Wild Garlic                      Edible

Wild Garlic (Allium ursinum)

Aka ramsons, bear garlic 

Season: late winter to late spring.

This abundant flavour power house is one of the best spring edibles, it's fairly easy to identify and easy to find.

Wild garlic is an indicator for old woodlands, when you see a large patch of wild garlic covering many metres or even miles in all directions, be aware its taken years and years for that patch to become established.   

The life cycle of wild garlic is between 5 and 7 years, from seed to a plant mature enough to produce more seeds. If you look carefully in your wild garlic patches you will be able to spot the young immature plants whose leaves range from about 3 cm long to 15cm. Mature plants can have leaves that grow over 30cm long.

With this in mind care must be taken when harvesting, if you cut all the leaves from one bulb year after year then the bulb will die as it won't be able to produce enough energy from photosynthesis to sustain itself, it is therefore best practice to take one leaf from each plant leaving plenty to perform photosynthesis. 

By adopting the leaf by leaf harvesting method you also reduce the risk of accidentally collecting one of the toxic species that like to grow in the same habitat and often in with the garlic. Lords and ladies (Arum Maculatum) and dogs mercury (Mercurialis perennis) and the two main ones to look out for. 

Identifying features for wild garlic

• Long green spear shaped leaves that grow singularly on a smooth whitish green stem (more than one leaf per stem its not garlic!!)

• Tear drop shaped flower buds, that have a pale green paper thin sheath that protects the flower

• The flowers are pom pom like clusters of little 1cm white stars 

• The seeds are clusters of 3 forming at the centre of the flower, they start off green and turn black with maturity.

• The bulbs (which are illegal to uproot are small and thin, they encompass the leaf shoots.

• The leaves, flowers and seeds all smell strongly of garlic especially when crushed (you often smell wild garlic before you see it) 

If you have all these features it’s likely you have found wild garlic. Hooray!

Look a likes for wild garlic