Bushcraft Foraging: Wild Edibles of Spring

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Video Transcription

either guys Springs well within motion as you can see in here around me and it's a great time to be out exploring and enjoying a bit of bushcraft so I thought I'd do a video covering some of the wild edibles you can find at this time of year this is quite an interesting edible to find hairy bitter cress and it sir it grows on the sides of roads wastelands woodland floors all throughout Europe and it's quite easy to identify you'll see at the base some sort of circular leaves there on the end of the leaf stem you've got like a main lobe and that's pretty classic four bit across but the further up you go the leaves become a bit more narrow and don't let that put off your ID that's pretty classic again for this particular edible but it's got quite a peppery taste to it and it's a nice one to find so this here is called a goose grass and you're probably very familiar with it I used to throw out on my mates backs when he wasn't looking and let them go home with it all over his jumper but um it's a bit like velcro and that's why it sticks so well to just sort of corresponding materials with them it's a good edible to eat I would boil it first because as I say it's a bitch it's a bit tough around the mouth them because of that texture that it has but just blanch it a bit or boil it and you can have like a nice little parcel to just snack on so again an edible that's not really going to need too much of an introduction I'm sure most of you know what this is this is dandelion and you'll find it from March all the way through to October pretty much inhabiting grassy areas signs of roads waste places now we're in a woodland here and this is an open canopy of lots of grass and and floor life from that on the ground so it's obviously growing here but the entire plants edible and the root is as well but the root itself should really be picked in the autumn where it's a lot bigger a lot fatter and you can bake it and grind it up and make a substitute for coffee but I don't really think it takes much like coffee at all so this is an edible that you'd probably smell before you saw it and this is a often referred to as wild garlic because of that smell it's actually a type of wild onion and it's called Ram scens but very popular to cook with nonetheless but you can eat it just raw straight off the plant and the buds too and it's short-lived compared to most edibles but worth taking advantage of while it's around so what we've got here is a little bit of Hawthorne it's a very common bush to find and early in the year the leaves are actually very tasty straight off the tree when they're young local or young leaves they'll be quite supple and and easy to just choose straight away and as a year goes on they will firm up a bit you can still eat them and just requires a little bit of steaming by the fire just to soften them up but later on in the year they'll produce a fruit to Barry and Hawthorne berry and the whole sort of range of what you can get off the tree tastes quite nutty actually it leaves the berries reminds me a lot of avocado but a very good butcher to find a few types of sorrel in the UK this one here's good sheep soil it grows up to about 30 centimeters high it's a single stem plant that likes growing in open pastures get us you get a few more broader leaves at the bottom and then as it goes up to this red kind of flower head the leaves kind of die off a little bit but they're still just as tasty and edible but as it grows to its full height you'll see in open pastures there'll be loads of it blanketing everywhere and you can pick a night quite easily this is an edible that we don't really need much of an introduction for this is nettle and it's pretty overlooked in this country I think given its er its nutritional value which is very very high contains vitamin A C iron they're also about 5% protein I believe which makes it quite formidable compared to others but if you mix it with a variety of other edibles like sorrel for example it's one of my favorites anyway and makes a really nutritious soup this is an edible fungus called dry add saddle or nicknamed pheasant back fungus because of its appearance you often find it growing on dead stumps of ash or sweet chestnut in this wooden woodland in particular anyway but um you want to pick the fungus while it's small and young because the older it gets the squid year and more maggot-infested it becomes and then in later on in its life it becomes like cardboard

so one like this for example it's perfect you can see the underneath is still quite soft it's not squidgy if I take a small piece of this one you'll see it's squidgy and it becomes like a sponge

but this one here is still quite firm and young and that's how you want them so I'm going to take that one home and have it for my lunch I'll take this one as well he's not going to last long that lowdown

what we've got here is a bit of black pre and later on in the year will produce berries that we can eat which are actually a very formidable edible they're very very high in fiber and shouldn't be overlooked really but some at this time of year it really just has its leaves to offer if you like your gray or sort of aromatic teas then you can pop some of these leaves into some hot water and actually make quite a nice tea although it's not recommended if you're pregnant because it does have some medicinal properties to it as well so it's best to have a look before you do that

