Tag Archives: Foraging

Old Man’s Beard

Clematis vitalba (old man’s beard / tysk klematis) is an important wild edible in Italy (young shoots which must be cooked) and also one of the most attractive plants in my garden for hoverflies and other pollinators! Saving seed this week from my 20+ year old seed propagated plant which provides me with a lot of entertainment (hoverfly watching on my balcony)!

The Potential of Perennials for Food System Resilience Symposium

Last weekend I attended this symposium in Stans (near Lucerne) with a diverse group of people including farmers, decision makers, bankers, investors, NGOs, students, landscape architects, writers, international organisations, chefs, plant breeders, university researchers, syntropic farmers, permaculturists etc. to discuss the role of perennials in what more and more people are seeing as a necessary paradigm shift in agriculture in the face of climate change and dwindling resources.
The program: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a574020b078696d379ca25e/t/5ab04a9288251bfd948ffe44/1521502868186/Program+PerennialsConference+7.Apr18.pdf

The Wild Greens of Korea

There are still many undiscovered (in the west) perennial edibles in the Far East. I’m therefore now concentrating mainly on that area in this quest. This spring I will travel for 3 weeks in Japan as part of this work. Another “country” with a rich diversity of food plants is Korea. With help from my Norwegian / Korean friend Misoni Sandvik whom I mention in my book, and who is on her own quest to find and grow wild herbs she remembers foraging when she was a child in South Korea, I’ve received two books from Korea today entitled “The Wild Greens of Korea” and “The Medicinal Herb of Korea”. There’s often a diffuse boundary between food and medicine in Korea, so the second book is also relevant, including plants like Aralia cordata (Udo)!

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Aralia cordata (Udo)

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Aster scaber (Korean Asters), the plant that lead to Misoni contacting me as related in my book, a plant she was looking for that I had on my seed list!


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