July 3, 2024 • 24 mins
A short podcast episode about how to not poison yourself through foraging - the link to the video version of this podcast is available below.
Being wary of foraging is fairly sensible as there is a real risk of poisoning yourself or others if you don't know what you are eating. Identification guides are brilliant to help you learn how to read the packaging of plants, trees and mushrooms and is the first step to take when moving into identification of species that you don't know.
Pairing a solid identification with knowledge from a foraging guide or another reliable source is the next step and will give you more detailed information about the edibility of what you have found.
Remember - no taste sensation is worth the risk of death if you aren't really sure!
Links
-The video version - https://youtu.be/NTdqTr4I7Ag
- Wild Food People on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook - @wildfoodpeople
- Support the Wild Food People podcast on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/wildfoodpeople
- About Wild Food People - https://wildfoodpeople.co.uk/about/
- Attend a course with Wild Food People - https://wildfoodpeople.co.uk/courses
- Get in touch with us - https://wildfoodpeople.co.uk/contact-us/
- Richard on Instagram and Twitter - @richprideaux
- Amy on Instagram and Twitter - @agreenoutdoors
Being wary of foraging is fairly sensible as there is a real risk of poisoning yourself or others if you don't know what you are eating. Identification guides are brilliant to help you learn how to read the packaging of plants, trees and mushrooms and is the first step to take when moving into identification of species that you don't know.
Pairing a solid identification with knowledge from a foraging guide or another reliable source is the next step and will give you more detailed information about the edibility of what you have found.
Remember - no taste sensation is worth the risk of death if you aren't really sure!
Links
-The video version - https://youtu.be/NTdqTr4I7Ag
- Wild Food People on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook - @wildfoodpeople
- Support the Wild Food People podcast on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/wildfoodpeople
- About Wild Food People - https://wildfoodpeople.co.uk/about/
- Attend a course with Wild Food People - https://wildfoodpeople.co.uk/courses
- Get in touch with us - https://wildfoodpeople.co.uk/contact-us/
- Richard on Instagram and Twitter - @richprideaux
- Amy on Instagram and Twitter - @agreenoutdoors
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This shorter episode is part of our new series that
will be in the regular podcast feed. We're going to
be covering some of the essentials about finding wild food safely,
ethically and legally. This is the podcast version, but if
you prefer videos, then we have exactly the same content
over on our YouTube channel. In this episode, I'm going
to be talking about how to find edible wild plants
(00:21):
and mushrooms without being poisoned. Okay, So this one does
come up quite often on our foraging courses and when
I talk to people about wild food, and particularly for beginners,
but it is something that you still need to have
in the back of your mind or even the front
of your mind when you're doing this as somebody.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Who's more experienced.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
And that's because there are plenty of species out there
in the British countryside growing wild or things in gardens
or in towns that will if you ingest them, or
if you ingest the wrong part of them or in
the wrong way, or don't prepare them in the correct way,
they will cause you a small amount of harm, or
a medium amount of harm, or a large amount of harm.
(01:04):
And at this end of a large amount of harm,
you have death. Even without moving too far from here,
you can find things like this hemlock water drop work
which is growing all the way over just there. You know,
these things aren't that rare, so you do need to
bear them in mind. So once people get to the
point in their foraging wild food journey that they realize, oh,
(01:26):
there are toxic things out there in the woods, in
the fields, in the edges of the roads, or wherever
it might be, it's quite common for there to be
some amount of nerves to creep into there for some
people to start thinking, oh, well, actually I might accidentally
kill myself or my family, or my partner or my kids,
or someone in my restaurant. I really don't want to
(01:46):
do that. So they start to become really nervous about
picking anything. And that's something we hear quite a lot
again on the courses, because people come along on a
foraging course because they want to learn how to forage,
They want to learn how to identify things. They want
to defer some of that risk over to somebody they
perceive as an expert so that they can show them
(02:08):
how to do it. But the thing is all of
those people and you listening, or you watching, or you
whatever you're doing whilst consuming this content, you already navigate
this world. This world you live in is full of
things that some of them are useful, some of them
are toxic or harmful, but you've managed so far to
(02:29):
stay alive. Think about the thousands of buildings that you
may go into over the course of a month or
a year or your life. Those buildings have food in
them or useful things in them, in packages and containers,
in bottles. They also have things like cleaning chemicals and
toxic things, and fuels and oils in them. You know
(02:51):
that you can eat some things or use some things,
and you know that you should avoid other things. Think
about a supermarket. Think about all of the different things
impactaging there. You know that it's okay for you to
buy and consume the milk or the bottled water, or
the ketchup or the beer or something like that, but
you know you should probably not be drinking the bleach
(03:12):
or the drain cleaner or any one of the dozens
hundreds of things that you might find in the cleaning aisle.
You know that it's okay to eat some things and
not okay to eat others because they have labels, they
have packaging. They have things that give you information on
the outside that tell you what is inside it. That's
(03:32):
exactly the same process you need to go through for foraging,
for finding edible wild things. You need to go look
at the outside, look at the packaging, and it will
tell you what that thing is. That is the secret
to not being poisoned, to not putting toxic things into
your body that shouldn't be there is reading the packaging,
reading what's on the outside. When it comes to food safety,
(03:55):
particularly food safety with wild ingredients, you really have got
to have a robust system for choosing what is the
right thing and what isn't and probably doesn't really cut it.
