In Glennie Kindred’s little book, A Hedgerow Cookbook’ she lists fruit, plants, roots, stems, seeds and nuts and leaves which grow wild and which can be cooked in various different ways.
I wish I’d had this little book when we were out gathering fruit in the autumn; I was chiefly looking for slows but we picked some hips and haws and blackberries too. She has a whole list of autumn fruits, including bilberry (whimberry, wortleberry, huckleberry) bullace which my mother-n-law spoke of gathering in her childhood, nearly a hundred years ago now, cherry plum, crab apple (they make the finest jelly!) damson, elderberry (I actually think they taste horrid, even when made into things) guelder rose (I have just looked themup, and I have been totally wrong about what they are… what I thought was a guelder rose is something completely different!) hawthorn (haws) medlar (I have read so often about this fruit in Elizabethan and Jacobean plays I would love to try some!) rose hip, rowan (mountain ash) sloe (just right for making sloe gin!) wild raspberries (so delicious) and wild gooseberries… wild gooseberries? Really? I’ve never heard of them or come across any but they sound intriguing!
