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Edible plants to forage in May

  • Robin Harford
    Robin Harford

    Robin Harford is a plant forager, ethnobotanical researcher and wild food educator. He is the author of the bestselling Edible and Medicinal Wild Plants of Britain and Ireland.

    He established his wild food foraging school in 2008, and his foraging courses were recently voted #1 in the country by BBC Countryfile.

    Robin is the creator of eatweeds.co.uk, listed in The Times Top 50 websites for food and drink.

    Listen to Robin Harford’s Herbcast episode “Wild foraging“.

  • 7:43 reading time (ish)
  • Foraging

Foraging is a fascinating skill that both deepens our relationship to nature and empowers our health. This article shares some interesting plants you can forage here in the UK in May.

Foraging is a wonderful way to connect both with nature, and nourish our health. We also want to spread the word about safe and ethical foraging, so please also read our article “A guide to safe and sustainable foraging” to learn how to practise foraging sustainably.

A useful link with images that can help with identification as well as botanical information is Wild Flower Finder.

In this article, Robin Harford shares some edible plants you can safely harvest from the wild in May.

Please note: Under Section 13 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, uprooting any wild plant without landowners’ permission is illegal (1).

Ash (Fraxinus excelsior)

Ash keys, the winged seeds of the tree, have long been used for pickling in Europe and Asia (2).

ash Fraxinus excelsior

The traditional Ash Key Pickle recipe involves boiling the keys in multiple water changes, followed by boiling them in a syrup of white wine vinegar, sugar, and water (3).

When you preserve them in salt and vinegar, these keys can serve as capers in various sauces and salads. Siberia still practices this preservation method (4).

People have historically used ash barrels to age balsamic vinegar (5).

You can consume the young shoots of ash trees raw in salads and extract edible oil, similar to sunflower oil, from their seeds (6). 

People have used ash leaves as an adulterant in tea (7).

People in France produce a drink called Frenette by soaking ash leaves in the sap secreted by aphids feeding on the leaves (5). 

You can use aphids and tree sap as sugar substitutes (8). 

Lastly, you can tap ash trees for their sugary syrup and use it to create ash wine (9).

Robin Harford

Robin Harford is a plant forager, ethnobotanical researcher and wild food educator. He is the author of the bestselling Edible and Medicinal Wild Plants of Britain and Ireland. He established his... Read more

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