Why will people only forage this one thing?

Plus your sightings (thank you!)

Jul 19, 2024

I love this time of year for one particular reason: it’s one of the only times I see others foraging. People from all backgrounds, of all ages, can be found up and down the hedgerows near my house picking blackberries. This week I’ve exchanged smiles with an older couple filling carrier bags with juicy berries, a cyclist stopped for a mid-cycle snack and a mother-daughter pair searching amongst the brambles for their pudding.

It got me wondering why people are so open to picking blackberries but so unwilling to forage other wild foods and I think it’s down to three things…

Firstly, nostalgia: Most of us will have picked blackberries when we were little and there’s something very satisfying about partaking in an activity associated with childhood. A simple mission ending in sticky, stained fingers and perhaps a delicious, sugary crumble? Yes please!

Secondly, familiarity. “Let’s go and find some opposite-leaved golden saxifrage for dinner” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as “Let’s go and pick some blackberries” does it? Some wild, edible plants do, admittedly, have unusual and often downright off-putting names. ‘Navelwort’ sounds like something you might find in your bellybutton after a weekend at a festival, ‘mugwort’ wouldn’t be out of place in a potion recipe and ‘stinging nettle’ doesn’t exactly get the tastebuds tingling does it? But ‘blackberries’ we know. Blackberries we can buy in the supermarket.

And that gets me round to the third reason I think people are willing to forage for blackberries, if nothing else, and that’s thriftiness! Blackberries are bloody expensive. A punnet of blackberries in the Tesco garage near me costs about four quid. I’ve never bought them, but judging by this comment I think I’ll stick to the hedgerows…

We’ve yet to pick any blackberries this year (the few I’ve plucked from the hedgerow mid-walk have been very tart!) but we’ve been out picking nettles for their seeds this week. Noushi doesn’t understand the appeal. Scroll down for a link to a post from last year about foraging nettle seeds if you’re interested…

Your Sightings

Last week I asked you to share what you’d been noticing in nature recently and boy, did you deliver…

Rhona shared this beautiful photo of a steamy lake, saying: “It had been sunning then raining all day, and the temperature difference was all over the shop”.
Richard Blaisdell
always delivers with something poetic and, from his home in California last week, he commented about browning magnolia petals, as well as one of my favourite sounds: “Cooing doves did call, early morning. Now they hide in shade quiet”.
Clare Baker of
Whole & Parts
shared her joy at finding the above self-heal in her un-mowed lawn: “The absolute joy at my first little showings of Self Heal. So small I almost missed them. But thanks to you, my eye caught enough to notice. And then I almost cried with excitement”.
Sharon the Lion-Hearted
was enjoying butterflies in her own un-mowed meadow in New England in the US, where she spotted her first goldenrod, even thought it was “not yellow yet”. Meanwhile, in Alberta, Canada,
Natalie
has been enjoying the roses on her dog walks, which she hopes will survive the current heatwave: “they are so beautiful, and seeing them makes my heart happy”. Her watering buckets were also attracting Japanese beetles, like
Dudley Zopp
’s evening primrose in Midcoast Maine. Speaking of insects (and those considered pests),
Eleanor
sent me this stunner of a photo:
Sarah Crowder
(whose Substack,
One Stone
, you should absolutely be reading) is making this most of July with “chanterelles pinning, small bilberries out, linden going over, and a big juvenile woodpecker on the feeder”, which I was feeling envious of until
Thomas Winward
(of
Urban Nature Diary
, another of my favourite Substacks) reminded me you don’t have to SEE a woodpecker to enjoy one: “There was a woodpecker calling all afternoon from the tree outside my bedroom the other day! I couldn’t see it but I could hear it loud and clear”.
Further north, a waterfall caught Andrew’s attention in Derbyshire: “The sound was beautiful, mesmerising, quite trippy actually,”
Janelle Hardacre
of the brilliant
because she has to
had a wonderful encounter with a buzzard in The Ribble Valley: “It was on a bare branch on top of a tree across the field. Thanks to my trusty binocs I was watching it looking around, stretching its wings and even pooping”. Thos binoculars of hers must be good. Up in Dumfries & Galloway, my mum,
Sarah Webb
was stopped in her tracks by a young buck while out running: “We looked each other in the eye and he backed off (clearly I am terrifying), disappearing silently into the bushes. Moments later I heard a very loud and decidedly authoritative 'bark' - I was being told to keep my distance I'm sure”.
Finally, Rosanna had been out foraging for poplar field caps (she’s an experienced forager and definitely not afraid of foraging mushrooms!) and red clover, which she says has “a wealth of health benefits”.
Photo by Rosanna @thebromleyforager
I’d love to keep this momentum going, so please do keep sharing your sightings in the comments! Or would you prefer I started regular threads in the chat again? Let me know!