I like food! No surprise in that I guess, but since I became aware that there were volunteer plants out there – wild herbs, weeds, whatever you want to call them, that are edible I started to notice them wherever I happened to be. I did this particularly while I was on my daily walk as this would often lead me through places where these wonderful plants grow in abundance. Just recently I got some insight into how wonderful they really are!
I change the route of my walk every so often and I was walking around one of the local streets where the council had just recently installed a roundabout. Part of said installation was to change the layout of the guttering to allow extra width for cars to get through. There was already a concrete footpath in place so the area of ground between the footpath and the new gutter was dug out and cleared of vegetation, and then basically left to its own devices. The roundabout had been in place for several months when the area became part of my walk, and what I saw astounded me!
What had been bare dirt several months ago was now a thriving and amazingly diverse volunteer plant community, happily growing on the side of the road, with no assistance from anyone. It was, in effect, a guild, but a self-selected guild with well over a dozen plants I could identify, as well as a few I couldn’t. On top of that, more than half were edible.
Now, yes, I understand that the place they were growing was not prime real estate for edible crops (check here for where and where not to harvest) but the fact remained that it had grown up from scratch with no assistance and in a more isolated place it would be a foragers’ supermarket.
As with any guild there were a collection of plants doing different things to support the whole community, the plants and what I thought they were contributing (as well as other stuff no doubt) is as follows -
Burr medic (medicago plymorpha) – edible by stock and people, has a taproot which digs down into the soil to bring up deeper nutrients, also assists water draining down into soil rather than running off, it is a nitrogen fixer and improves soil fertility. Insectary plant.
Clover (trifolium sp.) - edible by stock and people, has a taproot which digs down into the soil to bring up deeper nutrients, also assists water draining down into soil rather than running off, it is a nitrogen fixer and improves soil fertility. Insectary plant.
Dandelion – (taraxacum officionale) - edible by stock and people, has a taproot which digs down into the soil to bring up deeper nutrients, also assists water draining down into soil rather than running off. Insectary plant.
Dock – (rumex sp.) – Edible by stock and people, has a taproot which digs down into the soil to bring up deeper nutrients, also assists water draining down into soil rather than running off.
Fat hen, green – (chenopodium murale) – Edible, fibrous root system holds the soil together to prevent erosion during rain events.
Fire weed – (senecio madigascariensis) – has a taproot which digs down into the soil to bring up deeper nutrients, also assists water draining down into soil rather than running off.
Ribwort plantain – (plantago lanceolate) – edible (but very fibrous), with a fibrous root system holds the soil together to prevent erosion during rain events.
Scotch (spear) thistle – (cirsium vulgare) – edible stem and taproot, the taproot digs down into the soil to bring up deeper nutrients, also assists water draining down into soil rather than running off.
Shepherds purse – (capsella bursa-pastoris) – edible, has a taproot which digs down into the soil to bring up deeper nutrients, also assists water draining down into soil rather than running off, insectary.
Sowthistle – (sonchus sp.) – edible, has a taproot which digs down into the soil to bring up deeper nutrients, also assists water draining down into soil rather than running off, insectary.
Vetch (vicia sp.) – Edible, has a taproot which digs down into the soil to bring up deeper nutrients, also assists water draining down into soil rather than running off, it is a nitrogen fixer and improves soil fertility, insectary.
Wild carrot (daucus carota) – edible, has a taproot which digs down into the soil to bring up deeper nutrients, also assists water draining down into soil rather than running off, insectary.
Stagger weed – (stachys arvensis) - has a taproot which digs down into the soil to bring up deeper nutrients, also assists water draining down into soil rather than running off.
Prairie grass – (bromus wildenowie) – edible by animals, has a fibrous root system holds the soil together to prevent erosion during rain events.
All these plants as well as some others, all gathered in a narrow sward, between a road and a footpath, all self-sown and with no care from humans at all. Astounding! In some of the permaculture related courses we teach we talk about asking the question – “what would nature do?”. Clearly, THIS is what nature does.
Unfortunately, not everyone is as fascinated with weeds, wild guilds, wild food and volunteer species as I am, and when I was again walking through the area a couple of weeks after the initial photos were taken, I found this!
