Bittercress
Juniper
Blackthorn flowers
Icy canal
weather that has made the blackthorn bloom. This happened last year, and led to a very uneven crop of sloes: good where there was protection but poor where the bushes had been caught by frost. It is a similar idea to the one behind Candlemas and its revival as Groundhog Day. If the weather is fine and mild on this day, winter will come back and bite you. It reflects a common weather pattern! You should also spot the white
Wild garlic leaves
catkins of pussy-willow in February, on bare branches, before they get their pollen and turn yellow. Our most common hedgerow bush is the hawthorn, which won’t be flowering for several months yet. So you can’t really confuse this with blackthorn. However, hawthorn also comes into its own in February, as it is one of the first trees to come into leaf. The leaves are bright green and shaped a bit like small oak leaves, and they often appear in mid-February. They are highly edible and used to be eaten a lot, especially by children, having the traditional name of “poor man’s bread and cheese”. It’s hard to
imagine how wonderful these green leaves must have tasted in the days when you didn’t get any fresh green- ery all winter. Cow parsley and hawthorn aren’t the only green things you can eat now. Under the hedges you will find young goose-grass, also known as cleav- ers. This becomes that annoying plant that children stick on to each other’s cloth- ing, and which is reputed to
have provided the idea to the inventor
of Velcro. It isn’t really sticky, of course – it is covered with tiny hooks. But when young it is not so rough, and is won- derful stir-fried. Later it will have tiny white flowers. You can also find the leaves
of garlic mustard, also known as Jack-by-the-hedge. These are rounded and crinkle- edged, and again will later have clusters of small white flowers. They are unmissable if you pick them and crush them, with their characteristic garlic smell, although they are in the mustard fam- ily. One of the nice rules of
foraging is that anything that tastes of garlic is edible! In a mild year you may find true
garlic leaves too. These are typical bulb leaves, quite wide and light green, with a lovely taste. These grow in the Meadows in the older wood- land parts, though you shouldn’t pick them there as it’s a local wildlife site. They are common elsewhere in woodland or under hedges where there used to be woodland. Again, the
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White dead nettle The Village February 2017 45
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