You have to be able to identify every single thing
that you put into your basket, into the pan, whatever
it's going to be put into. You need to be
(04:16):
able to identify every single item that goes in. And
that really is a secret. It's just identifying every single thing.
But getting to that identification process isn't always easy, or
it's not always easy as a beginner when it comes
to where you find that information to identify that mushroom
(04:37):
or that plan or that tree or whatever that thing is.
The thing I always recommend to people, and the thing
I always urge people to buy first is a field
identification guide like this one. So this is a wildflower
identification guide, but there's one here on trees. There's mushroom one.
There's a different mushroom one there. This is a more
(04:58):
of a botanist guide, but all of the are published
and written in a way that allows you to identify
a species using the characteristics that you can see what
you can see in front of you. This is a
foraging guide. This is John Wright's Forager's Calendar, but there's
a load of other ones here. This does have some
(05:20):
information on identification of those species in there, but it's
more concerned with the taste or the history of that species,
or the history of our use of that species, or
the recipes, or what time of year you're going to
find it, or which parts of it are edible, which
parts are best, that kind of information. This ID guide
(05:40):
doesn't really care about any of that. So a printed
ID guide is going to be your best first option.
Part of the reason for that is that this has
been published by a company. This has been published by
a company that cares a little bit at least about
their liability about the information in being as correct as
(06:01):
they can verify it to be, because if somebody makes
an identification based on incorrect information in any one of
these then potentially they are going to be able to
have some sort of pullback on that company. They could
pass some of the liability for what happened to them
onto that company because they trusted that company. So it's
(06:24):
in the best interest of whoever's published these books to
make the information in there as correct as it could
possibly be. That doesn't always apply with online articles or
social media content or stuff like that. There's loads of
really good stuff out there, but there's also some really
crap stuff out there as well, And if you're a beginner,
(06:45):
it's hard for you to tell the difference between them,
because the same platform is publishing the good stuff and
the crap stuff. There's good stuff on TikTok, there's crap
stuff on TikTok. There's good stuff on Instagram, there's crap
stuff on Instagram. You can't tell, really as a big
platform what person what content is right for you, or
(07:06):
what is correct information. But at least in a boring
printed guidebook like this, you've got some chance, at least
or a higher chance of that information being correct.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
There are some useful apps.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
There are some useful AI tools now, but they are useful,
sometimes they are not reliable. So I do have a
good few apps on here. I use the AI search function,
I use image recognition, I do image searches on Google.
I use my phone a fair amount whilst we're doing
this kind of work. But I also know that that
(07:39):
information that is presented to me as a result of
that search, as a result of me using the interface
on that app, might not be correct. So apps and
AI tools and things like that are good for finding
wider context, or if you're ninety percent sure that this
is the species that you've seen the other five times
and you want to just quickly get a photo of
(08:01):
it up on your phone, they're quite useful for that
kind of thing, But for beginners they're not so good.
If you've got a good experience with an app as
a nature id guide previous to your interest in foraging,
or you regularly use an app and you say, oh, yeah,
it's this species and this species and it seems to
be quite accurate. Well, consider the higher risk of foraging
(08:25):
compared to just nature identification. If you take a photo
of something and say, oh, it's this species because the
app told me it is, and you put that on
Instagram or you tell other people, Well, you might get embarrassed.
You might somebody might point out that you're wrong, But
that's about the worst that will happen if you do that.
When it comes to identifying food and identifying a toxic
(08:46):
versus an edible species, then the penalty for that failure
is much higher. So apps are useful, but they go
in a box. They go in a box of it's useful,
I'm not going to stake my life on it. Where
there as a book like this, well, the maybe eras
in there potentially, but it's gone through a lot more
(09:07):
scrutiny than an app that's being redeveloped and redeveloped, and
there's got user feedback from people who might not know
what they're talking about. And is there more to generate
ad revenue. If you've got your guidebook and you're presenting
yourself there and you're ready to go, how do you start? Well,
each guidebook will have some information right at the beginning
on how to use this guidebook. Often they have a
(09:30):
bit of a workflow in there of okay, you start here,
and then you go to this and does it have
these features yes or no? Or does it have one
of these colors? And you go through a little flow,
and then that takes you to a group of species
that look similar or grow in a similar place or
a similar habitat or so on. That's overall the process
you should use for identification. You start off big, and
(09:52):
then you get down smaller and smaller in those details.
So when I say start off big, start off with
which country are you in? Which com turns you on?
And then which part of that country? How high above
sea level? How far are you from the coast, what
slope are you facing. Are you facing towards south so
you're facing towards the sun in the middle of the day.
Or are you're on the north facing slope so you
(10:13):
get a lot of shade. Are you in a woodland
like this one, or you're out on open grassland.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Are you on a beach? Are you next to a river?
