Wild Garlic - Plant Identification, Uses and Folklore

I've talked to dozens and dozens of people over the years who are really into the survival and the bushcraft. You know, you ask them to build a trap, they could build a trap, they could build a shelter anywhere out of pretty much anything that's there. But when it comes to plant ID and the uses of plants and really ancient knowledge that's been passed down about particular plants, we're pretty much all left scratching our heads. There's not that much knowledge out there. So what I'm hoping to do with this series is do the research. Get out there, find the plants, ID them, relay what the uses are and were back in the past and also bring a little bit of the folklore and possible magical uses surrounding those particular plants into these videos. I hope you enjoy them as much as I'm going to enjoy making them. Hello there, welcome back. In this video we're going to be taking a look at wild garlic. Here's an area that's absolutely heaving with it. When you get the right conditions it really grows with some profusion. The whole area smells absolutely beautiful. I'm kneeling down here crushing the leaves and it just smells so garlicky. Very, very nice. This is one of the easiest foods to recognise and also one of the safest ones to eat and one of the most delicious as well. So it's pretty much got everything going for it. I know when I was first starting to eat wild food, this is one of the first things that I ate, and I still eat it now. You know, every bit of it, every bit of it has got garlic juiciness to it. And when it's flowering, it is easy to identify. When those flowers die back, it's a little bit harder to identify, but often in places where it has been growing well, you'll be able to see manky, rotten leaves from kind of mid-summer onwards. It doesn't last long. And there'll often be bare patches in the ground there as well where these leaves have died and they've suppressed other growth. So if you dig down, you can still get the roots, you can still get that garlicky kick. Now you'll find wild garlic pretty much everywhere in the UK, apart from the Highlands and Islands, way up in Scotland, but when it's in this state, when it's got the flowers on, every piece is edible. Flowers are edible, leaves, stalks and also the bulbs. Just a quick note, although it's called wild garlic, it's actually a member of the onion family, same as onions and chives, but it doesn't have a smell and taste of garlic. Now this has got a few other names, for example, ramsons, bear garlic, wild garlic, broadleaf garlic. They all seem to involve garlic, yet it's not a true garlic. Now there is a couple of similar plants which are poisonous, but all you've got to do is take what you think is garlic, crush it, Smell it and you get that garlicky, chivy smell. You cannot really, you cannot go wrong. Look at how people manage to poison themselves picking something other than garlic. Now as far as the uses of wild garlic go, obviously most of them are culinary. You add it to salads or you make up sauces with it and so on, you know, because it does have a nice oniony, chivy, garlicky taste. It's also used in cheese production and apparently if cows are fed on these leaves, They produce milk which smells and tastes a little bit garlicky and I would imagine that would make absolutely beautiful cheese just a little hint of garlic. Now apparently that practice was very very popular in 19th century Switzerland and I know for sure if I ever get a herd of cows I'm going to feed them on this see if I can make some garlic cheese. Now I'm not sure if this is going to apply because I can't actually find any law relating to the wild garlic Only garlic, only true garlic, which was used for protection, healing, a lust inducer, exorcism, and also as an anti-theft device. I'm not quite sure how that would work. Now apparently in Roman times, soldiers would eat garlic to give them courage. It was traditionally eaten on festival days way back in the day when we had a pagan religion or religions and it was often given as offerings to the goddess Hecate left on crossroads. Crossroads have always had quite a a magical significance. Now even if you're in the US and you're not familiar with any of the old pagan gods that we used to have over here you'd probably be familiar with stories of crossroads. Especially blues players, for whatever reason, they like to sing about crossroads, and they would do the deals with the devil on the crossroad. Now, there's all sorts of protection laws associated with garlic. Obviously, you'll be thinking, vampires, vampires, vampires. Well, that's the obvious one. People would hang garlic up, and I don't really assume it was the smell that would keep the vampires away. I don't know. But sailors used to also carry it as a protection against shipwreck, and way back in the day when we had the plague running wild throughout Europe, garlic was used as a protectant then, and that practice carried on quite a long time. People would often get a clove of garlic, split it down the middle, rub it on an affected part of the body, and then throw that in running water that was meant to take the the infection or the poison away you know now as far as the protection laws surrounding garlic goes i can confirm that it does protect me from my wife because if i've eaten garlic and she hasn't she wants nothing whatsoever to do with me and that pretty much works the other way around as well if you're both eating garlic it's not so bad you can't really smell it on yourself but when only one of you eats garlic it's a hell of a job i used garlic when i was cooking outdoors not so long ago This is the video clip of that. Bingo! Wild garlic. And that's going to give us a lovely garlicky taste. Now although all those plant tastes garlicky, and you can eat the whole lot, even the flowers, the leaves, very, very garlicky. I'm just going to take some of the bulbs at the bottom. Yeah, there's no need to take all of them. I'm just going to replant this one. Awesome, job's a good'un. Let's get these washed. There you go, that'll do me. There's the remainder of that plant replanted. Right then, let's get our onions and garlic in here. Believe it or not, even after all the garlic and onions that I put in here, you can still get that little punch from the watercress. Still that little peppery taste just hits you now and again. It was really, really nice. So if you haven't tried it, by all means go out there, identify the correct plant and give it a go. It's a really, really nice plant to eat. So there you go, that's your wild garlic episode. Now if you've got any further information relating to this particular plant, by all means put it in the comments. If you've enjoyed this video please check out the other ones in the playlist and there's also a nation of other playlists connected to outdoor recreation on my channel. Just go there, bring up the playlists and watch them to your heart's content. Feel free to share them wherever you want. Knowledge should be shared freely. Thanks very much for watching, see you next time.