Edible wild plants found near the sea: Tree Mallow

Tree Mallow in Santiago del Teide, Tenerife. Photo by Steve Andrews

The tree mallow is a very tall species of mallow, hence its name, and is often found growing on cliffs and at the tops of beaches. It has attractive pinkish-purple flowers and blooms in summer.

Known to botanists as Malva arborea or Lavatera arborea the tree mallow is a biennial or short-lived perennial. It can grow to as much as 3 metres in height and forms a very thick stem like a small trunk. It is a handsome plant that stands out in its natural habitat.

The seeds are tiny nutlets and are edible and known in Jersey as “petit pains” or little breads. The leaves and flowers can also be eaten The leaves have a lot of mucilage and this is good for combating inflammation.

In herbal medicine the tree mallow´s leaves are steeped in hot water and used to make a poultice for treating sprains. Like other mallow species the tree mallow has a lot of mucilage in its leaves.

The tree mallow is listed in the book Food For Free which is Richard Mabey´s classic guide for foragers. It is a wild flower to look out for when on a coastal walk.

The tree mallow grows on coasts in the UK but is also found in Europe and the Mediterranean, as well as Libya, Algeria and the Canary Islands. It is resistant to salty spray from the sea and is often found on the coasts of islands.

The tree mallow makes an attractive garden plant and will grow happily away from the sea. It will self-seed and is easy to maintain year after year. 

Edible wild plants found by the sea – Fennel

Fennel flowers. Photo by Steve Andrews

The fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) is a common medicinal and culinary herb often found growing wild by the sea. It is a tall plant with umbels of yellowish flowers and produces finely divided feathery foliage that is very aromatic and smells like anise.

Fennel is native to the Mediterranean, parts of Europe and the UK but is found in many other parts of the world, including America, Canada and Australia. It is a perennial plant and likes to grow in grassy areas and on waste-ground near the sea and is often to be found when foraging in coastal areas. It is very common in the north of Tenerife in the Canary Islands and can be found on the other islands.

Fennel is included and recommended in Richard Mabey’s Food For Free, which is an excellent book on edible plants that can be found while foraging and that has been republished over and over and is now in its fortieth year after its first publication.

The aniseed aroma that fennel produces is a very good way to identify this herb which is in the Apiaceae or parsley family, a group of plants that also has several very poisonous species such as the hemlock.

Fennel, from Koehler's Medicinal-plants (1887) in Public Domain

Fennel seeds are good in curries and other spicy dishes and can be used to make fennel tea. In Spanish the herb is known as hinojo and teabags are commonly sold in grocery stores and supermarkets under this name.

Fresh fennel leaves can be eaten in salad, used as a garnish or made into sauces which are very good with oily fish. Fennel is actually very good for indigestion so using it in your cooking makes a lot of sense.

There is a variety of fennel known as Florence fennel or finnochio that has a bulb at the base and this is popular as a vegetable to be eaten raw or cooked.

In herbal medicine fennel is recommended for digestive problems and is said to improve the vision. It is also said to be an aid to slimming.

Fennel can be grown easily in the herb garden and will produce large clumps. There is a bronze fennel too with attractively coloured foliage.

Edible wild plants found by the sea – Rock Samphire

Rock Samphire growing at Swanbridge, South Wales. Photo by Steve Andrews

The rock samphire, samphire or sea fennel is a commonly found edible plant that grows in rocks at the top of beaches, growing amongst the shingle and on cliffs. It is found in the UK and along coasts of parts of Europe and the Mediterranean area, as well as on the Canary Islands.

Known to botanists as Crithmum maritimum, the rock samphire is in the Apiaceae or parsley family. It has succulent divided leaves and umbels of greenish-yellow flowers.  It is aromatic if bruised and has quite a strong smell and taste. The herbalist Nicholas Culpeper described rock samphire as having a “pleasant, hot and spicy taste.”

