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Medicinal plants to forage in November

  • Fergus Drennan
    Fergus Drennan

    Fergus Drennan aka Fergus The Forager has been learning about wild food plants ever since he began collecting dandelion leaves for his tortoise almost 50 years ago, although wild flavours only really grabbed his attention with full force after his first fungi forage back in 1990.  Since then he has continued his adventures with wild foods, running regular courses all over the country for the past 20 years, as well as exploring the medicinal and more creative craft side of both plants and fungi. The latter included the co-creation of a book entirely made from mushroom paper written and illustrated with 100% wild crafted inks and paints, the making of mushroom hats, tanning fish skins to make leather using fungi, and 100 + different plants, as well as dyeing leather with mushroom and plant extracts.

  • 12:06 reading time (ish)
  • Foraging

Let foraging wild food be thy medicine. Fergus Drennan shares medicinal plants to forage in November from rose, hawthorn, wild garlic, cockspur thorn, sea buckthorn and alexanders.

Medicinal plants to forage in November

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” is a frequently encountered quote attributed to Hippocrates and is a good general principle when we consider wild foods, like — nettles, watercress, alexanders, burdock root, rosehips, sea buckthorn berries, and winter chanterelles, all of which I’ve been gathering this week. These plants and fungi are all nutritious in different ways, taken collectively, providing a vast range of vitamins, minerals and other phytochemicals. Yet, diversity is key — without it, going from medicinal doses to nutritional portions can turn medicines to poisons if an especially potent herb were to be eaten in sufficient quantities. So, the quote has its shortcomings; medicine ought not always be thy food. Nevertheless, the phrase does usefully emphasise the importance of good quality nutritious foods in the prevention or treatment of disease.

The Hippocratic Corpus undoubtedly acknowledges the relevance of food in health and disease, though “Let food be thy medicine…” is in fact fabricated, a misattributed quote not at all from Hippocrates (1). The worldwide acceptance of this phrase owing to his venerated status, has bestowed it with moral and ethical sanction. Though food and medicine have been highly related since antiquity, Hippocrates did not equate food and medicine as modern interpretations suggest. 

Perhaps the term “functional foods” can come to our rescue here, if for no other reason than that while implying that foods can have additional health benefits beyond their nutritional value, it is also usefully vague. As a forager, the full functionality of wild plants and fungi to promote heath is the broader context that includes their collection

It is the whole process, from the gathering to preparing and, finally, consumption of wild plants and fungi that is key to a full range of positive health outcomes. Consider the benefits of meditation, exercise, spending time with family, friends or children, or daily exposure to sunlight for better sleep, or the grounding and life affirming aspects of time spent in nature. Katy Bowman, author of Move Your DNA: Restore Your Health Through Natural Movement, takes all these activities to illustrate her concept of life stacking, taking foraging as an example (2). If we think of all these different activities in a linear fashion, as things to tick off an overwhelming sequential to-do list, getting them done can feel quite daunting and stressful. Whereas, if we gather wild berries, dig some roots, or pick some mushrooms, in other words, go foraging, then through this one activity we have all the above activities and their benefits covered. We have gathered our food and medicine, stood quietly in meditation with each rosehip placed in our basket, have exercised, stretched and moved our body, spent time with friends and family (or found solace in the pursuit as a solitary one), and have connected with the natural world as we delighted in the murmuration of birds, witnessed with wrapped and spell-bound attention the spider repairing her broken web, and felt the warm kiss of sun, the coolness of wind, or refreshment of rain on our skin.

Let the gathering, preparing, and correctly proportioned consumption of wild plants and fungi be both thy food and medicine.

With these considerations in mind let’s consider some wild plants and fungi that can be gathered in November, and how to use them as functional foods: wild garlic bulbs, dog rose hips, cockspur thorn berries, hawthorn berries, sea buckthorn berries, and alexanders root.

The first of the four ingredients below I have been using to make a wild version of passata, the tomato sauce that finds so many uses in the kitchen, from pasta sauce to soups, stews, and pizza topping. It is the rosehip component that contributes to the tomato-like flavour. I’ve made and stored about 10 litres, mainly for use in The Wildbiome Project, a project spearheaded by Monica Wilde, author of other Herbal Reality foraging articles, which looks to measure the health impacts of eating a purely wild diet, especially with regards to the impact on gut flora.

Dog rose (Rosa canina)

Dog rose (Rosa canina)
Dog rose (Rosa canina)

Dog rose hips are plentiful and abundant, and it is a good idea to gather throughout October and November before the first frosts appear, simply to save getting really cold fingers, but they can be picked well into the New Year provided they are the right shade of red rather than the particular orange colour which indicates they have fermented.

If not making passata (details below) I gather kilos of these and freeze them, then from December onwards, pretty much every day until the spring, take a couple of large handfuls (approx. 200 hips), blend after covering with water, squeeze through super fine nylon, and drink the extract. This way you are left with viable seed with which to replenish the hedgerow. Extract for passata can be made this way too, although for that I prefer to place in a pan, cover with water, simmer for 10 minutes to soften the hips, blend with a stick blender, then when still hot, but not too hot to handle, pass everything apart from the seeds through a sieve. Finally, I’ll squeeze the resulting pulp through a fine nylon cloth to remove seed hairs and improve the texture.

Rosehips are a good source of “antioxidants (vitamin C, polyphenols, carotenoids, tocopherols, and polysaccharides)”(3).

Fergus Drennan

Fergus Drennan aka Fergus The Forager has been learning about wild food plants ever since he began collecting dandelion leaves for his tortoise almost 50 years ago, although wild flavours only really... Read more

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