Thanks you Dennis Breedijk for this lovely photo of Wild Marjoram (Origanum vulgare) growing in Westerpark. It certainly looks good enough to eat!
Also from Joop Eisenberger, Ground Ivy (Glauchema hederacea), evergreen, minty, tasty.
And also from Joop, Soapwort (Saponaria officinalis), not so tasty but very useful.
Just a few photos today, of much over looked useful and tasty urban plants…
Here is Ground Elder (Aegopodium podograria), it tastes fresh and of Parsley to quite an extent. it’s also a huge pest in many gardens, so of the soil is uncontaminated and the plants are unsprayed, I suggest carefully identifying it as the real thing and cooking it rather than adding it to garbage or dosing it with pesticide. It’s really interesting, finely chopped and sprinkled over many meals (I especially love it on fish and chicken), about 10 minutes before the end.
Next is Chickweed (Stellaria media), property salad, packed with nutrients and able to soothe the skin of itches and irritations. I add this to a vinegar, making the bone building nutrients readily available.
Next is Stinging Nettle (Urticaria dioica).
Lastly today, White dead nettle (Lamium album). No sings and very tasty. Can be cooked or eaten raw. I often hear of people who enjoy sucking the nectar from the flowers. I ad them sometimes to a salad but prefer to eat the leaves and stems.
A quick tram stop hunt for herbs today as I ran the Honey and Herbs workshop this afternoon.
Here’s a lovely little Hazel tree growing in the lowerparts of a beech hedge.
Here’s a very vibrant Dandelion (Taraxacum officinalis agg.) growing in a dirt filled pavement crack above a bridge.
I harvested lots of Plantain (Plantago major) today, from close to de Kas restaurant. I’ll be dressing the leaves as I haven’t had time to make a succus with it and I don’t want to waste them.
I’ve been to Proef in Westerpark today to have a look at their organic garden, which City Plot tend. It is another inspiring example of how to grow lots of food and herbs without a garden. The site is next to the old gas factory storage tanks and hence the soil is deemed unsuitable for directly growing crops. City Plot have overcome the problem by using raised beds. They look great, house hundreds of very healthy plants and are quite a haven for wildlife. The Growing and Using Exotic Herbs Workshop on Sunday October 14th will take place there. Myself and Suzanne from City Plot will run it.
On my way back home I found this exciting sight… A fully ripe Elderberry spray!
So the time has arrived. Get your paper bags and recipes ready, these berries are packed with nutrients and can be cooked and preserved to deliver them when needed, through the winter.
Beautiful weather today and a lovely stroll through the park.
Day Lilies (Hemerocallis fulva), beautiful, edible flowers, not to be confused with standard Lilies which are highly toxic. Please scroll through the photos on day 75 to see what they look like.
Garlic mustard (Aliaria petiolata) growing out of some dirt on a woodland bridge.
Garlic mustard seedlings, coming up for a second edible crop of the year. This is a biennial plant so although there is not enough time for these seedlings to mature and set seed before the frosts, they should survive and flower next year. Probably best to forage only from the second year plants (which are now almost over, foraging wise).
Motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca) is setting seed and what spiky seed heads they are proving to be! If you need to harvest some, it’s probably best to have gloves on and shake the seeds straight into a paper bag. I gave up trying today and threw the few I collected into nearby soil.
It’s still going strong in some areas: Ground Elder (Aegopodium podograria).
First year Burdock (Artica lappa). This is what is needed if harvesting the medicinal and nutritious Burdock roots, is your mission.
Blackberries.
Fat hen growing In the shelter of a Beech hedge.
I’ve been to De Hortus Botanicus today and busy planting exotic things for the workshop with Suzanne from City Plot in the autumn, so not much time to visit the park. Here are just a couple of photos of a beautiful Hazel tree which stands on the outside. It’s quite easy to confuse Hazel with Beech. Both have similar leaf shapes and both have edible nuts but Hazelnuts are my favourite. Roasted they taste almost chocolaty and go really well with it, hence my fondness. I need to make some notes of where I find Hazel this year. Hazel is a very useful tree, it can be coppiced to produce dozens of fine branded, in the same manger as Willow. it’s great to see that the council road cleaners, here in Amsterdam, still use broomsticks make of Hazel. It’s perfect for the job, grows locally and is completely sustainable. I hope the council brooms don’t come from abroad, if they are, at least they are not made of plastic.
