It is late May and the ramsons are out, the plant I'd longed for most when I was on the other side of the world. Ten years ago people would scoff at me using this wild herb in the kitchen - now chefs drool over it in London whilst it remains untouched in Somerset woodlands, nestles with bluebells (a sign of the oldest woods, I'm told). It's everywhere we walk - along roadsides, beside crumbling old walls, in woodlands, on the side of fields. Everywhere is the sulphurous smell of wild garlic, as a witch is brewing up a stew in her oak lined kitchen, her hair knotted with ivy and

Named for the bear who eats the garlic after hibernation, Allium ursinam grows wild in many parts of Europe. They say it also could have been named for Ursa Major, the constellation that looked over the fields of wild garlic in moist woodlands. I like to imagine stars shining on the shiny leaves of ramsons. There's something poetic about it. It smells heady as we walk and walk in ever widening circles, though we're house bound and anchored to a tiny collection of houses in the Somerset countryside, unable to wander further due to being in lockdown.

Once, we lost the leather strapping of an axe cover amongst the wild garlic, having made love against a wall beside it's pungent scent. I remember that now, as we gather some to supplement our diet, filled with paranoia about getting ill. Still, it makes no sense to worry so long as we eat well and have a varied diet. Wild garlic is like your common garlic, but better - you can eat the whole of the plant, leaves, roots, and seeds. It's best at this time of the year, although I love the seeds later in the year to put in sauteed rice or in homemade mayonaisse. It's full of vitamin C, let alone all the other good things we know garlic for - antivirals, antimicrobials, and so on. Don't count on it for THE virus though - hand washing and social isolation is still the best go to right now. Still, it's also good for the heart, and the blood - and thus for the immune system too.¹

Wild Garlic

Allium ursinum, ramson, sometimes ransom,
Old English hramsa: all Northern Europe
has a name for wild garlic, that startling white,
its pungency. Pick and they quickly fade
but in the mass – and waht mass! – overwhelming.
In Cornwall they form thick banks along the lanes
and fill damp woods, making me long to be
propped on beds of amaranth and moly –

and truly I find they’re magic: the moly-garlic
Hermes gave Odysseus to protect him.
Now hostage to fortune, how willingly
I’d pay a king’s ransom – in ramsons, of course,
whole armfuls of them, a wild cornucopia –
for the smallest chance of release, remission.

Mary MacRae - Inside the Brightness of Red, 2010, Second Light Publications

I am not in my own kitchen, and I am missing my culinary tools. I long for blenders to whip up almond and ramson pesto, or to blend ramsons for gnocchi. I want space to make ramson and chilli chapati and fetta too, threaded with thin strips of green. I can't even instagram my wild garlic and nettle soup - I have no light, and no wonderfully hipster plates on wooden boards. But I make the soup anyway - potatoes and ramsons, nettle and clevers - with added coconut milk and butter, and generous shakes of salt and pepper. It'll warm my cockles and nourish my soul.

Do you cook with wild garlic?

What's your favourite wild green?

Love, @riverflows xx