Eating Flowers - How to Make Lunch Out of Leaves
Wilderness Notes #5 A wild food walk with Adrian Boots
The delicate mauve flowers of lady’s’ smock glowed in the early morning light filtering through the chinks in a blackthorn hedge. I steeled myself, picked one and popped it in my mouth.
After a moment, there was an explosion of pepper on my tongue, as if an entire bag of rocket had been condensed into a single bud.
Adrian Boots smiled at my surprise. I was out on a wild food walk he was hosting through his company, Hedgerow Cottages: the idea was to find spring flowers and foliage for our lunch. (Side note - I used to have a column in BBC Wildlife magazine about foraging for wild food, but I’ve rarely done any since people have stopped paying me. I hoped Adrian was going to inspire me to start again, show me what’s on my doorstep in the Mendips, in Somerset, and remind me of what might kill my family.)
We had walked from Adrian’s house across the field and were now in Luvers Lane. The hedgerow was bursting with edible plants, but Adrian reminded us of a few tips when out foraging: don’t pick anything close to cars, farmyard slurry or other effluent, and make sure you’re picking plants growing above knee-height in order to miss dog wee. Or worse.
Although, he said, one time he was telling a group this, a Great Dane went past and peed right next to him. Well above knee-height.
“What was the chance of that?” he said, grinning at us.
He also cautioned us not to get into a “green mist of foraging frenzy”, pointing out that the wild garlic leaves (delicious) were interspersed with dog’s mercury and cuckoo pint (poisonous) and that the delicate leaves of cow parsley, which are edible, are remarkably similar to hemlock — definitely not edible.
We walked past a field golden with cow slips — you can make them into wine or add the flowers to salad — stopping at the edge of a copse to sample ground ivy. The name has always put me off, but this little purple-flowering plant has a deep earthy herby taste, a little like sage. It’s a member of the mint family and was used to make beer in the days before hops were widely grow, acting as a preservative and imparting bitterness. Adrian recommended making a tea from the leaves. And adding honey.
Across the commons of Burrington Ham we saw dog violets (the flowers of its close relative, sweet violet, used to be served sweetened and crystallised) and silverweed, gleaming like slips of pewter. Silverweed has been cultivated since the Iron Age: the roots are one of the few sources of wild carbohydrates and taste, apparently, a little like potato. The Latin is Potentilla anserina; Potentilla means ‘little powerful one’, partly because this hardy herb seems able to grow anywhere.
We tasted the peppery leaves of hairy bittercress and I immediately thought of the ones growing wild in my greenhouse, and later, slipped a few leaves into a salad to add a rocket-like punch, without my husband noticing).
Below Burrington Ham is an ancient woodland, and as we descended into its cool shade, we could smell the aroma of garlic. Beneath the trees was a wave of dagger-shaped leaves; the flowers, each one a sharp-pointed star, were beginning to bloom.
Back at Adrian’s outdoor kitchen, we had a most delicious lunch: nettle soup served with wild garlic oil and wild garlic focaccia. Nettles have more protein per weight than any other plant, and are packed with vitamins and minerals (only pick the tips and use gloves!)
Adrian then made us work for our pudding. We picked sorrel leaves growing beneath his apple trees, and he wilted them in a pan over the fire with a little sugar, added spoonfuls to tiny tartlets and topped them with vanilla custard. They were sublime: like rhubarb and custard.
Truly inspired, when I got home, my daughter and I picked a basketful of wild garlic and, as well as wild garlic oil and wild garlic focaccia, we also made pesto using this recipe from fellow forager, Andy Hamilton, who has a new book out: The First Time Forager: A safety-first guide to edible wild plants.
You can find out more about Adrian’s foraging courses HERE, and his book, just published, is called Wild Food and Mushroom Foraging: An Essential Guide for the UK.
This is a free post as part of Wilderness Notes and is research for Wilderness, the book I’m serialising right here on Substack. You can read the previous chapters here by subscribing.
Don’t feel able to subscribe? Perhaps you’d like to buy me a coffee instead?
That’s such a shame. It often seems the way - growing nice and healthily along verges!
The sorrel tarts look amazing! There are nettles and wild garlic round where I live but they are close to paths, ideal for dogs.