Succulent plant stems and wild pickles – no.8

Part of the series - Wild food in Covid times

Join me in this riotously blue celebration of spring in a gorgeous bluebell wood.

I demonstrate how to eat various succulent plant stems, and show how to pickle seven different wild plants/fungi, either hot or cold as is appropriate.

Note: As I mentioned at the beginning, in bluebell woods like this, with lots of ash trees, I usually find king Alfred’s cake and dryad’s saddle fungi, but I forgot to mention that most of the plants I’m working with, I brought in from elsewhere.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Foraging videos like this are best seen as a good starting point or stepping stone towards wild food adventures and discoveries, rather than a definitive guide to identification and safe use. For best results seek out multiple sources of information.

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Time stamps

• 0:00 Intro and bluebell woodland walk.
• 4:45 Causing wood ants to turn bluebells pink
• 8:20 Introducing larger edible and succulent spring plant stems (and hummus)!
• 9:07 Broad-leaved dock stem (Rumex obtusifolius).
• 12:18 Cow parsley stem (Anthriscus sylvestris).
• 16:50 Japanese knotweed stem (Polygonum japonicum).
• 29:30 The wild foods I’ll be pickling.
• 32:06 Cold pickling Japanese knotweed.
• 41:18 Cold pickling dandelion flower bud ‘capers’. (Taraxacum officinale).
• 48:10 Hot pickling immature elderflower clusters, and a wave/surfing analogy I spontaneously came up with, that I quite like (Sambucus nigra).
• 55:45 Cold pickling spear thistle roots. Also, how to peel and eat the raw stem (Cirsium vulgare).
• 1:03:53 Hot pickling immature ribwort flower heads an stems (Plantago lanceolata).
• 1:08:44 How to use spear thistle leaves to make biscuits.
• 1:11:37 Cold pickling jelly ear fungi (Auricularia auricula-judae).
• 1:13:17 Cold pickling wild garlic flower buds in a weird experimental ‘vinegar’ (Allium ursinum).
• 1:17:33 A couple of lovely things to pickle in the coming weeks, Ox-eye daisy flower buds (Leucanthemum vulgare) and honesty seed pods (Lunaria annua).
• 1:20:41 Cooking up a late breakfast. Perhaps the most random assortment of things I’ve eaten in a very long time. But was good with hummus!

Additional resources

• The Wild Flower Key (Revised Edition) - How to identify wild plants, trees and shrubs in Britain and Ireland Rev Ed by Francis Rose, Clare O'Reilly.
• Vegetative Key to the British Flora 2n eition by John Poland & Eric Clement
• New Flora of the British Isles 4th edition by Clive A. Stace

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