Richard Mabey gives some recipes for rock samphire in his classic book for foragers entitled Food For Free.  This book has proved so popular that it has been republished over and over and is now in its fortieth year. 

Rock Samphire in Portugal Photo by Steve Andrews

Rock samphire can be found all year round and can be eaten sparingly raw in salads, pickled in vinegar or cooked as a green vegetable. It was once so popular that it was mentioned by Shakespeare who describing the dangerous practice of gathering it from high on cliffs, wrote, "Half-way down, Hangs one that gathers samphire; dreadful trade!”  It was collected too in the Isle of Wight and shipped to London in vats of seawater to keep it fresh.

These days it is illegal to remove plants of samphire from their natural habitat.  Nevertheless the rock samphire is an interesting edible plant to look out for when walking by the sea.

Edible wild plants found by the sea – Sea Beet or Wild Spinach

Sea Beet amongst seaweed and rocks. Photo by Steve Andrews

Sea beet is a common edible plant found at the top of beaches and near the sea in the UK and Europe.

Its leaves are very good cooked as greens and taste very much like spinach. This is not surprising because the plant is an ancestor of cultivated spinach beet and beetroot. In fact, the sea beet is also known as wild spinach.

It produces masses of glossy dark green oval or diamond-shaped leaves in rosettes that can be found all year around. Its flowers are small and greenish and form in summer and autumn.

Sea beet can be found growing amongst pebbles and rocks at the top of a beach and on coastal land and is easy to recognise. You are not likely to find anything else looking like poking its greenery through the pebbles. It can be found growing where seaweed and other floating rubbish has been washed up by the tide.

The leaves of Sea Beet. Photo by Steve Andrews

The stems of sea beet and the leaf stalks sometimes have a purplish-red colouration which shows their link with beetroots.

The leaves of sea beet can be eaten raw in salads as well as being cooked like spinach. Many people think their flavour is actually better than spinach we grow and buy.

Richard Mabey recommends it strongly in Food For Free his classic book on foraging which is now in its fortieth year and contains info with illustrations for some 200 types of edible plant and wild mushroom.

The sea beet is known to botanists as Beta vulgaris ssp. maritma and used to be classed as in the Chenopodiaceae but it is now in the Amaranthaceae. Many other plants in this family, such as the goosefoot (Chenopodium album), are also edible.

Wall Pennywort is a delicious edible plant

Wall Pennywort

Wall Pennywort (Umbilicus rupestris) is an interesting edible wild plant that you are not likely to mistake for anything else. It grows, as its name suggests in old stone walls, and also in crevices in rocks, and has round leaves hence its name.

The Wall Pennywort is also known as Navelwort because its leaves have a small indentation in the middle that could be likened to a navel in a human stomach. The leaves grow in rosettes. An alternative name for the plant is Penny-pies.

Wall Pennywort is found in the UK and parts of southern and western Europe as well as in the Canary Islands. It has spikes of greenish-pink flowers on stems that may be a reddish shade and it flowers in spring and as late as May and early summer depending on location. These flower-spikes can reach some 10in in height and the small flowers are bell-shaped.  It is a member of the Crassulaceae or Stonecrop family and is adapted for surviving in dry conditions. The leaves and plant are succulent and fleshy.

Wall Pennywort in flower

The leaves can be eaten as a salad and have been compared with a crisp lettuce in flavour. They are best when found growing in moist conditions or after rain when they are really juicy. Wall Pennywort tends to turn a reddish colour in very dry conditions and will lose it succulent fleshiness. Take care when gathering the leaves because Wall Pennywort is very shallow-rooted and the whole plant can easily be pulled out of the small amount of soil it is growing in.

