Nibbling at wild fruit is in our bones, so here's how to harvest the finest hedgerow bounty

It is regrettable that millions of tons of fruit are wasted along our hedgerows and wood-edges every year. Yes, yes, there are always the birds, but I believe they should consider the value of sharing. Nibbling at wild fruit is in our bones, too — we are, after all, hunter-gatherers. Whereas the entrancing idea of food for nothing more than the gentle effort of collection might attract us all, it is the profound pleasure of following our natural instincts that delight us; fulfil us, even. It is a sad child that never learned to pick a blackberry.

But where can one pick wild fruits, or anything else? The rules are fairly simple: with minor exceptions, if you have legal access you can pick whatever you like provided it has not been planted and is not intended for sale. Wild plants (and mushrooms) are effectively deemed to belong to no one and thus everyone. I heard the story of an old farm worker in a village near my own in west Dorset. Picking mushrooms on another farm, he was challenged by the farmer with the words: ‘Oi! Charlie! What you think you be doing picking my mushrooms?’ Displaying an ancient understanding, Charlie replied: ‘They ain’t be your mushrooms, they be God’s.’

Sea buckthorn

The vigorous sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides) is a native shrub with a wild population largely confined to our coasts, but it can also occasionally be found on roadsides where it has been planted. It has been suggested that it once covered the land coast to coast after the last Ice Age as a pioneering plant.

The berries are small, bright orange, come in tight clusters and remove the enamel from your teeth if you eat them raw. A slight exaggeration, but they make crab apples seem bland by comparison. Often considered one of the superfoods, the juice is expensive, so well worth collecting. The berries appear from August, but linger for months, their colour and flavour slowly fading. Birds, sensible creatures that they are, keep well away.

The berries are unpickable without them bursting, so squidge the juice from the clusters into a bucket, being sure to wear thick rubber gloves — remember, the plant does have ‘thorn’ in its name. You could also try the process of freezing the clusters for 24 hours before shaking them off. Sea-buckthorn juice is cloudy and quickly separates, so shake the bottle before use.

There is a great deal that can be done with the juice: seabuck’s fizz or perhaps a jelly, but I take the ascetic path by taking a shot glass of unsweetened juice in the morning as a wakener.

Rosehips

Some readers will remember being fed Delrosa rosehip syrup in the early 1950s. Fruity, with a hint of vanilla and sweet as it is, I always thought this blessed spoonful was my mother’s apology for the cod-liver oil that preceded it, but, no, it was for its famously high vitamin C content. The 17th-century herbalist Nicholas Culpeper tells us that it is ‘grateful to the taste, and a considerable restorative’. Quite right, Nicholas. The hips of almost any rose are usable, although those of our native dog (Rosa canina) and field roses (R. arvensis) are the best. Hips are either unripe or over-ripe, never ‘ripe’, so simply pick any in full bright scarlet.

Elderberries

I spoke to a lady some years ago who had been juicing elderberries for her two year old. I asked if she boiled them beforehand. Apparently not — and she was appalled when I pointed out that raw elderberry juice is poisonous. Even boiled and sweetened, it is not really something for toddlers or anyone else, as there is too much tannin.

Most country wines are vile concoctions that should be banned by statute. I did once hear of someone who had made Jerusalem-artichoke wine, so I am sure you will agree. Exceptions, however, should be made for blackberry wine, plum wines and those made from the flowers and fruit of the elder. Elderberry wine is superb if all goes well and it is close to a reasonable red made from grapes. In fact, it can surpass many of them, thanks to a good balance of acids and tannins in the berries, so find a recipe, buy the kit and make gallons of the stuff. It matures well with the years, so brewing in quantity will allow you to lay down a vintage or six.

Sloes

In The Cherry and the Slea, the Elizabethan poet Alexander Montgomerie writes of ‘a bush of bitter Sloes’ and, indeed, they are bitter or, more precisely, sour. The flesh contains tannins that denature saliva and instantly dry the mouth and the stone bears a chemical that turns into cyanide. That so unpromising a fruit is the most fêted of all as the base for a hedgerow tipple should, therefore, come as a surprise. Nevertheless, the crop of sloes is jealously followed in the valleys from the setting of the blackthorn’s flowers in March and April through to ripeness from late August to early November, when their abundance is minutely assessed.

Crab apples

Crab apples go by the Latin name of Malus sylvestris, whereas cultivated apples are M. domestica. Both are found in hedgerows, the latter known as ‘wildings’, the offspring of discarded apple cores. Wildings do not breed true, so the only way to determine palatability is to try one. Mostly, they are pretty good.

Crab apples are always heroically sour: ‘As by Faces of People ye maie Deeme,/When thei tast Crabs while thei be greene,’ as one 17th-century writer, Elias Ashmole, nicely has it. Taking this, together with the fact that they are small and consist almost entirely of skin, pips and toenails, they do not encourage optimism. Yet they are usable as a juice provided it is sweetened, as a tannin-rich addition to other apples in a cider or the eponymous jelly.

Better still is crab-apple liqueur. Place sliced crab apples into a jar with sugar sprinkled between layers. Pour in vodka until the jar is full, shake a little every day for a week, then leave in a dark place for at least three months.

Blackberries

Blackberries are the most giving of all the wild fruits, their bounty marred only by their vicious defences. The blackberry is, in fact, a group of microspecies, of which there is one for every day of the year in Britain. With some exceptions, each plant produces clones of itself, which partly explains why some bushes are more bountiful than others. As do most plants for which we have an affection, the blackberry bears many colourful local names, such as cock-brumble, gatter-berry and country lawyers, the last no doubt alluding to their thorny character, not their sweetness.

It is often said that they should not be picked after September 29, when the Devil spits on them. This notion is a reference to the ‘grey mould’, Botrytis cinerea. However, blackberries often suffer from this both before and after the 29th, so simply be choosy.

Damsons and bullaces

These two plums are varieties of a subspecies of the familiar domestic plum: Prunus domestica subsp. insititia. The damson is oval, the bullace is spherical and a little larger than a sloe, from which it is distinguishable by the latter’s astringency and the thorns of its tree, the blackthorn. Bullaces were once grown in orchards, but there is now only a remnant population in hedgerows and odd corners. One odd corner is next to a supermarket in Dorchester, Dorset, so you never quite know where you might find one. They have a long history in Britain, with the first reference to them being from the mid 14th century as ‘bolaces’. It is always a great pleasure to find one and they are nicely sweet when ripe.

Both can make a reasonable wine if you can find some well-laden trees and resist the temptation to eat them. However, I have found that plums in general are difficult, often going bad during fermentation. Treated like sloes in sloe gin, they make a simple fruity liqueur.

This article first appeared in the September 24 issue of Country Life. For more information on how to subscribe, click here