I’m an animist so I figure I’d better practice what I preach. I’ve been trying my best to be aware of insects when I wild harvest and try my best to leave them in the wild not take them home with me in my bags of wildcrafted bounty. A few hide so well and still come home with me regardless. Others might think I’m a bit mad to pick up the beetles, earwigs, and spiders and put them back outside again. They don’t bite and they don’t run away – especially when you tell them you’re just putting them back outside (yes, I talk to bugs). If you don’t want to touch them you can get them to crawl onto a piece of paper and put them in a box or tupperware container.
Maybe it’s because I was looking for them that I saw so many more insects than normal including ones I’ve never seen before even though I was born and grew up here. The tiny little turquoise beetle above wasn’t even in my insect field guide and neither were the shiny metallic beetles that really love St. John’s Wort – so much so they wouldn’t let go of the stalks no matter what – so I had to avoid wildcrafting the bits with the little beetles stuck to them. One still managed to hitch a ride home with me and is now in the front garden.
I wild harvested a good few ounces of wild rose petals and learned that honey bees REALLY like wild roses… in a sexual way. They rub their heads and bodies all over the rose pollen and do little happy dances almost like a courtship dance with every new rose they land upon. It was like watching public sex and I felt a bit of a voyeur. Considering how many other flowers were blooming with no honey bees gracing them, I figure honey bees highly prefer them over the other flowers. I would too, I mean the smell alone! Instead of drying the rose petals I collected for botanica products I admit I made a rhodomel, a rose mead, when I got home (Nom! Mead post is forthcoming).
When I was picking rose petals I saw some gorgeous black berries and thought they were actually very early Blackberries, but after eating one I quickly realized they were Salmonberries that were so ripe they had turned black. They were sooo good!
Further up the hill of wild roses (coincidentally named Primrose Hill) I found a huge Burdock plant that was as tall as me and three times as fat. I’d never seen one get this big before in the neighbourhood, I’d only ever seen the huge rubarb-like leaves. I hope no one hacks it down before it flowers! Now that I can easily recognize Burdock I’ll have to go out on a rainy day and collect some roots for medicines.
Even further up the hill, my next destination was above a natural mountain spring to harvest some Enchanter’s Nightshade (not actually in the Solanaceae family and not poisonous). There are a few varieties in the world, the most common being the larger Circaea lutetiana, but the one I harvested was Alpine Enchanter’s Nightshade (Circaea alpina) which loves cool mountain environments and is a very environmentally sensitive plant I’ve blogged about before. In Scandinavian folk magic it was used to protect from elves and to cure elf-shot and elf-diseases. It can be easily confused with Sugar Scoop (Tiarella), so bring a field guide with you if it’s your first time looking for it.
Hedge Bindweed and purple and white Foxgloves were in full bloom along with the other wild flowers of the woods. It was a beautiful day for walking and wildcrafting in the forest. I harvested Nootka Rose petals, St. John’s Wort tips, Red Clover flowers, Alpine Enchanter’s Nightshade, and the Hedge Nettle I saw on my last outing. They’re all now drying in the kitchen waiting to become folk magics and medicines.
Back down the hill I saw the feather remains of a juvenile crow that had been eaten by a coyote. The crowlings are just getting a handle on flying right now. I guess it was a little payback for scaring away all the coyote’s meals…