Wall Pennywort has been used in homeopathic medicine and is known as Cotyledon umbilicus to practitioners. The plant is thought to be the “Kidneywort”, described by Nicholas Culpeper in the English Physician. The famous herbalist said of the Wall Pennywort: : "the juice or the distilled water being drank, is very effectual for all inflammations and unnatural heats, to cool a fainting hot stomach, a hot liver, or the bowels: the herb, juice, or distilled water thereof, outwardly applied, heals pimples, St. Anthony's fire, and other outward heats. The said juice or water helps to heal sore kidneys, torn or fretted by the stone, or exulcerated within; it also provokes urine, is available for the dropsy, and helps to break the stone. Being used as a bath, or made into an ointment, it cools the painful piles or hæmorrhoidal veins. It is no less effectual to give ease to the pains of the gout, the sciatica, and helps the kernels or knots in the neck or throat, called the king's evil: healing kibes and chilblains if they be bathed with the juice, or anointed with ointment made thereof, and some of the skin of the leaf upon them: it is also used in green wounds to stay the blood, and to heal them quickly."

Wall Pennywort is a plant that is easily recognised and is worth adding to the plants you are foraging for. It really is an enjoyable edible wild plant to be eaten as a salad vegetable or to add to sandwiches.

Summer Foraging in the countryside

Fennel flower

Gathering herbs in summer

Summer is the hottest time of the year and has plenty of sunlight, but when it comes to foraging for wild foods it is the season in between spring and autumn, which means that the spring greens are past their prime and the fruits and nuts harvested in autumn are still not ready.

However, summer is a great season for gathering in the herbs that grow wild and drying them to preserve them for future use and some like St John's Wort are traditionally harvested at this time.

St John's Wort

St John's Wort (Hypericum perforatum) is commonly found growing in grassy places, woodland clearings and edges, roadsides, waste ground and railway banks and is in full bloom and full potency at midsummer when it can be collected on St John's Day, June 24. It is easily recognised by its golden yellow flowers starry 5-petaled flowers with conspicuous stamens and the flowering tops are the part of the plant that contains most of its active ingredient hypericin.

St John's Wort

St John's Wort has become widely known and used as Mother Nature's answer to Prozac and is on sale as a herbal tea or in other forms as a supplement from health stores and distributors of such products. It is also a remedy for anxiety and nervous tension, as well as having antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties.

Red Clover (Trifolium pratense) is a plant that may well also be found in places where St John's Wort grows and especially in fields and meadows but also on railway banks and waste ground. The Native Americans recognised its medicinal properties after it had been introduced to the continent and used it against cancerous tumours and skin diseases, as well as taking it during pregnancy and childbirth and as a general tonic and herb of purification.

The flowers are the parts that get used as an infusion and these can be collected and dried. Red Clover was once used to treat bronchial complaints and is also thought to be good for balancing blood sugar levels.

Common name: Wild Marjoram - Scientific name: Origanum vulgare
Photo by Leo Michels. Usage: Public Domain

Two aromatic summer herbs that can be used in cooking as well as for medicinal purposes are Wild Thyme (Thymus drucei) and the Marjoram(Origanum vulgare), both of which favour grassy places on limestone or a chalky soil.

Wild Thyme is a tiny little plant that you will have to get down on your hands and knees to gather and it grows in clumps among short grassland and on downs and heaths. It produces reddish-purple flower heads and is easier to find and pick when in bloom, which occurs between June and August.

The flavour and fragrant aroma of Wild Thyme is much milder than the garden variety but it is just as useful for flavouring savoury dishes. Richard Mabey awards it with an A category in his classic book Food for Free.

Marjoram is a much bigger plant and when in flower it is easy to spot clumps of it, especially as it usually has bees and other insects in attendance eagerly gathering the nectar from its pinkish purple flowers. This is a very aromatic and spicy herb that is excellent for adding flavour to food.

In Mediterranean cookery Marjoram has been much valued and made use of, although in the UK it has often been neglected for some reason, even though one of its local names is Joy of the Mountain. It is also known as Oregano.

