· James Torr · Personal · 1 min read
Urban foraging with some added bonus pics. This is a Nicotiana, probably alata, aka Persian tobacco. The leaves are a bit sticky and the flowers are often trumpet/horn shaped. The rest of the shots are from around some Brighton mews in Kemptown. Very cool little spot, and nice to see this city still has some surprises left for me after all this time.
Amongst the excellently named mint family black horehound, next to a tree stump on Ditchling road in Brighton, are some potato plants. At the bottom of the pic. They've been growing here for some years apparently. Who knows how they got here?
in a little series of urban "edibles". This is prickly lettuce, Lactuca serriola, closest known wild relative of cultivated lettuce, L. sativa. Wikipedia describes it as having a "fetid" odor. That doesn't exactly sound appetising.
Urban edibles, Brighton. Brassica oleracea (cabbage) found outside a betting shop on London road. Dark fennel growing by a drainpipe in the North Laine.
As an alternative holiday souvenir, I decided to collect ingredients for a foraged herb bitters. From top left, clockwise: mugwort, clover, rock samphire, yarrow, rosemary, spruce, meadowsweet, wild carrot, tansy, sage. Collected around south Devon and Dartmoor. I've added some bitter and sweet orange peel (we took a few with us!), as well as gentian root (to up the bitterness quotient a bit. I'll leave this to infuse for a month, strain and simmer the dry ingredients with a bit of water, which I'll add back to the alcohol.