A Stitch(wort) In Time Saves Nothing If You Don't Pick It (16/03/20)
(Tumblr decided to delete my draft so I ragequit this for two days)
The sky is bright, empty, and blue. The air is briskly cold but clean. I have so far seen a lot of Lords And Ladies, a lot of Lords And Ladies, incessant amounts of Lords And Ladies.
I am exploring lakeside today instead of in the heathland. I am determined to find some Ramsoms like the other foragers I follow have. The general advice has been waterside woodland, as old as possible.
With the recent rain there is a lot more waterside than before! But the age is potentially a problem, so we shall see what we can see and live in hope.
On the suburban end of my walk, leading up to the lakes, there has been thriving greenery starting to shrug off the grey of winter. A rife of blue flowers started to emerge as I approached the gate, leaves spotted with white, quite pretty. Alkanet or Bugloss, and in their abundance, absolutely beautiful and rather like Forget Me Not flowers for the individual heads. I should have recognised them instantly - rather than letting the app confuse me into hoping they were Comfrey - for they look exactly as they do in Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion, the game designers did a wonderful job on the plants.
Picking my way through the swampy ground I eventually made it to the path which followed a seemingly circular route, I chose to go left to start with. I passed some grumpy swans and a fisherman mired in mud to practice his craft. I don't envy the conditions but give him props for going to such lengths. Takes guts to be that close to swans, evil bastards that they are.
Continuing onward, I see some dogwalkers, numerous water based plants which look like Irises, more bloody Lords And Ladies, and wonder of wonders I find St John’s Wort--!
Of course I didn’t find anything so forageable as that. It was Shrubby St John’s Wort, otherwise known as Sweet Amber... uses, none. Cute little plant though.
Next up is Wood Avens, which might actually be useful at last! Ish. After some looking, none of its uses are really supported by science. Ugh.
All I want is to learn to find usable, useful, edible plants. It is not really so much to ask.
The next step in my journey was to decide whether or not to try and cross a flooded area of stepping stones, or stepping logs rather. The water ran over them and there was no indication how much they would sink. I would hardly drown if I slipped. I would get at worst a nasty shock, sore bum and a bit soggy. But on principle it was the risk vs reward debate. I vaguely knew my options for turning back, the right turn I hadn't yet taken that would eventually lead full circle to my origin point.
Or the waterlogged path, of which I knew nothing.
So, naturally I took to the logs, got one wet sock but otherwise survived the scramble intact. It was an adventure!
The view was spectacular, a river on one side after a steep drop, and the lake I’d been circling on the other, waterfowl taking off from the river and flying over my head. I carried along the path, excitedly looking at my feet for potential Ramsoms or other plants, breathing deeply, hoping to smell the strong stench of garlic. But nothing, just damp soil, water, and the fresh air.
It was along this path I ditched LeafSnap as my identification app. My final straw was it umming and ahhing about hogweed and whether or not it was really a parsnip. With lesser hogweed that’s not a dangerous confusion, even if it’s drastically wrong. With Giant Hogweed that is potentially lethal, given the plant’s infamous toxicity (seriously, go investigate that terrifying beast). So, instead I moved to iNaturalist, which so far has worked much better, keeping identification assumptions much more closely related, and peer-reviewed by real people when unsure. Happily trotting along I found more Lords And Ladies, brambles everywhere, grasses, dock, more of my good friend Poor Man’s Mustard, and what looked like Forget Me Nots!
Or more specifically, Wood Forget Me Nots. Gardener variety Forget Me Nots are my favourite flower, but this variation might actually leap to the top. The leaves were so fuzzy and soft. There were fewer flowers than the plant I know, but that may be the time of year as much as anything. The petals were a far richer blue, matching the Alkanet.
At this point my battery dropped below 50% so I started winding my way towards home, deliberately without turning back. I followed the muddied ground towards a swampy plain full of rushes or similar. Amongst the tall reeds there were some with what looks like bugs munching on them, fluffy little curls. When I got closer I saw that they were actually part of the Willows as iNaturalist identified them.
That’s just the family of plants, it wasn’t confident enough to narrow it down to the specific, but I’m happy with that much for something I don’t intend to touch or eat. It’s so cute though!
After the Willows I had a decision to make, with my battery running low enough it might not make it home. Either I went the wiggly way through the houses, or a straight line through some awkwardly overgrown wilderness. Just as I was weighing up these options something caught my eye. Bright greenery in a nest of dead leaves.
And in amongst the emerald sea in there were tiny white drops. Bright tiny blooms of delicately deliberate petals.
And it was so utterly beautiful. I’d seen flowers like that before but I have no recollection of where. They were exactly the kind of thing I wanted to see. Useful, edible, I even was developing a stitch after 80 or so minutes on the hoof at that point! But did I pick any?
Because I’m an idiot who didn’t think of that till I’d already gotten halfway home, back through the undergrowth scritch scratch scritch scratch and back through the mud squelch squirtch squelch squirtch. It was only at I was opening the gate to return to the main road that I kicked myself for not getting down on my hands and knees to pick some of the Stitchwort, that I could have used it on a practical basis, tested its power. But no, my silly modern brain wanted to go home and have a banana to restock on potassium. Defying the whole premise of trying to reawaken older knowledge and customs.
But still. I know where they are. I’m pretty sure I could find my way back to that small cluster under that tree. They work well in salad apparently. Maybe I’ll do that for myself, a quarantine picnic, lockdown lunch of flowers and leaves.
Of course, yes, that’s the elephant in the room. I got home around 5pm.
Just in time to see the BBC tell me the country was on lockdown.