Is it damp? Is it dry? All of those.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Big factors will help you identify something because you'll only
find some species growing in certain kinds of soil, and
those soils are created by the trees around them. The
soil has to be a certain moisture level for that
species to be there. So all of these factors will
help you at least say, well, it's not that, it's
not that, it's not that because the right conditions aren't
(10:46):
there for it. Then think about time of year, because
there aren't many flowers around in December, so if it's
flowering in December, it's only going to be one of
a few species. There aren't many fruits, There aren't many
nuts or berries available in April, so if you're seeing
those things in April, then it's probably only going to
be one of a few species. So the time of
(11:06):
year will matter for your identification because some species will
go from being one shape to being a completely different shape, size, color,
everything over the course of six months. So you really
got to nail down that time of year as well
for your identification, and a good id guide will have
all of that information listed out on the page. Next,
(11:27):
look at the thing that you're trying to identify, try
and break it down into different sections. Maybe, so think
about leaves being separate, to flowers being separate to the stem,
and then once you've got those bigger sections, you can
start looking more closely at each part of that so
you can look at the shape of the leaf patterns.
(11:48):
Or are the leaves in pairs coming off the stem
as the one at the end? Do they all come
out at the same height and little terraces like this one,
or do they come all the way up and down
the stem? Are the shape of the flowers? And does
it have lots of little flowers on stalks like this hemlock?
What's the stem like does it have is it smooth,
(12:08):
is it hairy? Does it have spots on it? Does
it have a certain scent? I mean, if you've got
to the point where you're touching it and breaking it,
you're probably already confident that it's not one of those
species like giant hogweed, which is very harmful to touch,
or a stinging netal that you maybe don't want to
be touching when you're still trying to work out what
to do with things. So look at those bigger factors
(12:30):
and get smaller and smaller and smaller. That's how most
guidebooks work. They start off with really big things like
what corner of the world are you in, and they
finish down on details like there are tiny hairs on
the stem in this period of its growth cycle.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Exactly the same thing goes for mushrooms.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
For mushrooms, you look at things like what time of year,
where is it, what's the soil type, what trees is
it near or is it not near any trees? It
in grassland? Is it in salty conditions? So is it
one of only a coast or a few coastal mushrooms?
But do you get salty conditions next to a road
as well? Because in the UK we put salt on
the roads in winter, so the bits at the edges
(13:13):
of roads are saltier often than a coastal area. So
think about the fact is affecting where that little place is,
where that little thing is growing, and why it's choosing
to live there. And then with the mushroom again, look
at the stem and the cap and does it have
a cap? Does it have a stem? Is it a
(13:34):
stem and cap type mushroom? Is it a bracket? Is
it some thing that looks more like mold and slime
sitting on top of a log? Is it just a
tiny little branch thing sticking up out of a log?
And then what color is it? How big is it?
What scent does it have? Does it peel back on
the top of the cap, does it have gills, does
(13:55):
it have paws? All of those things will help you
narrow down. Okay, well, it's not it's not that. It's
not that, it's not that. Learning how to use your
ID guide is important, is vital for that guide, and
they all work in slightly different ways, but you go
through roughly the same process every single time, big factors,
getting down to small factors, even down to well, if
(14:19):
you have things like this one Francis rose is wild
flower key, there are things in here that say, well,
if you see it under a hand lens, if you
see it under a microscope, or if you see it
under some kind of magnifying device, you can get right
down to exactly the shape of the seed, exactly the
shape of each petal on the flower, and that will
help you with your identification. Same thing for mushrooms. There
(14:42):
are some mushrooms you can only identify by looking at
the spore pattern under a microscope. Once you get that identification,
stop and immediately become suspicious. Immediately assume that there is
a possibility that you might have got this wrong. So
in these Guys books, most things are grouped together with
(15:02):
things that look similar or grow in a similar place,
or stuff like that. So go one or two pages
that way, and go one or two pages that way,
and see if there are things that look very very similar.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Because if you've done.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
That step by step by step process wrong or you've
been a bit overconfidence somewhere in there, you might have
at some point branched off in the wrong direction and
you should have gone left instead of right. So it
is easy on that final stages, particularly with things that
look very similar but they grow in completely different locations
(15:36):
or they develop that feature at different times of year.
It is possible, and actually it's quite easy when you're
a beginner to make this thing in front of you
match what's on the page, because you go, yeah, it
looks close enough, without realizing, yeah, there are five things
that look like that.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
You've got to get the right one.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
And if you can't get to the point of yeah,
one hundred percent stake by life that is that and
leave it there. Or if you're at the point where
you think it's safe to collect and you're safe to touch,
then take a sample with you, take lots of photos,
take photos of where you found it, the habitat it
was in make notes around those kind of things, and
then have another go at identifying it when you get home.
