h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I do. I regularly use stinging nettles in soups. the sting is lost immediately in very hot water. I prefer them to spinach now, which they are often described as a substitute for.

There's lots of knowledge about food that was traditionally foraged for as a matter of course which have fallen out of fashion, or the knowledge is lost.

And this thread doesn't just refer to the UK but wherever you happen to live.

If I find something, absolutely!

Berry picking and mushroom picking is legal here, on anybodies land, as long as you treat the land with respect, and don't disturb the land owners but being close to their home.

Should I find chanterelles, I would get manic and pick all I could see, but so would anybody else who's around. Same with blueberries. Wild raspberries and blackberries too.

I've never picked nettles, but eaten it once or twice. As a scout, we learned about a couple of edible plants, but I never really tried my knowledge

Nearly wild garlic time again It makes great pesto. And berries aren't safe from me either.

I used to eat wild plants and fungi which I took in a responsible way just as the occasional seasonal treat but I stopped because of the impact of the commercial activities of others.

There is a right by tradition that one can take fruit, fungi, foliage and flowers in England and Wales however it is an offense to uproot any wild plant without the land owners permission, in some high nature conservation areas it is an offense to remove any biological material and some areas operate foraging licenses - so you really need to ask first.

This may seem heavy handed but unfortunately due to the greed of some trendy restauranteurs, the idiot advise of some media types and the commercial collecting of fungi by eastern Europeans these activities are having an effect on some species and the wildlife that depends on them, and have caused disturbance to rare wildlife.

Some land owners are concerned regarding the possibility of being sued by the families of trendy "Food for Free" types who demonstrate natural selection by ingesting some of the deadly species that occur on their land.

I'm very responsible about it because I have a great care and love of nature..I know all that stuff but thanks for posting that..not everyone will be so aware.

The nettles grown in my garden as does the ribwort plantain..I'll eat later.

I planted up my garden as an English wildflower meadow buying the grass seed and flowers from a responsible company that breeds them to encourage people to plant them as they are disappearing from the countryside..

Nettles are continually being dug up by the council and stuck in machines to make compost.

Out of interest what's a food for free type? I've not come across that term before. Is it a sort of club?

There have been various books and television programmes which have encouraged people to forage starting with Food for Free in the 70's - and each time it becomes trendy there is always an idiot fringe who have to see how many different things they can try while being to lazy or to dense to be careful and there certainly have been programmes giving bad advice for example "all Boletus fungi are safe to eat" which rather begs the question how Boletus satanicus (the Devil's Boletus) got it's name

My main concern is the large scale vandalism of the landscape by developpers and changes in farming practice.

I think that's a much bigger threat than a few trendy types as you refer to them, collecting things. I don't know anyone who falls into that category of trendiness but thanks for explaining.

It is important to protect those areas that have not been developed or put into intensive agriculture or foresty

My experience as a professional conservationist was of lines of men with bin bags systematically plundering internationally important sites as they were being paid £10 a kilo for ceps by restraunteaurs who were charging £60 per tasting plate of fungi that had been taken without consent or considerationm for the protected species they were disturbing or the loss of a vital food source for wildlife at a critical time of year

To use an analogy a few people collecting blackberries is not a problem but if jam companies were paying £10 per kilo for them and every bush was being trampled and stripped bare that would be a different matter.

I *want* to eat foraged food, but I also want to make damn sure I'm not foraging something that'll kill me. I did look at foraging courses, but they're expensive. Really expensive. Expensive enough that I determined they're mostly intended for smug upper-middle-classers who have solar panels on their rooves, drive hybrid cars and wear hemp shirts at the weekend.

Maybe when I'm working full time again I'll look for a weekend bushcraft course that has foraging in it, so I get the foraging *and* a bunch of useful skills for when I'm camping.

Industrial foraging is indeed a problem here.

Unscrupulous people ship asian workers here, have them pick berries en masse, litter the forests, trample down, and work for pretty much no pay at all. It's horrible.

I'm not sure you could learn enough botanical skills in a week to identify anything other than the most obvious edible plants and fungi safely - there arn't any easy short cuts but there are a lot of dangerous old wife's tales.

You have reminded me of a placement student who had just got back from a week long course with that chubby pyromaniac Ray Mears, we left him to light a cooking fire with a pile of dry pine twigs, several old newspapers, cardboard and a catering boxes of matches on a dry day and came back an hour later to discover all he'd ignited was the paper and all the matches

Oh, I'm well aware of the limitations of a short course, but it's surely got to be safer than trying to learn it myself out of a book...

Ribwort plantain buds were delicious. Sort of mushroomy flavour and crunchy.

They seed all over the place in the garden so I'm certainly having some more this year. They are also comon in the local park since they started letting large areas grow long and wild.

I'll try upload some photos later.

Applause Southwark Council.

Aside

They've also got the recycling going a treat now. I put far more in the big blue bin than in the normal dustbin. Everyone's at it. They sent out leaflets congratulating us for the amazing turnaround.

There are wild grapes that grow along the fence in the mobile home park that I live in. There's a good crop of dandelions on my lawn. The greens would make a good salad. :-0

Greed generally just repulses me but particulary when I see people foraging and taking far more than what is a fair share and stripping places bare, it infuriates me

Yeah but I've never seen it..

Why is it that I started a thread like this and now its so full of negativity?

For me its to do with tradition and childhood..nothing like some trendiness and greed that's been suggested. Country people have always done it and like I say I think the real thing to be concerned about are developers and farming changes.

For some of us it's in our *blood*. My grandmother taught me quite a lot of stuff..she was a real country woman...god bless her.

I won't be bothering to upload any pics *here* and I'm unsubbing.

As usual English rural ancient traditions are ignored.

I've plenty of brambles as usual for blackberries later and dandelions for salad leaves.

Yes, blackberries (from waist height or above only) and fallen chestnuts mostly, because I recognise them!

Sorry Effers, but people are going to post their experiences of a subject negative and positive, if you really only want positive posts you need to politely ask for that.

I WANT to be positive about this, but not everybody was lucky enough to be taught it from childhood. Some of us can only look at expensive courses and books of unverifiable reliability.

>As usual English rural ancient traditions are ignored.<

As usual the rural past is being romantised - English people were rather unadventurous as regards to the eating wild plants and fungi and largely stuck to blackberries, field mushrooms and cob nuts (which are hard to find these days thanks to grey squirrels.

I don't have a problem with people taking a little for themselves as a seasonal treat but the commercial foraging that many of us who live and work in the countryside have experienced is far from traditional.