what we've got here is a bit of wood sorrel and as you can see it's got quite a different appearance to the other soil we found in the pasture it almost looks a bit like a clover but with a slightly more heart shaped leaf and funnily enough these leaves actually close up a bit like this one here and strong sunlight it contains a mild acid which gives it its kick and it tastes a bit like apple schnapps but it's really nice edible to find and you can just chuck it straight on anything or eat it as it is despite how common this edible is it doesn't diminish its value historically it's and even today actually it has been used as a medicinal applicant for a whole range of major and minor illnesses and it's definitely worth looking into plantain if you're not familiar with it but as an edible you can eat it but best eat the younger leaves and much more supple as is with most edibles so where the thicker ones tend to be a little bit chewy and it can often act as a diuretic what we've got here is an edible called garlic mustard often nicknamed Jack by the hedge but garlic mustard or C relates to its taste again it's one of those edibles that has quite a strong garlicky kind of oniony taste to it but um it's a single stemmed plant the obviously grows in clusters who find it by roadsides waste areas woodlands lots of them growing together and it's important to note you should only really take one or two leaves from each stem and because you find it in clusters gives you the ability to pick large numbers of it without damaging one plant but it flowers from April through to June and it has slight seed pods at the top which can be eaten later in the years but it should make it quite easy to identify and help it stand out if you're braising into the woodland what we've got here is a bit of cuckoo flour it's quite a nice edible to find actually although it doesn't really provide you with a huge meal but it flowers from April to June and the leaves at the base of the plant can bear quite a resemblance to bitter cross but the further up they go they become very very narrow a bit like that but you can pick the petals off and eat them and the leaves are actually best at later on in the year as the flavours die down a little bit

so this is again quite a common one I'm sure lots of you have used on on your skin when you've been hit by stinging nettle over the years but this is curled doc and unlike broadleaf doc it grows just over a meter high and it usually has quite a large red sort of fruiting head at the top that you can see quite clearly and the stork can generally be quite red as well but the leaves are nice when young and they can be eaten straight off the plum I'm sure some of you recognize this one this is a burdock and it's quite a popular one when edibles are concerned but a lot of people will dig up the root and chop it up clean it and fry it a bit like fried potato and it is very nice like that very starchy a good a substantial meal for when you're outdoors which is something that can be a rarity anyway but the leaves can be handy - very good for cooking in or they work well for a surface area to work on if you decimated the plant by digging up the root why not use the rest of it what we've got here is Marsh thistle this is probably my favorite out the thistles it's quite easy to identify because it has sort of a dull purple on the outskirts of the leaves so on the edges and growing up the stem and the whole thing is very very hairy leaves stem with spikes growing up the stem as well which you don't often find to - obviously on other thistles they're very pronounced on the marsh little but um it likes growing on sort of very damp soils so you know this woodland here holds moisture very well on the ground and this thistle grows in abundance everywhere so it's a great snack to have on the go but what I like to do is just skim the whole thing and just have the stem pretty much like celery and just snack on it as you go you'll often see this plant decorating the forest floor it's yellow Archangel and you'll find it flowering between April and June but treat it like you do all the dead Nettles

just eat the young shoots young leaves and yeah it's quite a nutritious plum what we've got here is an example of a thistle there are a variety of thistles that you can find in the UK this one here is a creeping thistle I can just tell this by the leaf and the stalk but the leaves will no prickly and much softer to touch and some of its counterparts but the stem is the main thing you want to eat on this even though the leaves are edible it's not particularly a snack you'd want to eat unless you have to but the stalk itself can can be chopped and skinned and/or skinned and chops are probably the best way around and then fried and provided you fry it quite well it can soften it up a bit and make it quite a tasty snack so this is a very very common one and it's called a Primrose and both the leaves and the flowers are edible a lot of people will just eat the leaves and flowers young flowers are very good for making tea