(16:20):
Because that's happened to me quite a few times. I've
got something home and on oh actually, yeah, it is
this because when I was stood in the field trying
to look in the guide book and see what it
was or identify it, I was hungry, or was talking
to somebody, or as distracted, or it was too hot
or too cold, or whatever factor of human condition was
affecting me that day. I just wasn't in the right
(16:41):
frame of mind to identify it properly. But sat at
home with a cup of tea, it was fine.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
It was easy.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
It was oh, yes, quite obviously this one. It's got
all the features now I see it. If you do that,
if you can't identify it in the field and you
just take the photos home, or you just take one
sample and then you get home and go, oh it
was that, well, you've not lost anything. In fact, what
you've done is gained some knowledge. You've gained more experience
and identifying things. You've gained some experience in where that
(17:09):
thing grows and the kind of habitat it grows. And
particularly you have a location for that thing that you
can go back to. But it's better to maybe have
missed out one ingredient for one meal than it is
to have died. There's a point where there's no reward
that's worth a certain amount of risk, So if in doubt,
(17:30):
just leave it there. There are accidental poisonings every single
year all around the world, in this country, in your country,
everywhere the thing is. Only a small percentage of those
are due to wild plants, while mushrooms and so on,
most of them are going to be from household chemicals
or from other things that are man made in some way.
(17:51):
When you balance out the risk of getting it wrong
versus the reward for getting that ingredient into your your pan,
onto your plate, into your whatever you're going to use
it for, just think about that supermarket. Think about okay, well,
if you know what that label says, if you know
what that packaging says, what the information on there means,
(18:15):
then you can make a good choice about whether you're
going to use it or not. When it comes to
wild plants, when it comes to wild mushrooms, if you
can't identify it, if you can't read the information on there,
to make that identification to make that good choice. Then
you just have to leave it there because the information
might be there. Someone else might be able to read it.
(18:38):
Next week. You might be able to read it. But
it's better that you're still here to come back and
have another go next week than it is to completely
cock things up this time and poison yourself or poison
someone else. And don't be disheartened, don't be discouraged. If
you have to keep checking the guidebook. If you're going right,
it's that one, Yes, the right joint. Check the other
(19:00):
guidebook now, yeah that has that yet, and I'll check
the third guidebook. Yeah, you aren't a lesser person because
of that. In fact, you're actually a better forager. You're
taking things more seriously. I would always rather be served
a meal by the slightly nervous, over checking forager than
the really over confident one that just goes, oh, yeah,
there's a wild mushroom that's growing in the field, so
(19:22):
it must be a field mushroom. No, I'd always rather
be fed by the person who's taking care and taking
it seriously than the person who's being really over confident
and just not either not aware of those risks or
they're not balancing those risks against the reward in a
(19:43):
sensible way. Relax and enjoy things, because it is okay
to be cautious, and you are going to be coming
across lots of content saying, oh, yeah, there's just this
one weird trick. If you only eat things growing on here,
or if you never eat things that look like this,
or only do this, but those some of those tricks work.
Some of them don't, but they often have a lot
(20:03):
of exceptions that mean, yeah, this all works apart from
this one which will kill you, which never gets into
the TikTok video or the Instagram.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Reel or YouTube short or wherever. It is.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
The only tried and trusted method for always making sure
that you put the right thing in your mouth is identification.
It's boring, but it's what works. This is not something
that we're still working out as humans. How do we
identify the right things to eat? No, No, we've got
the resources now, We've got id books, we've got guides,
(20:36):
we've got lots of reliable information out there. This is
not something we have to experiment with. The information is
therefore identification of these things. Every now and again, some
really obscure subspecies moves from this genus to that genus,
or from this family to that family, but doesn't really
affect the identification in terms of toxicity. Do what a
(20:59):
colon just do. Do what botanists do, Do what my
cologists do. Do what complete experts in their fields have
to do when they go out, which is, take a
guidebook with you because this guidebook, well, this is the
one that belongs to Amy and she's had a whole
career doing this. I've got friends who are a cologist,
(21:19):
so I do a little bit of ecology work where
I have to go out with other people or go
out to identify things. As a business, and you have
to go out and identify a plant and say this
is yeap, one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
This is that. Take the guidebook with me, because you.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Can't possibly remember every single thing that's out there. Taking
the guidebook is fine. Checking against a guidebook is fine.
If you're watching this and you're still a little bit nervous,
that's fine. Confidence doesn't come from just getting it right
the first time. Confidence comes from working out where your
(21:56):
strengths and weaknesses lie and then make positive steps towards
improving those weaknesses and getting you towards where you want
to be. It comes from making lots of little, low
consequence and mistakes again and again, but within a balanced
understanding of what that risk overall is. You're making forward steps,
(22:16):
but you are aware that, yeah, if this goes wrong
and if I do it wrong in the wrong way,
it's going to have serious consequences. So you become more
confident by just doing little bits again and again and
again and again and moving forward constantly. You don't become confident.
You don't become good at things by just flailing around
(22:36):
and doing it once until you hit the right result
and then saying right, we're done. And it really is
that simple. You use a guidebook, you identify every single thing,
and you don't put it into your body, or you
don't put it onto your skin, or you don't put
it into someone else's body if you don't know what
it is, or as the cool kids keep telling me
on Instagram and blogs and everything else, never munch on
(22:58):
a hunch. Thank you podcast listener, well for listening and
for getting through to the end of this. We're going
to be trying to do more of these as we
can throughout the year. We're still going to be doing
the interview episodes, and we've got more of those lined up,
and we have got the new segments that we started
off with, so we are going to be coming back
(23:19):
to those. But we've got a lot to get on
and it's the summer, so it is the time when
we are really busy out foraging and fishing and gathering
wild food in one way or another. So we've got
a lot on. But we really love doing this and
we love the support that you've shown. If you want
to show us even more support, then you can join
(23:42):
those that have signed up to our Patreon account. If
you go to patreon dot com forward slash wild Food People.
