Wild Weed Wisdom

Nurture Your 'Inner Wild' with Foraged Edible and Medicinal Plants

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Fiddlehead “Flag” Indicator – Mature Fern

When looking for fiddleheads – look for this indicator! It’s the mature fern. All the fiddlehead sprouts will be found growing – or will soon be coming up – at it’s feet… kind of like an old woman surrounded by her grandchildren.
Those ‘seeds’ you see clinging to the browned leaves are actually spores. If you brush against them, or give them a pat with your hand, the spores will be released in a cloud, like magic. Once upon a time, it was indeed thought that this magical cloud had the power to make someone invisible.

Wildcrafty Soup!

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Wildcrafty Soup!

As-Fresh-As-Can-Be Wildrcafty Soup:

  1. Gather a couple of handfuls (say, one handful per person) of ethically foraged plants, buds and flowers- we used: henbit, ground ivy, hawthorn buds, burdock leaves, dock, dandelion leaves, garlic-mustard, young cleavers and nettles – probably a few more, but I can’t remember! We meant to find some wild ramsons, but they weren’t right in our area, and we missed some bishop weed that was in the area that would have added a huge flavour.
  2. Water
  3. Salt and Pepper – or local flavouring: dried tansy leaves would have been interesting.
  4. Celery and/or carrots, cut into very small pieces – optional
  5. Potatoes – cut into small cubes optional
  6. Pre-cooked lentils  – optional – I cooked these the night before and brought them in a thermos. 1 cup of dried lentils, then pre-cooked is enough.

Get your campfire/camp-stove going, throw it all together, gather your friends and tell a story while the soup comes to a boil, then simmer until the potatoes are soft – about 20 minutes. We collected dried Beech-leaves that were rustling all around us and made a tea from them (not for pregnant women, though) and the tea was gorgeous – tasted a bit smokey, like Lapsang Suchong tea! This was part of a full, 6-hour day in the woods with Wild in the City!

Spring Harvest

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Spring Harvest

I like to keep a small paper bag with me in case I see a good, full batch of abundant herbs or edible plants. This photo is from a patch of Coltsfoot flowers, that happened to grow adjacent to a small field full of Violets. We tasted a few Violets, and brought a small sample home for my husband to try – they are considered to be Nature’s Vitamin Pill – and you can imagine how important this would be in earlier times, when people had to survive the winter primarily on preserved food. This sweet little flower is packed with just the vitamins they’d need. Coltsfoot, on the other hand, was traditionally used for sore throats. They’d let it soak in water overnight, and that water was made into a lukewarm – not boiled! – infusion the next morning – to be taken in small doses throughout the day.