Marjoram is prepared by collecting some flowering sprigs of the herb, hanging them to dry and then stripping the leaves and flowers from the stalks. Crushed up in this dry form it can be stored in airtight jars for future use.

Marjoram taken as an infusion is good for anxiety, insomnia, colds and chest complaints, indigestion and tension headaches. It has antiseptic properties too.

Another common summer herb is Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) and although it grows inland on waste ground and cultivated in gardens it really thrives on cliffs and other places by the sea. It can reach as much as 5 ft in height and is easy to recognise with its graceful appearance, feathery leaves and umbels of mustard-yellow flowers, which appear from June to October.

If you crush any part of the Fennel plant you will notice a strong smell of aniseed and its flavour is similar too. The seeds are collected later on in the autumn and are wonderful for adding to curries, stir-fries and other dishes as well as making Fennel herb tea but the leaves and stalks are gathered in early summer and hung up to dry.

Finely chopped Fennel leaves are good in salads, with parsnips, and even in apple pie and the herb is good with oily fish as well. The whole plant is edible and it really is one of the most useful wild herbs that can easily be found.

In fact, Fennel is such a versatile plant that Pliny listed it as being a remedy for no less than 22 complaints and it was one of the Anglo-Saxon herbalists' nine most sacred herbs. Fennel tea is good for the digestion and it can be used as a gargle for a sore throat and a mouthwash.

Fennel Tea

250ml/ ½ pint/ 1 cup of boiling water 1 teaspoonful of Fennel seed ½ thin slice of fresh orange or some grated rind

Crush the Fennel seeds slightly and place in a teapot and pour the boiling water over them. Cover and leave to infuse for 5 minutes.

Add the orange slice or rind for extra flavour, and then strain before serving.

Olives with Wild Marjoram

1 lb of pricked olives in a jar 1 cup of olive oil 1 teaspoon of Thyme 1 teaspoon of crushed peppercorns 3 teaspoons of chopped Wild Marjoram

Add the herbs and spices and olive oil to the olives in the jar, close it, shake well and store in a refrigerator for at least 2 days.

Serve the olives with red wine and cheese.

Common Mallow

The Common Mallow (Malva sylvestris) is often found growing in the same locations as Fennel and is another very useful herb that flowers from June through until October. Typically encountered on roadsides, on banks and on waste ground the Common Mallow stands out with its showy pink five-petalled flowers that are produced on stems that can be as much as 3 ft in height.

The leaves, flowers and seeds are all edible as well as having medicinal properties. The plant contains a lot of mucilage, which taken internally as an infusion reduces inflammation and is a treatment for coughs sore throats and bronchitis.

Young leaves and shoots of the Common Mallow contain vitamins A, B1, B2 and C and can be eaten raw in salads or cooked as greens. Unripe fruits can also be added to salads and the seeds are known as "cheeses," due to their shape rather than the mildly nutty flavour.

The Romans cultivated the Common Mallow as a culinary and medicinal herb and by the 16th century it had gained a reputation as a cure-all. In sufficient quantity it has a laxative action and so can help purge the body of toxins and disease.

Meadowsweet

One more easily found and wonderful summer herb is the Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria), which grows in damp places such as river and streamsides and by ponds, and flowers from June until October with frothy creamy-white flower heads. Meadowsweet has inspired poets Ben Jonson and John Clare, and the latter included it in his poem To Summer.

The flowers and leaves when dried smell of newly mown hay and can be added to pot-pourri or used to make a herbal tea. It can be used to flavour soups and stews but has medicinal properties too and is traditionally taken as an infusion for heartburn and gastric ulcers.

Lime Tree

Besides all the herbs described above that can be looked for in the countryside, there is another, which grows much closer to home and is definitely worth knowing about and that is the Lime Tree (Tilia x europaea), which can be found in many parks, gardens and along city streets. In June and July the delightful honeyed fragrance of this common tree perfumes the air and when they are in bloom is the time to harvest its flowers.