It's not a huge commitment. It's a couple of pounds
a month and in there you'll get behind the scenes stuff,
early access to things, add free episodes, extra content when
we record it, and maybe a few other things in
(24:03):
the future that are coming up. And that doesn't go
and be spent on champagne and caveat that gets spent
on things like hosting for the podcast and equipment and
things like that to make sure that we can upgrade
the equipment when time comes. This episode was recorded live
in a woodland surrounded by birds yet again, and next
(24:25):
to a dead holly tree that we cut down last week.
It was in the way though, and it will regrow.
There some other stuff that's going to come in behind it.
It's a rural an outdoor. It's a rural an outdoor.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Production
This shorter episode is part of our new series that
will be in the regular podcast feed. We're going to
be covering some of the essentials about finding wild food safely,
ethically and legally. This is the podcast version, but if
you prefer videos, then we have exactly the same content
over on our YouTube channel. In this episode, I'm going
to be talking about how to find edible wild plants
(00:21):
and mushrooms without being poisoned. Okay, So this one does
come up quite often on our foraging courses and when
I talk to people about wild food, and particularly for beginners,
but it is something that you still need to have
in the back of your mind or even the front
of your mind when you're doing this as somebody.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Who's more experienced.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
And that's because there are plenty of species out there
in the British countryside growing wild or things in gardens
or in towns that will if you ingest them, or
if you ingest the wrong part of them or in
the wrong way, or don't prepare them in the correct way,
they will cause you a small amount of harm, or
a medium amount of harm, or a large amount of harm.
(01:04):
And at this end of a large amount of harm,
you have death. Even without moving too far from here,
you can find things like this hemlock water drop work
which is growing all the way over just there. You know,
these things aren't that rare, so you do need to
bear them in mind. So once people get to the
point in their foraging wild food journey that they realize, oh,
(01:26):
there are toxic things out there in the woods, in
the fields, in the edges of the roads, or wherever
it might be, it's quite common for there to be
some amount of nerves to creep into there for some
people to start thinking, oh, well, actually I might accidentally
kill myself or my family, or my partner or my kids,
or someone in my restaurant. I really don't want to
(01:46):
do that. So they start to become really nervous about
picking anything. And that's something we hear quite a lot
again on the courses, because people come along on a
foraging course because they want to learn how to forage,
They want to learn how to identify things. They want
to defer some of that risk over to somebody they
perceive as an expert so that they can show them
(02:08):
how to do it. But the thing is all of
those people and you listening, or you watching, or you
whatever you're doing whilst consuming this content, you already navigate
this world. This world you live in is full of
things that some of them are useful, some of them
are toxic or harmful, but you've managed so far to
(02:29):
stay alive. Think about the thousands of buildings that you
may go into over the course of a month or
a year or your life. Those buildings have food in
them or useful things in them, in packages and containers,
in bottles. They also have things like cleaning chemicals and
toxic things, and fuels and oils in them. You know
(02:51):
that you can eat some things or use some things,
and you know that you should avoid other things. Think
about a supermarket. Think about all of the different things
impactaging there. You know that it's okay for you to
buy and consume the milk or the bottled water, or
the ketchup or the beer or something like that, but
you know you should probably not be drinking the bleach
(03:12):
or the drain cleaner or any one of the dozens
hundreds of things that you might find in the cleaning aisle.
You know that it's okay to eat some things and
not okay to eat others because they have labels, they
have packaging. They have things that give you information on
the outside that tell you what is inside it. That's
(03:32):
exactly the same process you need to go through for foraging,
for finding edible wild things. You need to go look
at the outside, look at the packaging, and it will
tell you what that thing is. That is the secret
to not being poisoned, to not putting toxic things into
your body that shouldn't be there is reading the packaging,
reading what's on the outside. When it comes to food safety,
(03:55):
particularly food safety with wild ingredients, you really have got
to have a robust system for choosing what is the
right thing and what isn't and probably doesn't really cut it.
You have to be able to identify every single thing
that you put into your basket, into the pan, whatever
it's going to be put into. You need to be
(04:16):
able to identify every single item that goes in. And
that really is a secret. It's just identifying every single thing.
But getting to that identification process isn't always easy, or
it's not always easy as a beginner when it comes
to where you find that information to identify that mushroom
(04:37):
or that plan or that tree or whatever that thing is.
The thing I always recommend to people, and the thing
I always urge people to buy first is a field
identification guide like this one. So this is a wildflower
identification guide, but there's one here on trees. There's mushroom one.
