Bushcraft Foraging: Hairy Bittercress

Description

A detailed look at Bittercress, Hairy and Wavey.

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Video Transcription

by the guys it's a beautiful spring day and lots of lots of wild edibles are coming through and a bit like the last episode where we looked at lesser celandine and we focus on that specific edible

you know exploring its nutritional content Eric you can ProSource it how you can identify it in the train it grows in we're going to do the same with another edible today so we're going to head a bit further down where there's a lot more water and the soil doesn't drain as easily and have a look at this edible and explore it further so the plants have got in my hands here is called wavy bitter class and wavy bitter crest is the member of the brass ECI family which is the mustard family which is a very very common family kind of you see abundantly everywhere in spring and a very tasty family as well it requires almost no processing in most cases so before I go into the identification of wavy bitter dress has a very similar cousin in the same family hairy versa crest and the two are often mistaken and in field guides you'll generally see the mixed together as as opposed to being shown as two separate plants now the difference in them is very very minut but some wavy piece of grass or wood grass you'll often find growing in woodland Harry bitter crest we generally find growing um you know Anton Plains and where it gets a lot more sunlight so it's usually a lot rather because of that sun exposure I mean if it's flowering is a very easy way of telling the difference wavy bit of grass has 6 stamens in the flower but there was Harry's mr. crash then it has fought and wavy bit across has given its name simply because it's a zig zagging stem and harry bitter grass is generally a bit straighter the leaves are hairy and whether it's the stem on way people it's across this Harry

and it's a much fuller plant wavy bitter grass much bigger very bitter grass is a lot smaller and it's a lot more dense at the base where there is on the stem there are very few leaves and it's pretty much the opposite on wavy bits across so it's worth looking into the two but whatever the environment you can process them both the same way and the flavor is pretty much identical so the kind of terrain that wavy bitter grass is going to grow in and its other name is wood crass um is woodland you'll find it almost everywhere in woodland and you'll find it where soil doesn't drain very well so this is very damp soil here I can see loads of tracks all those of the place and where animals have been coming to drink and you know Boxey got a lot of RAM sands around here wild onion wild garlic as they call it you know it's a very very abundant place and there's plenty of water here so it's quite clear with this environment and all the smacking losses the soil doesn't drain very well so this is a perfect environment for it and you can see this one's pretty big it's been doing very well here so the parts of the world it's going to grown it's going to be very common all three you're very very common in the British Isles grows almost everywhere quite abundantly if the conditions are correct obviously but yeah Europe grows all throughout Europe provided you're in these kind of conditions yeah sort of northern temperate zone that's got a bit of dampness to certain areas you're probably going to find it very likely as much of its cousins will be there as well in the muscle family but hedg mustard that's growing all around me everywhere now but we'll approach that in another video but I do believe it grazed in parts of North America as well provided the conditions are correct there so it's a fantastic edible to find simply because the lack of processing you can do with it you know it's very tasty which is a big plus on the side of edible is lots of things are said to be edible but they're not always too tasty so it's nice to find the ones that actually do taste good because it's you know encourages you to go out and actually then forage for them so how are you gonna ID the plant well we obviously talked about the the distinct differences between Harry bit of grass and wavy bit of grass while some of the differences anyway there are some more but unless you're really interested you can't have a look into it but the processing and ID really is the same with the two plants which is the great thing about it but when you look at the lower leaves of the plant you'll see they're very round and they're a lot bigger than the upper leaves the lower leaves generally have even up to something like 14 15 lobes on them with a larger one at the end and they are a lot rounder a lot larger when you go up the stem you'll see they become really thin near the flower you know almost very very long and thin and much smaller as they kind of crowd around the flower has their the flower has four tassels and also say on wavy bits of grass as 6 stamens on Harry bitter Crescent has four stamens so there is a difference there if you are prepared to check that and it has flowered but if it hasn't flowered the leaf is a fantastic way of identifying the plant it grows out of a central cluster of roots you know much in a circular kind of way a bit like the lesser cell in vine we looked at much like dandelion a single root structure growing out not like a creeping root you know like you see the mint family but a very easy plant to identify and a taste test will you know help you out you just pick the top meet it yeah very very tasty much like watercrafts and in the similar tanks and absolutely delicious just to eat straight off the ground from a nutritional perspective the plant is very nutritious it contains vitamins A B B's C's and K I'm also a good amount of iron and calcium so worth adding to a varied diet so in terms of processing you can pretty much do what you like with it and take an artistic license with it I mean it's like anything you buy from the shops you buy bag of spinach you might you know just blanch it a bit and eat it you may roast it with some vegetables you might stir fry it you might just have it raw in a salad it really is up to you you know it's a very versatile plant and it can be eaten quite easily I just quite like to steam it a bit and have it with some wood pigeon or a bit of steak and it really is delicious and it complements kind of meat very well with that peppery taste so again you know you could dry this there's a substitute for example much like this mint I've got just here I Drive this last year and you know it's kept for about six months still going strong and you know you can bounce that on various things or have it in teas and rehydrate it very easy to dry these plants out very easy just need a lot of airflow rather than heat to be quite honest it's more about airflow and driving process so that's just really the wave your Harry better grass plant are the mustard family I hope you've enjoyed the video and I hope it's helped fantastic fun and you know as we're well within spring the spring will be gone before you know it so best to get out now and have a look at these plants while they're still there thanks for watching hopefully I'll see you in the next video