Hey I'm Lewis welcome to UK Wildcrafts so this video is the first in a series that i'm making
of a month by month foraging calendar, i'm starting in march because it's the beginning
of spring and the start of a new cycle. i love this time of year because there's so many nice
wild edible plants just starting to grow. in this foraging calendar series i'll be including
in each month the plants and fungi that are at their peak in that month,
but depending on your location and the weather it might be a little bit earlier or later for you.
I do most of my foraging in the southwest of england or south wales, but most of these plants
are relevant if you're in temperate parts of europe and even in the united states,
in a temperate parts of the united states a lot of the plants are either the same or fairly similar
this is opposite-leaved golden saxifrage, a low-growing edible plant that you can find all
year but it's best after it's flowered from march through to early summer.
so it's really common in damp woodlands and especially on rocky grounds alongside streams
and it can form really large mats along the woodland floor
it can grow up to about 12 centimeters in the late spring through to summer and the
leaves are rounded and have a slightly toothed margin though more of a scalloped edge really
and the leaves taper at the base
they grow in really densely packed clusters
and the leaves grow in opposing pairs
the stems have a square profile
and the the upper surface of the leaves and the stems are usually covered with fine hairs
what really makes this plant stand out is in march when the flowers start to appear
you just get this nice golden color all over the woodland floor
the flowers don't actually have petals they just have four yellowish green sepals and eight stamen
you can eat the the leaves the stems and the flowers, the leaves can be eaten all winter but
before they flower they've got a really bitter taste and they're not very nice
but as soon as the flowers appear in march then they're quite a nice little salad
plant you can just add into your into your salads they've got quite a strong flavor which
i can't really describe but it's a similar taste to alexanders, so if you've had that
like the aftertaste is a little bit similar to alexanders. you can eat them raw or cooked
and you can't really mistake this plant for anything else apart from
the closely related alternate leaved golden saxifrage which the main difference obviously
is the leaves are alternate instead of opposite and also it doesn't form dense mats like this
but both this and alternate leaved saxifrage are edible anyway
this is a flowering currant they're not native to the uk they're from western united states and
canada but they can be found around gardens parks and in waste grounds around the uk
they flower in very early spring right from the start of march and then through april
this time of year you can pick the nice bright blossoms and also these
young leaves are quite nice a bit later in the year you can pick the berries though they're not
quite as nice as the blossoms and leaves
the blossoms have a nice fruity flavor and they're great for making syrups cordials and vinegars
the flowers grow in drooping clusters of up to about 30 flowers per cluster
each flower has five petals which are either a nice bright pink or red
and they've got a nice strong floral smell fairly similar to the dog rose
the leaves are quite broad and have five lobes very similar to other currants
and they've also got quite a strong floral smell when crushed
and they've got like a quite a resinous feel to them when they're at this young stage
so i highly recommend having a look around parks and around some villages in your area to try and
find a few of these bushes they are fairly common and they're very easy to spot this time of year
it's a really nice flavor to these leaves and flowers this this time of year you don't get many
plants that have this nice sweet flavor
by early to mid-march wild garlic or ramsons are covering the floors of many uk woodlands
it can be found even earlier from february but i find early to mid march
is the best time for the wild garlic well the wild garlic leaves anyway
because they've reached a decent size by that time and it's before they start to flower
which in that period is when i find the leaves the the best to pick
the main indicator for wild garlic or any other allium is when you
crush the leaves give them a smell and you'll get a strong
oniony garlic smell so as long as you've got that smell then it is safe
so the leaves are tapered at both ends
and on the underside
you've got a pronounced white midrib
and the veins in the leaf run parallel to the mid-rib
just be a bit careful when you're picking wild garlic that you're not picking this plant here
lords and ladies or the arum lily they do grow in the same environment and at the same time
as wild garlic see the more mature leaves here will be quite difficult to mistake
for wild garlic but these younger ones like this are very similar color
to wild garlic so that would be fairly easy to mistake and these are poisonous
so the thing that you really have to check as i said before is the smell crush it get the
garlic smell it's fine i have done other videos more in depth of how to identify
this plant the arum lily or lords and ladies i'll leave that in the description