Made into a herbal tea, known as "Tilleul" in France where it has proved a very popular beverage, Lime-blossom besides tasting good is good for anxiety and insomnia because it has mild tranquillising properties as well as for treating high blood pressure. Dry the entire flower head along with its winged bract and make the tea without milk.

In early summer, before the Lime leaves get too old and tough, they can be eaten in sandwiches but make sure to wash them first and collect them from out of the way of roads and traffic fumes.

Summer is an ideal time for enjoying the countryside and rambling due to the longer hours of daylight and the warm and sunny weather. The fragrance and the many uses of the herbs found growing at this time of year are surely another of the many pleasures of the season.

Footnote: This article was originally published in Permaculture Magazine, number 48, summer 2006.

Copyright © 2010 Steve Andrews. All Rights Reserved.

Royce Holleman talks to Steve Andrews about Herbs Of The Northern Shaman

In this video, Royce Holleman talks to myself, Steve Andrews, aka The Bard of Ely, and interviews me about my book Herbs of the Northern Shaman for his Paranormal Palace Radio show.

Besides discussing the mind-altering plants described in this 2010 O-Books/Moon Books publication we also talk about edible plants, foraging, raw food, St John's Wort as an anti-depressant, flying ointment, the law and legal status of many plants, magic mushrooms, herbs in the Bible, Moses and his use of Calamus, artistic inspiration from hallucinogens, hummadruz, UFO author Jenny Randles, Arthur Shuttlewood and UFOs, Magic Saucer UFO magazine, Warminster, Atlantis, David Icke, ayahuasca, Prof Arysio Santos and Atlantis, the Vedas, tribal ways, Christopher Everard, Rastas, soma, Shiva, ancient religions, religious experience, Essiac cancer cure, Hulda Clarke, absinthe, Fly Agaric, and much more.

Foraging

Edible plants like Dandelion are recommended as ones that can be found around the world and are one of several plants thought of as weeds that grow in lawns but are actually good to eat. Clover and the Daisy are two other edible weeds.

Atlantis

We talk about the late Professor Arysio Nunes dos Santo and his website and theories about Atlantis. I point out that Prof Santos believed that many psychoactive herbs, such as Salvia divinorum, were selectively cultivated and created by the people of Atlantis.  The professor also believed that Atlantis was located where Indonesia and the South China Sea are today.

Hummadruz

I explain about my Amazon Kindle book Hummadruz and a Life of High Strangeness, and how I learned the term Hummadruz from Jenny Randles the UFO author. My book is an autobiographical account of my paranormal and spiritual experiences in the past.  Jenny used to write for Magic Saucer magazine, a publication intended for younger readers and published by Crystal Hogben.  I had a regular column in this too entitled Eco-space. 

Warminster and UFOs

The late Arthur Shuttlewood, who was the editor of the Warminster Journal and an author of several books about UFOs, was also a writer for this magazine. I talk about how Warminster in Wiltshire was once famous for being a place UFOs were frequently seen.

Calamus

We discuss mind-altering plants mentioned in the Bible and how the prophet Moses was said to have used a “holy anointing ointment” that contained Calamus, a herb that is both a stimulant and a hallucinogen. I talk about how Chris Everard, the film-maker for the Enigma Channel and publisher of Feed Your Brain magazine, claims in his book Stoneage Psychedelia that religious books like this were inspired by ancient people who used hallucinogenic herbs for inspiration and visions. We go on to discuss ‘Soma’ and I point out that this was thought to be the Fly Agaric toadstool.

Essiac

Royce asks me about herbal cures for cancer and I describe the Essiac herbal cancer cure and the very controversial late Dr Hulda Clarke and her treatments which involved the use of Wormwood. I also point out that this potentially dangerous herb was the main ingredient in Absinthe, an alcoholic drink that many great authors, poets and painters drank.

The video interview was intended to be just one hour but because I had so much to say it went on for nearly two.