but um although it's classified as an edible certain micro species will cause unusual allergic reactions so it's best to just have a look at it or just eat in small quantities but it's good to remember to always only take a few leaves from each plant just not to damage the plant but you will find it all over the place in open canopy so it is a very very common one so it won't just be the bluebells decorating the forest floor the shade of purple but this little edible as well I mean this is really classified as in a medicinal applicant it's a mild sedative as well as a mild antiseptic and it's been used throughout history to treat so many major and minor illnesses it's actually quite incredible really you know the people have got on board and started producing sort of natural topical remedies that they can say will cure anything they'll they'll sell you them over the internet and it will be made by this one and it's a bugle weed but like most edibles you can eat the flowers you can eat the young leaves the young shoots so yeah best eaten young but quite an interesting one to learn about this particular plant here is a member of the carrot and parsley family and it has a lot of lot of brothers and sisters that look almost exactly the same with just very subtle differences and if you're going to approach this edible approach it with caution some will kill you some will poison you some will taste good and you'll eat them and you'll be fine but there are very subtle differences as I say between all the different plants that look alike in the same family some will produce a you know like wild carrot for example a nice root that will smell just like carrot and it is delicious and you can eat it and you can identify it by an unusual purple flower in the center of the umbrella canopy at the top but others will have spotted stems and slightly more sporadic leaves slight thorns under the under the petals at the top and a lot of them you know will look very similar as I say so I'm not going to cover these in too much detail mainly because I don't eat them personally and they're dangerous is too much margin for error if you don't looking for what we've got here's common hogweed as you can see it's um almost like an oversized version of cow parsley bad cow parsley is the plant I spoke about earlier that I said to be wary of the carrot and parsley family with all the brothers and sisters that look very very similar some poisonous some not but the thing about this one is it's quite easy to identify because if it's oversized appearance you've got a main stem here with all these large lobes sprouting off and it can be quite quite easy to spot just on the hedgerows if you're browsing along but this one's quite young and the young leaves can be eaten the stem can be skinned and boiled like a vegetable and it is quite a substantial vegetable very nutritious but the thing I like about them is this flower bud here and this one's an open and that's what you want you want to pick that off lightly steam it it's almost like broccoli and it's a good good vegetable to find really but some do be careful of a giant hogweed that's a slightly different variation of hogweed and want to be wary of so do have a look into it before you go and pick it

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again another common one I'm sure plenty of you have seen around this is white dead nettle and a member of the dead nettle family probably the most common one you'll see I used to pick the flowers off these and chase my mates around thinking they were making them think there are real nettles that we're going to sting them but these don't sting you much like all the dead nettles you'll find but yeah treat like any nettle really eat the young shoots young leaves you can eat the flowers as well and it says pretty abundant you'll find it everywhere so what we've got here is a spear thistle one of the ugly ones of the Thistle family none like creeping thistle a marsh thistle the leaves are a lot tougher and the spikes are a lot spicier so if you move in to give it a grab you'll find that it'll get you pretty much straight away but um you can pretty much distinguish it by being a lot deeper in color and the lobes are far more defined on the leaf so if I try and take a leaf off here without well I'm getting it I'm getting spikes big time but um you'll see there that that's pretty distinct it's not you know the other things tend to be quite flat weathers this one has a twist up the main sort of spine of the leaf that and the spikes are pretty defined so the spear thistle is quite easy to identify but with the spear thistle you really you can eat the leaves you can eat the roots and you can eat the stem but my preference is really just to eat the stem I find if you chop it up and you fry it or boil it it's quite a nice vegetable to have and the root as well actually

so I hope that videos been of some use to you guys all those of you are interested in wild edibles there's a still an enormous amount of edibles I haven't covered really those are just kind of the more common ones the ones you find in large quantities everywhere I mean there is hazel here as well plenty of hazel in this woodland although it doesn't have much to offer you now you know later on if you can beat the squirrels some of the bigger bushes will provide you with the with nuts and they are quite nutritious but there's Beach as well there's no there's no beach in this woodland but beach leaves in the early spring of delicious straight off the tree or on salad got a bit of a bite to them towards the end of a of you chewing them so they are very refreshing

but obviously Beach produces a nut as well every sort of three to four years this sweet chestnut is bilbrey rosehip comfrey mallow there's this loads I haven't covered actually in the video but unfortunately got a tick on me there has loads of those things around but be careful really with deer ticks you get Lyme's disease but they actually pretty resilient I just crushed that one but anyway yeah there are loads of edibles I haven't covered and unfortunate ups because I just haven't been able to find them in this environment and I'm towards the edge of the woodland now and when you're on the edge of the woodland you tend to get you know quite a lot more than you do sort of in the depths and darkest areas of the woods but um yeah I hope it I hope you've enjoyed the video I do make guides and I do sell these guides I'll put a link below if any of you are interested any some of you have already bought it and then this really does cover pretty much everything we've been over today I mean it cost about a quid fifty if you're interested and I usually put the money towards making other guides which I'm currently making a few others at the moment but um yeah please do message me if you have any questions and yeah thank you for watching

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