Tag: common dog-violet

Small green leaves available to eat in the winter
In Search Of Winter Greenery: Twelve Candidates For Frosty Foraging

In Search Of Winter Greenery: Twelve Candidates For Frosty Foraging

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Winter is often characterized as a season of dormancy. The winter woods are quiet and sparse. Unlike the evergreen northern forests, the deciduous trees of Britain lose their greenery and leave stark, dark wooden skeletons. When it comes to plants, in foraging books and websites, I often see reference to spring greens. Far less common is mention of what herbs can be gathered in winter. Once you know what to look for, however, there are plants we can seek out for some winter greenery. To get you started, here are a dozen candidates that are common and widespread….

12 Easy-To-Forage European Plants For Spring And Early Summer

12 Easy-To-Forage European Plants For Spring And Early Summer

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As spring moves towards summer, there are plenty of wild edibles to choose from. Some of the easiest to collect are the green aerial parts of readily recognised plants as well as some of their flowers. Many of these provide great additional flavours to seasonal salads and some can be used as stuffing herbs or as the basis of a soup. All of these uses provide additional micronutrients to your diet. Flavoursome teas can be made with several of the featured plants and some also have medicinal uses. In this article I present a dozen easy-to-recognise and easy-to-collect seasonal plants for this time of year…

Common Dog-violet, Viola riviniana, flowers
Common Dog-violet, Viola riviniana: Spring herbage

Common Dog-violet, Viola riviniana: Spring herbage

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Common Dog-violet, Viola riviniana, is the most common violet in the UK and provides some useful herbage for a wild salad. The leaves have a pleasant flavour with only a little bitterness and making it a wild food worth picking up as you forage, particularly in the spring. It flowers March to May and is then easy to spot but a little less so at other times. The leaves and flowers are edible…