Garlic mustard!

This wonderful plant is growing by the allotments. It's a fairly common wild plant called garlic mustard (or 'Jack-by-the-hedge'). You might be tempted to eradicate it as a weed, but it's a wonderful edible with an important role in our ecosystem.

Scientific name: Alliaria petiolata

When to see: year-round

Grows: shady places, e.g. the edges of woods and hedgerows and apparently the edge of allotments

Height: up to about 1m

How to identify: heart-shaped leaves with a jagged edge.  The leaves are smooth and hairless.  When crushed, they smell of garlic. This plant has small, white flowers that have four petals in the shape of a cross, and grow in clusters at the ends of the stems. Further identification help from Wild Food UK

Lookalikes: It has a few lookalikes - possibly confused with ground ivy, for example.  However,  the smell of  the crushed leaves is the distinguishing feature (garlic / mustardy).   It isn't related to garlic though.

Ecosystem facts: It is a food plant of the green-veined white butterfly (Pieris napi) and orange tip butterfly (Anthocharis cardamines), and a site for egg laying.  In June the pale green caterpillar of the orange tip butterfly can be found feeding on the long green seed-pods - take care if harvesting as they can be hard to spot!

Parts used for food:  leaves, flowers, seeds, root, stalks

Nutrition: Vitamins A, C, E and potassium, calcium, iron, lots more besides

Cautions: Potential allergies. Later in the season, leaves are more bitter (so moderate usage accordingly).

Herbal medicine uses: Robin Harford includes some medicinal properties here and Plants for a Future

How would you eat this:

- you can pop washed leaves (top of the plant) and flowers into a salad. The taste is quite distinctive, so you will only need a little. Young, fresh leaves picked in September  are better, but I eat them in Spring too. The best leaves are those picked in the plant's first year and before the plant flowers. The leaves look different then (see here)

- you can add leaves to a nettle, wild garlic and garlic mustard pesto for a more mustardy tone.

- the seeds can be used to season. A bit like mustard / pepper.

- The roots at the end of the second years growth taste like mild horseradish (remember you will need the landowner's permission to harvest roots in the UK)

- Wild Food UK suggests the root is a bit like horseradish, but I haven't tried this.

- For a vinaigrette, combine 1 teaspoon sugar (or I use agave syrup or honey), 1/2 teaspoon salt, 2 teaspoons vinegar (I use apple cider vinegar), 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard, 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil.

- You can snack on the stalks. You could also pickle (blanch and pickle in vinegar with some spices) - Robin Harford's idea!


Recipes:

Garlic Mustard Pesto from Food52 (personally I wold combine with some wild garlic if the season is right and I use agave syrup instead of sugar)

Jumping Jack Wraps by David Hamilton -  I am definitely going to give these a try, but may use risotto rice instead of couscous.

Garlic Mustard and Dandelion Frittata I would love to gives these a go, but don't have any gram flour in lockdown ... so this will have to wait until next year now

Robin Harford has a pasta and vichyssoise recipes here

Garlic Mustard Hummus from The 3 Foragers (substitute ramps - a North American plant - for a couple of cloves of garlic or some wild garlic)