Bushcraft Foraging Wild Edibles of Spring

Hi there guys, spring's well within motion as you can see and hear 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 bittercress, and 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 and on the end of the leaf stem you've got like a main lobe and that's pretty classic for bittercress 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 goose grass and you're probably very familiar with it. I used to throw it on my mate's backs when he wasn't looking and let him go home with it all over his jumper but it's a bit like velcro and that's why it sticks so well to sort of corresponding materials but it's a good edible to eat. I would boil it first because as I say it's a bit tough around the mouth 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 but this is dandelion and you'll find it from March all the way through to October pretty much inhabiting grassy areas, sides of roads, waste places. Now we're in a woodland here and this is an open canopy with lots of grass and floor life on the ground so it's obviously growing here but the entire plant's edible and the root is as well but the root itself should really be picked in the autumn where it's a lot bigger and 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 tastes much like coffee at all. So this is an edible that you'd probably smell before you saw it and this is often referred to as wild garlic because of that smell. It's actually a type of onion and it's called ramsons 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 hawthorn 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 like a lot of young leaves they'll be quite supple and easy to just chew straight away and as the 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, a berry, a hawthorn berry and the whole sort of range of what you can get off the tree tastes quite nutty actually, the leaves, the berries, reminds me a lot of avocado but a very good bush to find. There are a few types of sorrel in the UK but this one here is called sheep sorrel and it grows up to about 30 centimetres high and it's a single stem plant that likes growing in open pastures, 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 that there'll be loads of it blanketing everywhere and you can pick it out 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 nutritional value which is very very high, it contains vitamin A, C, iron and also about five percent 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 favourites anyway and it makes a really nutritious soup. This is an edible fungus called dryad 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 woodland in particular anyway but you want to pick the fungus while it's small and young because the older it gets the squidgier and more maggot infested it becomes and then later on in its life it becomes like cardboard so one like this for example is perfect you can see the underneath it's 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 low down. What we've got here is a bit of blackberry and later on in the year it'll produce berries that we can eat which are actually a very formidable edible, they're very very high in fibre and shouldn't be overlooked really but at this time of year it really just has its leaves to offer. If you like earl grey 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 sorrel 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 in strong sunlight. It contains a mild acid which gives it its kick and it tastes a bit like apple schnapps but it's a 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's 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 they're much more supple as is with most edibles so 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 obviously relates to its taste again it's one of those edibles that has quite a strong garlicky kind of oniony taste to it but it's a single stemmed plant that obviously grows in clusters you find it by roadsides waste areas woodlands lots of them growing together and it's important to note that 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 like 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 browsing into the woodland. What we've got here is a bit of cuckoo flower 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 bittergrass 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 flavors die down a little bit so this is again quite a common one that I'm sure lots of you have used on on your skin when you've been hit by a stinging nettle over the years but this is curled dock and unlike broadleaf dock 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 stalk can generally be quite red as well but the leaves are nice when young and they can be eaten straight off the plant. 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 substantial meal for when you're outdoors which is something that can be a rarity anyway but the leaves can be handy too they're very good for cooking in or they work well for the surface area to work on if you've decimated the plant by digging up the root why not use the rest of it. What we've got here is marsh thistle and this is probably my favorite out of 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 too too obviously on other thistles they're very pronounced on the marsh thistle but 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 skin 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 plant. 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 although prickly are much softer to touch than 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 had to but the stalk itself can can be chopped and skinned and or skinned and chopped is 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 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 it 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 a really classified as 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 the people have got on board and started producing sort of natural topical remedies that they can say will cure anything and they'll sell you them over the internet and it'll all be made by this one and it's a bugleweed 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 a 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 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 there's too much margin for error if you don't know what you're looking for what we've got here is common hogweed as you can see it's um almost like an oversized version of cow parsley now 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 of its oversized appearance you've got a main stem here with all these large lobes sprouting off and it's uh 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 unopened and that's what you want you want to pick that off lightly steam it and it's almost like broccoli and it's a good good vegetable to find really but um do be careful of giant hogweed that's a slightly different variation of hogweed and one to be wary of so do have a look into it before you go out and pick it 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 well making them think they were real nettles that were 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's uh it's 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 and unlike creeping thistle and marsh thistle the leaves are a lot tougher and the spikes are a lot spikier so if you move in to grab you'll find that it'll get you pretty much straight away but um you can pretty much distinguish it by it 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 spiked big time but um you'll see there that that's pretty distinct it's not you know the other thistles tend to be quite flat where there's this one has a twist up the main sort of spine of the leaf there 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 I hope that video has been of some use to you guys or those of you are interested in wild edibles there's a still an enormous amount of edibles I haven't covered really um 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 uh with nuts and they are quite nutritious but there's beech as well there's no there's no beech in this woodland but beech leaves in in the early spring are delicious straight off the tree or on salad got a bit of a bite to them towards the end of uh of you chewing them so they are very refreshing but um obviously beech produces a nut as well every sort of three to four years there's sweet chestnut there's bilberry um rosehip um comfrey mallow uh there's there's loads I haven't covered actually in the video but unfortunately uh got a tick on me there there's loads of those things around got to be careful really with deer ticks you get lyme's disease but they're actually pretty resilient I just crushed that one but anyway yeah there are loads of edibles I haven't covered and unfortunately that's because I just haven't been able to find them in this environment and I'm towards the edge of the woodland now and uh 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 I hope you've enjoyed the video I do uh make guides and I do sell these guides um I'll put a link below if you're interested I know some of you have already bought it and then this really does cover pretty much everything we've been over today I mean they cost about a quid 50 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 uh message me if you have any questions and uh yeah thank you for watching