Late summer into early autumn is peak season for observing the Robin’s Pincushion, a red and spiky gall around the size of a small plum which is found on dog rose (Rosa canina) and some other rose species. If you have been out foraging rose hips, or even just admiring the colour which is popping from the hedgerows here in the UK, you have possibly seen these intriguing growths on the wild rose stems. At one point I thought that they were just oddly developed flowers or fruits due to a genetic mutation or cross-pollination with local cultivars, but they are actually much more impressive than th ..read more

The fruits are easy to identify and collect in large quantities and can be used to make fruit leathers (another name for a fruit roll-up), a fruity jelly which is a good accompaniment to game meat, and even to flavour alcohols like gin and brandy ..read more

North Wales is a fantastic place to look for fungi, with a wide range of habitats and ideal climate. If you’ve been out to a local woodland, parkland or ungrazed grassland recently you have probably noticed some colourful mushrooms and other fungi scattered around. Although some species produce their visible fruiting bodies year round in the UK, Autumn is the prime time of year to go looking for fungi, especially after a drop in temperature and an increase in rainfall following a dry spell ..read more

Sloes are ripe before the first frosts these days, but you can use a freezer to imitate the affect of a frost and have some infused gin ready for winter ..read more

Blackthorn is a deciduous shrub with edible flowers and edible berries which are called sloes. Very popular with foragers and lovers of sloe gin ..read more

Pocket plum is the common name for Taphrina pruni which causes deformities in the fruits of blackthorn (the ever precious sloes), damsons and some other plum species, and there is a related fungus Taphrina padi which affects Bird Cherry with similar symptoms ..read more

Elder (Sambucus nigra) is a tall flowering shrub with clusters of white, fragrant flowers in late Spring and red berries in early autumn. It has a long history of uses as a source of food, for hedgerows, for keeping insects (and perhaps the Devil) at bay, and a host of other uses. It is sometimes known as the Judas Tree, from the tale that Judas Iscariot hung himself from the bough of an Elder. There are also many (often paradoxical) folk tales surrounding the use and planting of the tree – from seeing the devil himself after burning the wood to planting Elder near a home to ward him off. Ther ..read more

Something that we always talk about on our foraging courses is the law. This isn’t in a general “don’t do naughty things or the police will throw you in jail”, but a well researched overview of the various laws which apply when you are out collecting plants and funghi. Aside from the well-known factor of protected species, we talk about the less well known protected areas of land, which can even prohibit the landowner from digging a hole on their own patch without the correct permissions ..read more

As we roll out of a relatively cold winter into the first weeks of Spring - it's time to get out into the woods and fields and find some Wild Food ..read more

In this blog post I will do my best to explain it, pick out the relevant parts of the legislation and steer a forager, bushcrafter or ethnobotanist in what is (hopefully) the right direction. At the bottom of this blog post is the shortened explanation (a tl;dr), but for those who want to know exactly where that came from here are some blocks of legal text ..read more