wild garlic is a very versatile leaf it's good fermented wilted fried
dried ground down into a powder and used a seasoning there's lots of uses for it
and it was one of the first plants that
i learned to forage and it's still one of the ones i look forward to most coming into season
so this time of year early spring there's still not that much heat coming from the sun
or reaching the woodland floor so what you can do to get a bit of a head start
is to find woodlands that have a south facing slope like this and there are a bit more open
so they get this the light earlier and another thing is if you look around say like fallen trees
like this here they're given a bit of protection from the elements and you'll often get
nicer looking leaves just by the side of them because the
the wind chill can make the ground a lot colder so even just a few degrees extra that this
log is uh given this bit of ground here there's quite a lot of difference at this time of year
so you'll find much healthier looking plants in early spring when they're protected
these are magnolia blossoms and they are good and edible they're best around march and april
and they vary in taste sometimes they're quite bitter and sometimes they taste just like ginger
they have quite a strong flavor and if you use them raw in salads you only need a small amount
but my favorite use for them is to sweet pickle them
they taste just like the pickled ginger that you eat with sushi
so when the buds are closed they're more bitter and when the blossoms start to open
up and you can see the magnolia pineapple inside the petals usually taste a bit better
just be careful when you're picking them if you want to pickle them they do bruise very easily
and they go quite brown which doesn't really affect the flavor but it doesn't look as nice
another good edible plant in march are dock especially the younger leaves like this here
this time of year you can harvest these nice young leaves and these are a really good source of iron
they've got a nice tart lemony flavour very similar to the closely related sorrels
and this flavor comes from oxalic acid which is fine to eat but it's not something you
want to consume every day so a sorrel or dock i'll only eat these a couple of times a week
you'll find dock growing just about anywhere especially on
disturbed soil and little patches of waste ground like this are perfect for it
broad leaf dock have wide oval leaves and they can grow quite a bit bigger than this maybe
two or three times the size of this leaf and they are cordate or heart shaped at the base
and they have a fairly rounded tip
so curly dock leaves are much narrower and have a wavier margin
all docks are characterized by untoothed and unlobed margins it may look like they're
slightly toothed but when you look closer it's actually just because the the margins are wavy
but they're not toothed
and also at the base of the leaf stems they've got these protective sheaths called ocrea
on younger plants like this they're
just a light green but as the plant matures they go brown and papery
and the the stems of these very young leaves they're really mucilogenic
or they release a slime when you pick them
like that
so that's another good ID feature
obviously when you cook the leaves it gets rid of this slime
that's the sort of leaf you want to be going for just as they're starting to open up and uncurl
and there you can see the protective sheath
that's another good one there
oh that one's really slimy
it's probably better to cut these off with a knife to be honest but,
i generally don't go for the leaves once they've opened up fully because they're really bitter
only ones like this
you can sometimes find the seed still
this time of year of the dock and they've got like a rusty red color
so that can be a good way of finding the plants because the
fresh growth will be at the base of it
this is greater stitchwort an edible plant you'll find growing out of hedgerows and in grasslands
throughout the spring its leaves grow in an opposite arrangement
and they're quite narrow and look a bit like blades of grass
and they grow on a square stem
the flowers have five petals although from a distance
it can look like ten because they are quite deeply notched the flowers are white they look
quite similar to chickweed flowers and they are quite closely related greater stitchwort
flowers are usually about three centimeters across and the only thing you mistake it for
are like i said other members of the stellaria family like chickweed or lesser stitchwort also
looks very similar but they have smaller flowers there usually up to about one centimeter across
but all of those flowers that i mentioned are edible
the chickweed greater and lesser stitchwort are all edible. when the seeds ripen
they have like a projectile system to launch the seeds and they can make quite a loud pop. the
stitchwort doesn't really have much of a flavor maybe just like a mild lettuce and it's just good
added into salads you do find them in quite large numbers so it's quite easy to collect some of the
flowers and leaves and the younger stems as well before they go too brittle can be eaten
and the flowers make quite a nice decoration as well
it's believed that eating this plant can cure stitch though i've not actually tried that