Apparently there’s a nice copse of Hazel somewhere at the bottom of Pythagorasstraat, I haven’t found it yet. It’s well worth foraging nuts when you find them. They contain such a lot of nutrition and are apparently the least polluted part of a plant, that may be harvested. That is a great thing to remember when foraging in mucky city autumn weather.
These plants are growing alongside Frankendael by the windy dirt path that follows the Middenweg. At first glacé everything simply looks green there but if you take a closer look there are several great edibles and a few plants that if eaten, would upset your body quite substantially.
Here is nutritious Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica), regrowing after a recent mowing.
Next is White Deadnettle (Lamium alba). Not a stinger but very useful and also nutritious.
Here’s a poisonous berry, I know it as Snowberry (Symphoricarpus alba).
Here are some of those half eaten unripe Elderberry heads, that I mentioned last week. We can only eat them safely when they are fully ripe, for birds it’s obviously another story.
Lastly today some ripening Hawthorn berries (Crataegus monogyna). If you are not sure then how’s a good time to get to know how to identify them, in readiness for the autumn harvest.
I carefully walked a long Frankendael hedge and woodland today, hunting for Sloes on Blackthorn trees and shrubs. My wander was fruitless in one way – not a single Sloe to be found and yet very fruitful in others:
Here is a woodland wild rose, already covered in very dark, almost ripe hips.
The following rosehips are more the norm. In a sunny location, this shrub flowered later than the one shown above and hence it ripens hips later. They are well on the way though.
Here’s a Jerusalem artichoke plant in full bloom. I wonder if this park has tried the Sarphatipark method of using it to smother chopped down Japanese knotweed?
Here is Rowan, ablaze with ripe orange berries. There are many uses of this fruit. Here’s a particularly tasty one.
More ripening and ripe Blackberries, this shrub is one of several within the park.
And here are the Sloes which I eventually found. My daughter wanted to go to our closest playground all along. When I gave up my Sloe hunt and returned there, we found a huge Blackthorn absolutely laden with fruit. I harvested as many as I could manage, all of which popped off the tree without any effort. Traditionally Sloes are harvested late, after the first frost but this usually means I miss the chance to harvest more than a few fruit. This year, for a change, I am harvesting as and when I see the fruit become ripe enough (fully coloured and very plump). I am scoring them with a sharp knife before freezing them. When I have about 500g, I’ll heading out for a bottle of Gorden’s Gin or similar, will combine the berries with some sugar and the gin and will leave it for as long as possible to infuse that unique sloe flavour into the sweetened spirit. There’s nothing quite like it and I am very excited to have found an inner city Sloe hot spot!
Edible Geranium flowers at a street cafe in Oost Watergraafsmeer.
Buzzing honey bees on flowering White Bryony (Bryonia alba) which is poisonous but clearly valuable to city wildlife.
Common Hemp Nettle (Galeobdolon tetrahit), in flower, prickly, square seemed labiate and easily identified. Edible and medicinal. This plant is an annual so if you harvest any leave the flowers intact to seed. Here’s a link to some basic information about the plant.
Lastly today, a mini meadow of Soapwort (Saponaria officinalis) again, in Park Frankendael.
Blackberries are now ripe enough to harvest in many scrubland locations. These were on the Hugo de Vrieslaan and they tasted great! The bramble season will continue for several weeks. The plants cunningly open their flowers gradually, allowing for birds to strip all the ripe berries one day only for more to be available, just a few days later.
Here is Wild Parsnip. The roots (which I wouldn’t forage for ecological and social reasons) are edible but the foliage is definately not and can make unwise foragers very ill.
These Elderberries are not yet ready to harvest and could give you a very sick stomach if you tried them now. They need to become a deep purple black colour. Some birds have begun stripping the elderberries from plants just as they turn pale red. I don’t notice that usually, perhaps it’s because so little fruit has ripened on the trees in general this year. Whatever the reason, I’m sure that when the mass of elderberries become ripe, there will be enough for everyone who fancies cooking them.
Urban Herbology 