Strictly speaking, this post isn’t about foraging as such, more like plant identification. The key point is this: You need to be able to positively identify plants in order to be able to forage for them. However, if you don’t live near the great outdoors, you can practice your plant ID anyway. For example, just […]
Some of you already know how I feel about litter in our beautiful countryside, so this litter rant won’t come as too much of a surprise to you. I went out for a quick walk in the Lee Valley Park this lunchtime and the litter was appalling. It was only a short walk, out and […]
If you read all there is on the internet about Chickweed, you could be forgiven for expecting to trip over the stuff every few minutes. Maybe I’ve just been unlucky, but apart from having a tiny patch pointed out to me in January, I’ve seen none of it. Chickweed spotted On my way to Mudchute […]
Whilst the London Plane tree is of no use when foraging for food and drink; And as far as I’m aware, not especially useful for bushcraft; given that it accounts for probably half of the large trees in London, I think it’s worth being able to identify, if only for the purpose of elimination. Environmentally […]
I’ve been on the lookout for pesky Alexanders for a while now. Mostly because I’ve read about how widespread they are, and about how they came to the UK with the Romans as a food stuff. Anyway, I’ve had a few moments where I’ve thought I have them, but then I’m not sure. The difficulty […]
Please note: This article was originally posted on www.totallywilduk.co.uk Identifying trees in Winter is hard. It isn’t too bad in Spring, Summer and Autumn; But during the winter, when there are no leaves, flowers or fruits on show, it’s pretty awful. Why trees? What has that got to do with foraging? The obvious reason is […]
On one of my now frequent visits to Epping Forest, I had no intentions of foraging, just out for exercise; However, I just happened to come across quite a lot of tree fungus in Epping forest this time. Both easily identifiable, and (at least for me) unidentifiable. Birch Polypore So the first thing I cam […]
The Judas’ Ear fungus is one that I was on the lookout for, and came across it by accident. It’s quite unique looking and has been used in food and medicine for a very long time. Other Names The common, but now unacceptable name “Jew’s Ear” probably came about as a corruption of the original “Judas’ […]
This polypore is quite an incredible fungus, well worth knowing how to identify it, and definitely worth harvesting for its health benefits (the usual rules of collection apply). The first time I was certain that this was what I was looking at, I was very excited and like most of these things, when you’ve positively […]
On a recent trip to Epping Forest, I came across some bracket fungus growing on an old log pile. I didn’t know what it was at the time, so I took some pictures with the intention of identifying it later. So here I am and it looks like it was Turkey Tail Fungus, one of […]