There's a different mushroom one there. This is a more
(04:58):
of a botanist guide, but all of the are published
and written in a way that allows you to identify
a species using the characteristics that you can see what
you can see in front of you. This is a
foraging guide. This is John Wright's Forager's Calendar, but there's
a load of other ones here. This does have some
(05:20):
information on identification of those species in there, but it's
more concerned with the taste or the history of that species,
or the history of our use of that species, or
the recipes, or what time of year you're going to
find it, or which parts of it are edible, which
parts are best, that kind of information. This ID guide
(05:40):
doesn't really care about any of that. So a printed
ID guide is going to be your best first option.
Part of the reason for that is that this has
been published by a company. This has been published by
a company that cares a little bit at least about
their liability about the information in being as correct as
(06:01):
they can verify it to be, because if somebody makes
an identification based on incorrect information in any one of
these then potentially they are going to be able to
have some sort of pullback on that company. They could
pass some of the liability for what happened to them
onto that company because they trusted that company. So it's
(06:24):
in the best interest of whoever's published these books to
make the information in there as correct as it could
possibly be. That doesn't always apply with online articles or
social media content or stuff like that. There's loads of
really good stuff out there, but there's also some really
crap stuff out there as well, And if you're a beginner,
(06:45):
it's hard for you to tell the difference between them,
because the same platform is publishing the good stuff and
the crap stuff. There's good stuff on TikTok, there's crap
stuff on TikTok. There's good stuff on Instagram, there's crap
stuff on Instagram. You can't tell, really as a big
platform what person what content is right for you, or
(07:06):
what is correct information. But at least in a boring
printed guidebook like this, you've got some chance, at least
or a higher chance of that information being correct.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
There are some useful apps.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
There are some useful AI tools now, but they are useful,
sometimes they are not reliable. So I do have a
good few apps on here. I use the AI search function,
I use image recognition, I do image searches on Google.
I use my phone a fair amount whilst we're doing
this kind of work. But I also know that that
(07:39):
information that is presented to me as a result of
that search, as a result of me using the interface
on that app, might not be correct. So apps and
AI tools and things like that are good for finding
wider context, or if you're ninety percent sure that this
is the species that you've seen the other five times
and you want to just quickly get a photo of
(08:01):
it up on your phone, they're quite useful for that
kind of thing, But for beginners they're not so good.
If you've got a good experience with an app as
a nature id guide previous to your interest in foraging,
or you regularly use an app and you say, oh, yeah,
it's this species and this species and it seems to
be quite accurate. Well, consider the higher risk of foraging
(08:25):
compared to just nature identification. If you take a photo
of something and say, oh, it's this species because the
app told me it is, and you put that on
Instagram or you tell other people, Well, you might get embarrassed.
You might somebody might point out that you're wrong, But
that's about the worst that will happen if you do that.
When it comes to identifying food and identifying a toxic
(08:46):
versus an edible species, then the penalty for that failure
is much higher. So apps are useful, but they go
in a box. They go in a box of it's useful,
I'm not going to stake my life on it. Where
there as a book like this, well, the maybe eras
in there potentially, but it's gone through a lot more
(09:07):
scrutiny than an app that's being redeveloped and redeveloped, and
there's got user feedback from people who might not know
what they're talking about. And is there more to generate
ad revenue. If you've got your guidebook and you're presenting
yourself there and you're ready to go, how do you start? Well,
each guidebook will have some information right at the beginning
on how to use this guidebook. Often they have a
(09:30):
bit of a workflow in there of okay, you start here,
and then you go to this and does it have
these features yes or no? Or does it have one
of these colors? And you go through a little flow,
and then that takes you to a group of species
that look similar or grow in a similar place or
a similar habitat or so on. That's overall the process
you should use for identification. You start off big, and
(09:52):
then you get down smaller and smaller in those details.
So when I say start off big, start off with
which country are you in? Which com turns you on?
And then which part of that country? How high above
sea level? How far are you from the coast, what
slope are you facing. Are you facing towards south so
you're facing towards the sun in the middle of the day.
Or are you're on the north facing slope so you
(10:13):
get a lot of shade. Are you in a woodland
like this one, or you're out on open grassland.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Are you on a beach? Are you next to a river?
Is it damp? Is it dry? All of those.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Big factors will help you identify something because you'll only
find some species growing in certain kinds of soil, and
those soils are created by the trees around them. The
soil has to be a certain moisture level for that
species to be there. So all of these factors will
help you at least say, well, it's not that, it's
not that, it's not that because the right conditions aren't
(10:46):
there for it. Then think about time of year, because
there aren't many flowers around in December, so if it's
flowering in December, it's only going to be one of
a few species. There aren't many fruits, There aren't many
nuts or berries available in April, so if you're seeing
those things in April, then it's probably only going to
be one of a few species. So the time of
(11:06):
year will matter for your identification because some species will
go from being one shape to being a completely different shape, size, color,
everything over the course of six months. So you really
got to nail down that time of year as well
for your identification, and a good id guide will have
all of that information listed out on the page. Next,
(11:27):
look at the thing that you're trying to identify, try
and break it down into different sections. Maybe, so think
about leaves being separate, to flowers being separate to the stem,
and then once you've got those bigger sections, you can
start looking more closely at each part of that so
you can look at the shape of the leaf patterns.
