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Visit a wood near youForaging in July: nature's best summer food for foraging
Content manager, botanist and tree lover
Explore your inner hunter-gatherer by finding seasonal edible wild plants this month. You’ll find them along hedgerows, path edges, woodland and heathland.
A wild food foray is a great way to connect with the landscape around us. Please remember to only take what you absolutely need (and only when there is a plentiful supply), and only pick what you can identify with certainty. Read our sustainable foraging guidelines for more advice.
Bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus)
These edible berries of heathland and moorland turn fingers, lips and tongues a deep purple.
Did you know?
Other names for this plant include whinberry, whortleberry, blaeberry, hurtleberry and blueberry.
How to use it
The berries of the bilberry plant are pleasant tasting when raw but are even better when cooked. They can be made into jam or lightly stewed with a little sugar and added to natural yoghurt, cream, or ice cream. Use them to make a version of Scottish cranachan or a summer pudding or (if you have picked enough) use as a filling for pies, tarts and crumbles.
What to look for
The low shrubby plants grow on heaths, moors and sparse conifer woods with acid soil. Their fruit resembles small blueberries and can ripen around the beginning of July, but August and September are the best months.
Chickweed (Stellaria media)
Chickweed is an overlooked but underrated weed with cleansing and healing properties and is packed full of vitamins and minerals.
Did you know?
Chickweed is abundant throughout the year from spring to late autumn.
How to use it
Its tender leaves can go in salads with lemon and olive oil dressing. Blend into homemade pesto, or use to liven up fish or chicken. Wilt the leafy stems in a knob of butter, add spring onions and eat as a vegetable. The tiny white, edible flowers make a pretty salad garnish.
What to look for
Common throughout the UK on waste ground and in gardens. Look for its small, white, star-like flowers and low, creeping habit. Leaves are too small to be picked individually, so pick the fine, tender stems.
Chanterelle (Cantharellus cibarius)
This yolk-coloured fungus is one of the prettiest and best-flavoured of all wild mushrooms.
Did you know?
Because of their colour, chanterelle mushrooms have always been associated with eggs, and some believe there's no better way to eat them than in omelettes.
How to use it
Chanterelle has a firm flesh and a peppery, slightly fruity taste and smells mildly of apricots. It is one of the few mushrooms that can stand washing. Cook in a little oil or butter, add to pasta or steep in vodka for a distinctive liqueur.
What to look for
From July onwards and into autumn, look for the golden, trumpet-shaped chanterelle in all kinds of woodland, from pine to mixed. Its wavy shape distinguishes it from false chanterelle, which smells and looks like a more typical mushroom but just happens to be a similar colour.
Fat hen (Chenopodium album)
Don’t let its alternative names of dirty dick and pig weed put you off. This common and nutritious plant, also known as wild spinach, was a staple food of our ancestors. Its seeds have been found inside the stomachs of Danish bog bodies.
Did you know?
Fat hen was used as a food plant in prehistoric times.
How to use it
Its leaves taste similar to spinach and can be cooked in the same way. Pick the tender leaves of the stems and lightly steam or boil. Blend it into a dressing with parsley, capers and olive oil or whip up a soup.
What to look for
Fat hen has diamond- or goose foot-shaped leaves that are covered with a coating of faint white hairs. It often grows in gardens as a 'weed'. Choose tender leaves and flower heads from the top of the plant.
Mallow (Malva sylvestris)
The leaves, flowers and seeds are edible. Leaves are rich in protein, calcium, iron and vitamin C and in traditional medicine they’ve been used to treat constipation and diarrhoea, dry throat and chesty cough.
Did you know?
Other names for this plant include billy buttons, bread and cheese, fairy cheeses, flibberty gibbet and good night at noon.
How to use it
The slightly furry leaves are best picked in the summer. They contain a resin that gives them a distinctive gummy texture a little like okra. It adds glutinous richness to the Arabic soup, molokhia, which is made from them. The purple-mauve flowers have a similar flavour and texture to the leaves and are a good addition to salads, while the seeds have a delicate nutty flavour.
What to look for
Find it in open and sunny habitats along hedgerows and roadsides and in pastures and wasteland. Its geranium-like leaves are best picked in midsummer. When the flowers start to drop, look for the little pea-sized, green seeds that are worth a nibble.
Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria)
Meadowsweet has long been a hedgerow herbal medicine. It was important in the development of the drug aspirin which got its name from the older scientific name for meadowsweet, Spiraea ulmaria.
Did you know?
Dried meadowsweet smells of new-mown hay, hence its alternative name, hayriff.
How to use it
The leaves have a pleasant cucumber flavour and the flowers have a scent similar to sweet almond. Both leaves and flowers can be used to flavour homemade wines, teas, cordials and sorbets.
What to look for
Meadowsweet is in full flower in July. It grows best where there is moisture, so look for it along ditches and in bogs, marshes and at the edges of watercourses.
Strawberry, wild (Fragaria vesca)
Also known as Alpine or woodland strawberry, these distinctive fruits are tiny but full of flavour. Small woods can be dominated by wild strawberry plants but unless these populations are kept secret they can quickly become decimated by over-picking and uprooting of plants to transplant into gardens.
Did you know?
The commercial strawberry we buy or grow today originated from an introduced American species, Fragaria virginiana.
How to use it
Wild strawberries are small and it’s rare to be able to pick more than a handful. They are best eaten raw, on their own or with a slight sprinkling of sugar (and possibly some cream). They’re considered far superior in flavour to cultivated strawberries.
What to look for
Low-growing plants with 3-lobed leaves and fruits that look like miniature cultivated strawberries. Look for them in deciduous woods, along hedgerows, and on rough grassland on chalky soils. The fruits ripen between June and August.
Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)
Also known as soldiers woundwort and staunchweed, yarrow was used traditionally to stem bleeding from wounds and nose bleeds and was used to treat fevers. This strong-smelling plant was popular as a vegetable in the 17th century.
Did you know?
Yarrow had a reputation among herbalists as an astringent for wounds.
How to use it
Yarrow leaves are edible but have a medicinal and slightly bitter taste. The younger leaves make a pleasant leafy green in salads or when cooked like spinach, or in a soup. They can also be dried and used as a herb in cooking.
What to look for
You’ll find yarrow growing in grassy habitats in fields, meadows, gardens and along roadsides. It has distinctive feathery leaves and umbels of white to pink flowers from June to September. The leaves look a little like chamomile, pineapple weed and tansy but all three of these species are edible. Take care when picking - it can cause allergic skin reactions or photosensitivity in some people.
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