This is the prettiest and most fragrant of all hedgerow plants, its creamy yellow clouds of tiny flowers (I call them ditch-floss) spreading honey and almond summery scents about the countryside…
Watercress is a delicious peppery salad vegetable, but unfortunately it is prone to infestation by the cyst stage of a parasite (fasciola hepatica) when growing in land containing livestock…
Cow parsley is the predominant roadside plant from March through to June, when its delicate, nodding white flowers adorn nearly every rural roadside in the country – hence the old name of Queen Anne’s Lace.
Elderflowers are one of natures finest edible treasures and for me, the signature wild food of early summer. In autumn elder berries offer quite different, but equally rich delights for hedgerow preservers.
I have a love-hate relationship with marsh samphire. Mostly its love – the wide open seascapes where it thrives, its odd cactus-like appearance and its wonderful salty-fresh succulence. Even the silty, squelchy estuarine habitat where it grows has a “mud-glorious-mud” gooeyness that appeals to the filthy schoolboy in me.