(11:48):
Or are the leaves in pairs coming off the stem
as the one at the end? Do they all come
out at the same height and little terraces like this one,
or do they come all the way up and down
the stem? Are the shape of the flowers? And does
it have lots of little flowers on stalks like this hemlock?
What's the stem like does it have is it smooth,
(12:08):
is it hairy? Does it have spots on it? Does
it have a certain scent? I mean, if you've got
to the point where you're touching it and breaking it,
you're probably already confident that it's not one of those
species like giant hogweed, which is very harmful to touch,
or a stinging netal that you maybe don't want to
be touching when you're still trying to work out what
to do with things. So look at those bigger factors
(12:30):
and get smaller and smaller and smaller. That's how most
guidebooks work. They start off with really big things like
what corner of the world are you in, and they
finish down on details like there are tiny hairs on
the stem in this period of its growth cycle.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Exactly the same thing goes for mushrooms.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
For mushrooms, you look at things like what time of year,
where is it, what's the soil type, what trees is
it near or is it not near any trees? It
in grassland? Is it in salty conditions? So is it
one of only a coast or a few coastal mushrooms?
But do you get salty conditions next to a road
as well? Because in the UK we put salt on
the roads in winter, so the bits at the edges
(13:13):
of roads are saltier often than a coastal area. So
think about the fact is affecting where that little place is,
where that little thing is growing, and why it's choosing
to live there. And then with the mushroom again, look
at the stem and the cap and does it have
a cap? Does it have a stem? Is it a
(13:34):
stem and cap type mushroom? Is it a bracket? Is
it some thing that looks more like mold and slime
sitting on top of a log? Is it just a
tiny little branch thing sticking up out of a log?
And then what color is it? How big is it?
What scent does it have? Does it peel back on
the top of the cap, does it have gills, does
(13:55):
it have paws? All of those things will help you
narrow down. Okay, well, it's not it's not that. It's
not that, it's not that. Learning how to use your
ID guide is important, is vital for that guide, and
they all work in slightly different ways, but you go
through roughly the same process every single time, big factors,
getting down to small factors, even down to well, if
(14:19):
you have things like this one Francis rose is wild
flower key, there are things in here that say, well,
if you see it under a hand lens, if you
see it under a microscope, or if you see it
under some kind of magnifying device, you can get right
down to exactly the shape of the seed, exactly the
shape of each petal on the flower, and that will
help you with your identification. Same thing for mushrooms. There
(14:42):
are some mushrooms you can only identify by looking at
the spore pattern under a microscope. Once you get that identification,
stop and immediately become suspicious. Immediately assume that there is
a possibility that you might have got this wrong. So
in these Guys books, most things are grouped together with
(15:02):
things that look similar or grow in a similar place,
or stuff like that. So go one or two pages
that way, and go one or two pages that way,
and see if there are things that look very very similar.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Because if you've done.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
That step by step by step process wrong or you've
been a bit overconfidence somewhere in there, you might have
at some point branched off in the wrong direction and
you should have gone left instead of right. So it
is easy on that final stages, particularly with things that
look very similar but they grow in completely different locations
(15:36):
or they develop that feature at different times of year.
It is possible, and actually it's quite easy when you're
a beginner to make this thing in front of you
match what's on the page, because you go, yeah, it
looks close enough, without realizing, yeah, there are five things
that look like that.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
You've got to get the right one.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
And if you can't get to the point of yeah,
one hundred percent stake by life that is that and
leave it there. Or if you're at the point where
you think it's safe to collect and you're safe to touch,
then take a sample with you, take lots of photos,
take photos of where you found it, the habitat it
was in make notes around those kind of things, and
then have another go at identifying it when you get home.
(16:20):
Because that's happened to me quite a few times. I've
got something home and on oh actually, yeah, it is
this because when I was stood in the field trying
to look in the guide book and see what it
was or identify it, I was hungry, or was talking
to somebody, or as distracted, or it was too hot
or too cold, or whatever factor of human condition was
affecting me that day. I just wasn't in the right
(16:41):
frame of mind to identify it properly. But sat at
home with a cup of tea, it was fine.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
It was easy.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
It was oh, yes, quite obviously this one. It's got
all the features now I see it. If you do that,
if you can't identify it in the field and you
just take the photos home, or you just take one
sample and then you get home and go, oh it
was that, well, you've not lost anything. In fact, what
you've done is gained some knowledge. You've gained more experience
and identifying things. You've gained some experience in where that
(17:09):
thing grows and the kind of habitat it grows. And
particularly you have a location for that thing that you
can go back to. But it's better to maybe have
missed out one ingredient for one meal than it is
to have died. There's a point where there's no reward
that's worth a certain amount of risk, So if in doubt,
(17:30):
just leave it there. There are accidental poisonings every single
year all around the world, in this country, in your country,
everywhere the thing is. Only a small percentage of those
are due to wild plants, while mushrooms and so on,
most of them are going to be from household chemicals
or from other things that are man made in some way.
