Coastal Foraging: What to Pick and Avoid

Reading the shore before you pick

Coastal foraging is less about hunting a rare prize than learning the rhythm of a place. The best haul often comes from a ten-minute walk along a saltmarsh creek with your trousers rolled up, a pair of scissors and a cloth bag. Go out on a falling tide, when the mud is firmer and the plants are cleaner, and always check a tide table first — a creek that took five minutes to cross on the way out can be chest-deep on the way back.

Take only what you will eat, and only from plants that are abundant. In England and Wales, picking foliage, flowers, fruit and fungi for personal use is generally allowed, but uprooting a wild plant without the landowner's permission is an offence; Scottish access rules are more generous, though uprooting and commercial picking are not covered. Nature reserves, Sites of Special Scientific Interest and conservation land have their own rules, so check before you go.

Marsh samphire: the taste of a summer saltmarsh

Marsh samphire, also called glasswort, is the coastal forager's reward. It grows in salty mud on the edges of creeks around estuaries, appearing as jointed, bright green fingers from late spring. The season runs roughly from May to early September, at its tender best in June and July, before it turns woody and red.

Pinch or snip the top five to eight centimetres of each shoot — young samphire snaps crisply, while old stems bend. Never pull it up by the root. Rinse it in cold water, then blanch for a minute or eat it raw with butter and lemon. It is naturally salty, so taste before you reach for the salt cellar.

Rock samphire is a different plant, growing on cliffs with thick grey-green leaves and a strong smell of aniseed and carrot. It is excellent pickled, but cliffs are dangerous and many are protected or private, so leave it be.

Sea beet and other coastal greens

Sea beet, the wild ancestor of garden beetroot and spinach, is a generous plant. Look for glossy, dark green, fleshy leaves with wavy edges on shingle banks, sea walls and the drier edges of saltmarsh. Young leaves from spring into early summer are the ones worth having — cook them like spinach, or shred the smallest raw into a salad.

Sea purslane is another easy one: a low, grey-leaved shrub of muddy creeks with a pleasant salty tang, good in stir-fries. Sheep's sorrel, with its sharp lemony leaves, grows in rough coastal grass nearby.

Dandelion leaves and the edges of the coast

Dandelions are not a coastal plant, but they are the most useful foraging green within reach of the sea. Young leaves, picked between March and May before the flowers open, are bitter and clean-tasting, excellent chopped into a warm potato salad or wilted with garlic.

Pick from wild grass, garden edges and quiet lanes — never a busy roadside, lay-by or a verge where dogs are walked. If you are unsure whether a patch has been sprayed, leave it. Once the flower stalks are up, the bitterness wins; that is the moment to stop.

Where not to pick: pollution, roads and protected places

Coastal plants take up whatever is in the water and soil around them, so where you pick matters as much as what you pick. Avoid:

• Busy roadsides and lay-bys, where exhaust and tyre dust settle on the leaves.
• Estuaries and creeks below sewage outfalls, marinas, boatyards or industrial sites.
• Water next to farmland, where run-off and sprays can reach the plants.
• Anywhere close to a harbour where anti-fouling paint is used on boats.
• Popular dog-walking spots, at least at leaf height.
• Reserves, protected sites and private land without permission.

After heavy rain, wait a couple of days before harvesting from low-lying ground. In summer, avoid water with an obvious green or blue-green scum; algal blooms can be toxic.

Eat with confidence, and leave what you doubt

There is one rule above all others: if you cannot identify a plant with complete confidence, do not eat it. Coastal Britain holds some genuinely dangerous plants, including hemlock water dropwort, a parsley-like plant of wet ditches and marsh edges that is among the most poisonous in the country. Umbrella-shaped plants with white flowers are best left alone unless you know them well.

Take a good field guide, and better still, go out with someone experienced the first few times. Learn a handful of species well rather than a hundred badly, and start with those above, which have few convincing lookalikes. Wash everything in cold water, cook what needs cooking, and eat small amounts the first time.

Do that, and the reward is more than a free meal: an hour on the marsh with the tide running out, a swim afterwards if you are brave, and a plate of samphire that tastes of the exact place you found it.