of a stomach upset but I've never actually seen them in the wild.
The most common are sweet violets which have quite a nice strong sweet smell and also
common dog violets which i think these are because they don't have the smell.
But to be honest all i can smell is wild garlic because there's
wild garlic everywhere around here.
And also hairy violet which is covered in fine white hairs, all of those are edible.
The leaves of all violets are heart-shaped to kidney-shaped
and they're dark green and have quite a crinkly texture and they grow in a rosette.
So the flowers have five petals,
there's two at the top which are folded back and look a bit like rabbit's ears.
And then two on the side that are folded forwards
and one at the bottom which is quite heavily veined.
and the flowers are a lighter colour in the center.
The flowers can be used to make tea or violet syrup
and they're good candied and used as a decoration for cakes
although i do suggest not picking too many unless they're growing in a large number because they're
becoming quite a lot less common in the uk due to lack of habitat and over picking so
yeah if there's only a few plants like this i generally don't pick them at all
but if you do find them in large numbers then
take a few and try them out the leaves can eaten raw in salads or cooked as a green and
violet flowers and leaves can be used as a herbal tea to help treat headaches and insomnia [Music]
Nettles have to be one of our most underrated and underused plants in the
UK, they're really nutritious and they're superfood and they grow everywhere i think
people maybe are put off by the fact that they sting but once you cook them they lose that sting
and yeah as i said they're highly nutritious. They've got quite a high level of protein i
think like five percent which is very high for a plant and they're high in fatty acids and vitamins
A and C so they're best to eat this time of year in the early spring just you get these nice bright
green tips coming up and you just eat the top few inches that's the part that's most nutritious.
I mostly eat stinging nettles in soups i like mixing them with wild garlic and
potato it makes a nice nutritious spring soup or just mixed in with other greens.
To ID nettles the first most obvious way is that they sting
also the leaves are oval and cordate or heart shaped at the base.
And they have a pointed tip they're quite heavily toothed.
Also they're net veined or the veins just kind of spread out.
The only thing you might really mistake these for are dead nettles.
Nettles really like fertilized soil and they grow anywhere around human habitation so around towns
or around farms which should be fair in the UK is pretty much everywhere. I highly recommend
making the most of these in spring this is when at their best you don't want to be eating them
in the summer after they've flowered because they start to get a buildup of
crystals in the leaves i think it's calcium crystals and they can cause kidney stones so
don't eat them after the plant's gone to flower but this time of year they're really good.
It is best to wear gloves when you're harvesting them but if you're not wearing
gloves you can just grip them really quickly because all of the hairs are growing upwards,
so if you get them if you grab them in an upwards motion you shouldn't get stung, like that.
These are purple dead nettle (Lamium purpureum) a nice common edible that you'll find
growing all around field edges often in quite big patches and you'll find them alongside country
roads as well. So they're not actually related to the stinging nettle and they don't sting they're
actually a member of the mint family and like all mints they have that characteristic square stem.
The leaves look fairly similar to the stinging nettle they grow in an opposite arrangement
and they're oval, and have a toothed edge, but out of the the dead nettles i'd say these look
the least like stinging nettles the white dead nettle and the yellow dead nettle which i'll show
next month they look very similar to stinging nettles. So the leaves of the purple dead nettle
are a bit smaller than the other dead nettles and if you look at the leaves
at the top of the plant you can see their purple which really gives this plant away.
The light pinky purple flowers
are quite nice and sweet especially if you catch them early in the morning.
They make quite a nice little decoration for salads as well, I usually just pick
the top part of the plant the growing tip because that's where most of the nutrition is in spring.
So these do grow in quite large patches usually but i always make sure there's plenty left for the
bees because they really like these flowers it's a good source of nectar for them in early spring.
Another good salad ingredient in March are these hawthorn leaves just as they're opening
they're not particularly tasty they don't have much of a flavour but they are very nutritious and
what i'll do is just pick these and mix them in with other salad greens just to get that extra bit
of nutrition so hawthorn leaves when they're fully open are very deeply lobed and they're quite small
but i generally don't eat them once they're opened because they're a bit more bitter
yeah the ones just like this as they're not open yet they're quite nice, they can have a bit of a
nutty flavour, just watch out for the really sharp thorns on the twigs.
You'll find hawthorn all along country roads and it's used as hedging to divide fields as well.
March is the time to be tapping trees, you can tap birch maples and walnuts in this area birch
is the most popular. It depends where you are to what sort of time for me it's early to mid march.
Just don't take too much sap from any one tree.
It's a very nice refreshing sugary drink, birch sap.
Just make sure if you're using the knife method use a nice clean knife so the tree
doesn't get infected and after you've taken the sap, just give it a good knock to help it seal
you can also use the twig method where you just cut off at an angle cut the twig and then let the
the sap pour out that way, it only really works for gathering a small amount
but i never really take more than a liter of the sap from a nice mature tree. I have
done a video on tapping birch in more detail i'll leave a link to that in the description.
So those are some of the wild foods i would say are at their peak
in March but that's by no means all there is to forage this time of year. I'll leave a list
in the description of this video of other plants and fungi that you can forage this time of year
but i'll include them in other videos in this series. Okay thanks for watching uk wildcrafts.