Wild Garlic

It’s *that* season, our wake-up call from nature. Wind down the windows and take in the scent. Better still, put on your wellies and head out foraging.

Here’s everything you need to know about Allium ursinum, familiarly called, wild garlic.

Names say it all

The latin name for wild garlic is associated with Ursa, the bear, as it’s a plant bears go crazy for in the spring. Emerging from hibernation in the spring this is their go-to plant to kick their systems into functioning. It’s sometimes also called bear’s garlic for this reason.

Other folk names refer to the unmissable smell of wild garlic, especially pungent when drifts of it spread along lanes and through woods. These include ‘stink bombs’ and ‘stinking nanny’.

Most commonly it’s known as ‘Ramsoms’ and this name is given to many places where the plant grows prolifically. We find such nominal indications all over the British Isles including Ramsey on the Isle of Wight, Ramsgate in Kent and Ramsdell in Hampshire. It’s claimed that you can open any page of a UK map and find a ‘Ram’ name, I’m yet to spot one on the Gloucestershire page so would be happy if you can point it out to me!

Wild garlic is an indicator species for ancient woodlands, along with plants like Dogs’ Mercury, so Rams in a placename tell us that this was, at least at one time, a wooded area.

Garlic spotting

Visiting the woods anytime from summer to winter you might not be aware of wild garlic at all. But in spring its shiny, strappy leaves (broad with pointed ends) appear in unmissable clumps and carpets, fuelled by underground bulbs, similar but smaller to the cultivated garlic bulbs we more typically use in cooking.

Wild garlic has the same culinary and medicinal properties as cultivated garlic, but there’s something special about using a herb that is hand-gathered and only fleetingly available. In a few weeks it will be gone.

Gather with care

So gather and enjoy wild garlic while you can. But do be careful while picking, as many plants grow among the wild garlic, some of which may be accidentally added into a bundle or mistaken.

In particular beware not to gather:

• bluebells (which also have strappy green leaves)
• hearts tongue fern (much larger, more crinkly-edged leaves)
• lords and ladies (upright green leaves, more distinctive when in flower later in the year, and when bright red berries appear in autumn)
• Autumn crocus / meadow saffron / colchicum (long pointed leaves)
• Lily of the valley (more often found in gardens than in the wild)

The best test is to smell your plant, only wild garlic smells of garlic.

Family friends

There are other plants that are similar to wild garlic and used for culinary purposes, these include:

• Three cornered leek, Allium triquetrum (white bell-flowers and triangular stems, naturalised in the South West)
• Crow garlic, A. vineale (found in arable fields and waysides, small pearly bulbils form at the top of the stems). Richard Mabey suggests these should be gathered and added to dishes, or kept for a fortnight in water or damp paper and use as ‘sprouting salads’.
• Chives A. schoenoprasum
• Roundheaded leek, A. sphaerocephalon this is a rare and protected species (Wildlife and Countryside Act) and should never be harvested in the wild.

Harvesting

Once you’ve found and positively identified your wild garlic, here are a few tips for harvesting:

• The younger leaves, the better, try to pick before flowering and look for smaller leaves
• Some recommend using scissors but, if you don’t mind getting garlicky fingers, it is quite easy to snap the stem between finger and thumb.
• The leaves wilt quicky, so use as soon as you get home, or keep them in the fridge, it’s better to make mutiple trips gathering a little at time, if you’re able.
• Leaves, seed heads and flowers are all edible.
• The underground bulb is also edible (it’s a little milder in flavour than the cultivated bulb we normally cook with), but we don’t gather bulbs and roots from the wild.

Grow your own

Wild garlic is typically gathered from the wild, but if you want to be able to eat the bulbs as well, grow some in your garden. If it likes it there, it may become invasive.

To get started either sow ripe seed on bare ground in early summer, or divide plants in late summer (once the leaves have died back). The bulbs need to be planted fairly deep. Keep them damp and they should colonise.

Benefits of garlic

Garlic is traditionally turned to in supporting immunity, its also good for digestion and has properties as an antioxidant, antiseptic and insecticide.

In these respects, wild garlic is interchangeable with cultivated. So if you like steeping garlic in honey to create a cough syrup, why not try it with wild garlic.

Anti-vampire

It is curious that, while humans can enjoy all parts of garlic, animals will avoid it. Not only is it unpalatable, it’s also potentially toxic. Pet owners know not to feed onions and plants in the onion family to cats or dogs. Indeed, if grazing animals eat wild garlic their milk will turn; and if animals eat wild garlic shortly before slaughter, their meat will be spoiled.

The stories tell us that vampires cannot abide garlic, perhaps this is an indicator of their non-human status.

Cooking with wild garlic

There are lots of ways to enjoy wild garlic when it is fresh, for example:

• Chop leaves into a salad or a cheese sandwich (or a peanut butter sandwich)
• Mix the leaves into mayonnaise or sour cream
• Chop fine and mix into cream cheese as a sandwich or jacket potato filling
• Chop fine and mix into goats cheese, form into balls and roll them in lightly toasted sesame seeds. Chill for half an hour before serving as hors d’oeuvres
• Mix into an omelette
• Use wilted leaves on a pizza
• Add to stir fries

If you want to have wild garlic for a little longer, try making pesto. This will keep for a few weeks in the fridge, or can be frozen.

Wild garlic pesto

The basic approach is to chop wild garlic leaves along with nuts or seeds, add some grated hard cheese and blend with olive oil. The quick way is to use a food processor, the more artisan way is to grind in a mortar and pestle. Either way, get your mashed greens first, stir in the cheese and then drizzle in as much olive oil as necessary to get the texture you like.

Variations include:

• adding in other green leaves along with the wild garlic. Watercress or sorrel would be conventional but others include dead nettle, stinging nettle, violet leaves and dandelion leaves.
• your choice of nuts – pine nuts, pig nuts, walnuts, …
• your choice of hard cheese, parmesan is most obvious choice

Quantities

This kind of hedgerow food is generally created by eye, or measured by handfuls, there’s a lot of leeway in quantities used so you are free to do your own thing.

If you prefer a little guidance, most recipes suggest the cheese and nuts should together equal the weight of the leaves. So, for example, 100g of leaves would be blended with 50g nuts and 50g of cheese. This would likely need less than 40ml of olive oil to complete the blend.

Storing

Once you have your desired pesto, scoop it into a clean jar and then put a little extra olive oil on top to ensure it is not exposed to the air.

Label and store in the fridge. It should keep for a few weeks.

Or you can freeze it. I like to do this in an ice cube tray so I can take out individual cubes at a time. A cube of pesto defrosting in a steamer over a pan of pasta makes a quick one-pot ready meal.

Enjoying

Pasta pesto is one way to enjoy your foraged food. Other ways include drizzling pesto over roasted or steamed vegetables, stirring it in with rice and beans or adding it to flavour savory biscuits or sauces.