The Foraging Course Company

Fabulous fungi guided walks

Discover the weird, wonderful and whacky fungi found in the UK on our fabulous fungi guided walks. You’ll discover a variety of unusual shapes, spectacular colours and amazing smells. They are beautiful, bizarre and truly fascinating.
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​Led by an expert guide, this walk offers a fun and educational dive into the mysterious world of fungi. You’ll learn about identification, hear quirky facts and folklore, and discover the vital role fungi play in our ecosystems.

Find out more on our website

Autumn foraging course and fabulous fungi guided walk dates released!

All of our autumn foraging course dates are now released and ready to book on our website.

This year we will also be running our new Fabulous Fungi guided walks. Rather than being edibility focussed, these walks look at the wider fungi world, their amazing lives and huge impact on the world around us.

Find out more via our website www.foragingcoursecompany.co.uk/courses

Wolf’s bane (Aconitum lycoctnum)

A deadly poisonous discover on the recce for yesterday’s foraging course. Wolf’s bane (Aconitum lycoctnum) is native to some parts of Europe but not the UK. It was introduced around 500 years ago and has since naturalised in shady woodland areas. The UK native relative of this plant is Monkshood (Aconitum napellus), which has bright purple hooded flowers, is often called wolf’s bane but it is A lycoctnum that was used historically to kill wolves. Both plants are deadly poisonous.
Aconitum species are sold in garden centres and carry warnings about toxicity. They are desired for their tall beautiful flower stalks and deeply lobed leaves. Just don’t eat them!
Both are considered to have the ability to be able to poison through the skin so excessive handling with bare hands (especially if cuts or grazes are present) is advised against

More venues and dates for our wildflowers and witchcraft guided walks!

Wander the countryside with us and uncover the hidden folklore, myth and magic of wildflowers used for healing, protection and spellcraft, where old beliefs still murmur through hedgerows, meadows and ancient paths.

Currently available in Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Gloucestershire, Norfolk, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, West Midlands and Worcestershire.

Find out more via our website (in bio) or direct at https://www.foragingcoursecompany.co.uk/wildflowers-and-witchcraft-walk

St George’s Mushroom

The St George’s mushroom (Calocybe gambosa) is so called because of its fruiting period being roughly around St George’s Day (23 April).
It likes calcarous soil and is found growing in rings in grassland near trees. It is thought to potentially be saprobic (feeding on decaying organic matter), mycorrhizal (symbiotic) and pathogenic (harming a host) all at once!
The grass in the ring is often flushed (grows faster than the grass around it).
The St George’s mushroom is cream coloured, the cap is often misshapen and the stem has no ring/skirt. It has crowded, sinuate gills (attached to the stem but with a little notch before the attachment) that are very shallow. The base of the stem is often swollen to one side.
Its smell is doughy, mealy or sometimes like cucumber.
At this time of year there is little to confuse it with but check out the guide on our website for possible lookalikes.
Don’t eat wild food unless you are 100% sure of your identification!

Common morel (Morchella vulgaris)

These were found at the end of a recce for one of our wildflowers and witchcraft walks and although they weren’t part of the event today, they were shown to participants.
Growing with Ash that was clearly suffering from dieback. These were decent-sized specimens.
The morels still seem to be popping in the UK.

Spotting crow garlic (Allium veneale)

Crow garlic likes to grow in turf and as it has thin leaves it can be hard to spot. But, at this time of year in the UK when mowing is taking place, that gives us an advantage.
Like all Allium, it is edible. This one produces bulbils so there is actually no need to dig it up to get to the bulb. Don’t forget to get permission from the landowner before digging anything up!

Black morel (Morchella importuna)

A good friend of mine sent me some pictures of some mushrooms she’d found at the property where she works as head gardener. I was really pleased to see that these were black morels. I’ve got to admit, I’ve been very busy getting ready for our courses to start so I’ve not really been keeping an eye out for these. Therefore, it was great to find out that one of my nearest and dearest has been doing the job for me!
The black morel is an edible mushroom, but like all morels must be thoroughly cooked. There was a case in Spain a few years ago where a restaurant managed to cause a mass poisoning of around 30 of its covers due to undercooked morels.
This species likes to grow in woodchip beds and these particular specimens were found close to where the flooring of the owner’s chicken run is put into the compost.
Morels do have a few poisonous lookalikes and the deeply pitted cap and totally hollow stem are great identification points to tell them apart.
At a time of year when there are far fewer edible mushrooms around these are always are welcome find and, because of their habitat preference, a brilliant one for the urban forager.
Keep an eye out for them in woodchip beds, park planting schemes and, obviously, the side of compost heaps that have spent chicken bedding put on them!

Chickweed identification and information video from March 2020

i’ve been digging through some old video files and came across some identification and information pieces done for online courses held during lockdown 2020.
Although they are a few years old, these videos still contain great information on how to identify wild edibles at this time of year.
Chickweed (Stellaria media) is an abundant plant that is starting to grow strongly in early spring. It has an excellent key identifying feature enabling it to be told apart from it’s poisonous lookalikes very simply.
Chickweed is a great wild edible to get to know for beginner foragers because of the identification points that can be seen in this video.
I’ll be putting up more videos from the archives over the coming weeks as they are relevant to the wild edibles that are in season in the UK now