foraging few flowered leek

I've blogged about few flowered leek before. This is a rather distinctive looking plant as seen from the photo below,

though from a distance it can be confused with wild garlic (which you can see in this post - that year wild garlic had flowered mid April, this year it's barely yet starting to flower!).

I've noticed few flowered leek much more over the last few years and realised it wasn't a native plant. But it was only on reading this article from Plantlife that I realised it is classed as an invasive plant, and is gradually taking over from the wild garlic, bluebells and other flowers of the woodland floor.

But you can be part of the solution! Few flowered leek (and its near cousin three cornered leek) are edible and because they're invasive plants you can pull up the whole plant! (But if you're picking wild garlic just pick the leaves, wild garlic is native to our woodlands and it's illegal to uproot it!). There's a good video here about how to recognise few flowered leek (Thanks to Howard for sharing this link on Facebook).

You can chop up either of these invasive leeks and use in potato salad or to make pesto. 

Of course, as when foraging for any plants, choose areas that aren't used by dogs.



For Nature Notes. 


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