(17:51):
When you balance out the risk of getting it wrong
versus the reward for getting that ingredient into your your pan,
onto your plate, into your whatever you're going to use
it for, just think about that supermarket. Think about okay, well,
if you know what that label says, if you know
what that packaging says, what the information on there means,
(18:15):
then you can make a good choice about whether you're
going to use it or not. When it comes to
wild plants, when it comes to wild mushrooms, if you
can't identify it, if you can't read the information on there,
to make that identification to make that good choice. Then
you just have to leave it there because the information
might be there. Someone else might be able to read it.
(18:38):
Next week. You might be able to read it. But
it's better that you're still here to come back and
have another go next week than it is to completely
cock things up this time and poison yourself or poison
someone else. And don't be disheartened, don't be discouraged. If
you have to keep checking the guidebook. If you're going right,
it's that one, Yes, the right joint. Check the other
(19:00):
guidebook now, yeah that has that yet, and I'll check
the third guidebook. Yeah, you aren't a lesser person because
of that. In fact, you're actually a better forager. You're
taking things more seriously. I would always rather be served
a meal by the slightly nervous, over checking forager than
the really over confident one that just goes, oh, yeah,
there's a wild mushroom that's growing in the field, so
(19:22):
it must be a field mushroom. No, I'd always rather
be fed by the person who's taking care and taking
it seriously than the person who's being really over confident
and just not either not aware of those risks or
they're not balancing those risks against the reward in a
(19:43):
sensible way. Relax and enjoy things, because it is okay
to be cautious, and you are going to be coming
across lots of content saying, oh, yeah, there's just this
one weird trick. If you only eat things growing on here,
or if you never eat things that look like this,
or only do this, but those some of those tricks work.
Some of them don't, but they often have a lot
(20:03):
of exceptions that mean, yeah, this all works apart from
this one which will kill you, which never gets into
the TikTok video or the Instagram.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Reel or YouTube short or wherever. It is.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
The only tried and trusted method for always making sure
that you put the right thing in your mouth is identification.
It's boring, but it's what works. This is not something
that we're still working out as humans. How do we
identify the right things to eat? No, No, we've got
the resources now, We've got id books, we've got guides,
(20:36):
we've got lots of reliable information out there. This is
not something we have to experiment with. The information is
therefore identification of these things. Every now and again, some
really obscure subspecies moves from this genus to that genus,
or from this family to that family, but doesn't really
affect the identification in terms of toxicity. Do what a
(20:59):
colon just do. Do what botanists do, Do what my
cologists do. Do what complete experts in their fields have
to do when they go out, which is, take a
guidebook with you because this guidebook, well, this is the
one that belongs to Amy and she's had a whole
career doing this. I've got friends who are a cologist,
(21:19):
so I do a little bit of ecology work where
I have to go out with other people or go
out to identify things. As a business, and you have
to go out and identify a plant and say this
is yeap, one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
This is that. Take the guidebook with me, because you.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Can't possibly remember every single thing that's out there. Taking
the guidebook is fine. Checking against a guidebook is fine.
If you're watching this and you're still a little bit nervous,
that's fine. Confidence doesn't come from just getting it right
the first time. Confidence comes from working out where your
(21:56):
strengths and weaknesses lie and then make positive steps towards
improving those weaknesses and getting you towards where you want
to be. It comes from making lots of little, low
consequence and mistakes again and again, but within a balanced
understanding of what that risk overall is. You're making forward steps,
(22:16):
but you are aware that, yeah, if this goes wrong
and if I do it wrong in the wrong way,
it's going to have serious consequences. So you become more
confident by just doing little bits again and again and
again and again and moving forward constantly. You don't become confident.
You don't become good at things by just flailing around
(22:36):
and doing it once until you hit the right result
and then saying right, we're done. And it really is
that simple. You use a guidebook, you identify every single thing,
and you don't put it into your body, or you
don't put it onto your skin, or you don't put
it into someone else's body if you don't know what
it is, or as the cool kids keep telling me
on Instagram and blogs and everything else, never munch on
(22:58):
a hunch. Thank you podcast listener, well for listening and
for getting through to the end of this. We're going
to be trying to do more of these as we
can throughout the year. We're still going to be doing
the interview episodes, and we've got more of those lined up,
and we have got the new segments that we started
off with, so we are going to be coming back
(23:19):
to those. But we've got a lot to get on
and it's the summer, so it is the time when
we are really busy out foraging and fishing and gathering
wild food in one way or another. So we've got
a lot on. But we really love doing this and
we love the support that you've shown. If you want
to show us even more support, then you can join
(23:42):
those that have signed up to our Patreon account. If
you go to patreon dot com forward slash wild Food People.
It's not a huge commitment. It's a couple of pounds
a month and in there you'll get behind the scenes stuff,
early access to things, add free episodes, extra content when
we record it, and maybe a few other things in
(24:03):
the future that are coming up. And that doesn't go
and be spent on champagne and caveat that gets spent
on things like hosting for the podcast and equipment and
things like that to make sure that we can upgrade
the equipment when time comes. This episode was recorded live
in a woodland surrounded by birds yet again, and next
(24:25):
to a dead holly tree that we cut down last week.
It was in the way though, and it will regrow.
There some other stuff that's going to come in behind it.
It's a rural an outdoor. It's a rural an outdoor.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
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