I'm having a 'plant identifying' day in the forest! I got a book from the library with illustrations and names of southern european plants that grow specifically in the forests. There's 190 plants in there, I have no way of memorizing all of them, but I'm going to flip through them so the images are fresh in my mind. Then, I'm going to the forest, where I'll take a picture of every plant I see. When I get back, I'll compare them to the book!
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I have returned, and compiled some plants I recognized and identified! First the edible ones:
I eat these regularly, chickweed is my favourite because it tastes better than lettuce, and wood sorrel tastes like lemon.
I almost yelled when I spotted Bear's Garlic, one of the tastiest forest foods! I haven't tried Dead Nettle becasuse it doesn't smell appealing, and even though the Greater Stitchwort is edible, there are 2 similar poisonous plants so I steer away from that. Large bitter-cress tastes like mustard!
Ground elder tastes like carrot tops! I always snack on the young leaves. I haven't tried Lady's purse yet, but I tried cleavers and they taste,, odd. I haven't yet figured out how to eat sow thistle because it is very spiky. But I've heard it's great in salads.
Okay so these were all edible, now for some dubiously edible (only parts are edible, or only some time of the year)
Large dead nettle is technically edible but it has this very soft and airy texture, I'm extremely untempted to bite into it. Speedwell has many varieties and only one seems to be medicinal. Mixed reviews for ground ivy, apparently it's been used as cough medicine and young leaves are edible, but older ones are toxic. They're such tiny leaves! I do not have the patience for it. And celandine is supposed to be edible very early spring, before flowering, and I can tell you it tastes sooo sweet. But if you make tea from it and drink it 2 days in a row, you'll get a nasty headache. And as soon as it flowers its toxic to eat.
Ok now we're onto fully completely toxic poisonous ones, do not put these in your mouth:
Periwinkle is just called 'evergreen' here because it's green all year, it makes the forest look magical! Dog violet pisses me off because it looks so much like violet, but unlike the normal ones it's not edible, and it doesn't smell like anything! Way to trick me into believing I found a tasty snack. Fumewort creeps me out so bad, every time I see it I feel something is wrong there. It looks like the elongated alien skull with a purple yapping mouth. Eugh. It's so creepy. I only identified hazelwort for the first time today so nothing to say about it yet! Also the anemones behind that hazelwort in the picture are also poisonous.
Next are the plants I'm not sure about what they are, I have suspicions, but since they haven't fully developed yet, I can't say 100%:
It might be a May Lily or Lily of the Valley, I can't tell.
I think that's comfrey? But it could be something else
This could be Blue-eyed Mary. I will be able to tell once it flowers.
This looks like Narrowleaf bittercress according to pictures! Early to tell.
And finally these are the plants I found no identification for! I would love to identify these so if anyone knows their names, please tell me in the comments!
