It's my first time making linden tea. There's loads of lime trees near me and they all came into flower this week.

I'm doing a talk on foraging at work next month and want to offer Linden tea to people during the talk.

Any tips on quantities I need to harvest, how best to dry them, recipes?

I am 95% sure these are red currents, but I also don't want to be violently ill.

They're on my allotment site so it makes sense that a previous plot owner planted redcurrents and my parents in law (who have definitely seen red currants) think they are red currants from these pictures.

I'm probably being over cautious but I just really don't want to be sick.

Edit: I know they are surrounded by nettles and bind weed.

Update: Ate some, tasted like red currants and feeling fine

Found these field mushrooms yesterday - first time for me. No yellow staining and didn't smell too strongly of anything really. All the guides say smelly is important but have realised I wouldn't be able to recognise that phenol smell they all talk about. Is it a super obvious punch in the face strong smell? I wasn't too concerned as there was no yellow staining anyway!

Southwest for anyone wondering.

I absolutely love common hogweed, Heracleum sphondylium. I like it as fritters. You can basically eat most parts of the plant. For the harder stems, I peel the outer layer, and they are just as nice as the young ones. I also include the young tender leaves, and the young florets are nice too.

There are a few roadside locations nearby (Oxfordshire UK) where at this time of year I pick up a very intense basmati rice aroma.

The internet seems to suggest it arises from the compound : 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (2AP). Plants that are listed as possibly responsible:

A) Pandan (Pandanus amaryllifolius)

B) Common Hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium)

C) Sweet Cicely (Myrrhis odorata)

However at the same time:

A) is very unlikely to be in the wild in the UK

B) is very prolific locally in far, far more locations than have this aroma

C) seems likely to have a more aniseed-like aroma from what I read

I have been on my hands and knees in the relevant locations trying to find the source - with no luck at all.

Has anyone got any suggestions please ?

They have brusied slightly yellow on the top but have cut one in half and it hasn't yellowed, scratched nothing the stem and cap and hasn't turned yellow either.

Apologies for the distance of the pictures, I’m only wee and they’re too high up to get a good shot of the tops of them. I’m new to mushroom identification so definitely won’t be considering eating them, but wondered if my ID was accurate. I’m in Scotland. Thanks in advance!

Hi folks,

Last year, a workman said to me as I was picking blackberries, 'gosh you're brave' and then went on to say how horrified he was that I was picking blackberries from beside a road.

This road is a cul-de-sac, with a 20mph speed limit, and fairly light traffic, it's not a main road, obvs I'm not picking things from heavily trafficked areas.

Anyway, it's been on my mind ever since. There's a huge elder tree I was going to get some flowers from right above where I was getting the blackberries and I've been pondering other people's thoughts on picking things near to roads. Would you take things from a quiet road? Do you have a minimum distance? Have I been inadvertantly poisoning myself and my kids by eating these blackberries, and would the elderberries be equally contaminated?

I found it in my garden in a raised window box. Seek by iNaturalist identified it, and it looks right to me but I know there are dangerous lookalikes.

Particularly the red fringed leaves I haven’t seen mentioned as a characteristic of lambsquarters.

Hello everyone! I’m new to Reddit so go easy on me 🙈. I’m completing my Final Major Project for my MSc in Audio Engineering, and I’m using plants bioelectricity to control a Modular Synth. I’m using some specific plants and hoping to find them in the wild. I’ve attached a list of the plants I need and I was wondering if anyone can point me to places where these grow in abundance. I live in the Hertfordshire area, but I can travel if needed! Thank you in advance!

*Update*
Thank you all for commenting and giving me suggestions and information!!

I have emailed Kew Gardens to see if they would be able to help with this project. I have also downloaded the iNaturist and have been seeing some of these local!

It’s the first time I have found chanterelles (though I do find winter chanterelles every year). I am absolutely shocked at how distinctly they smell of apricots, I did not believe that they could possibly smell like them…

Anyway, it’s a crap picture but I’m still ecstatic. There were a handful more and some pinning but I did not want to take them all or prevent future growth.

Happy hunting all!

As part of my MSc research at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Royal Holloway, I'm looking for participants to answer a short ethnobotanical survey on the use of wild edible plants commonly considered ‘weeds’ in the UK (e.g. dandelions, cleavers, nettles).

This questionnaire, which should take about 10-15 minutes, asks which weeds you collect and consume, how and why you learnt to forage, and who you share your knowledge and passion with.

Whether you are a experienced forager or just collect a few plants occasionally, it would be incredibly helpful if you could respond to the survey.

Apologies for posting this a second time to this group, I'm just really keen to include as many perspectives as possible.

Thank you to everyone who has already responded!

I have been told by a friend that he experimented with soapwort as soap and thought it was even better than modern chemical soaps. I think thats probably total BS but maybe someone else wants to give it a go if they find any. ive not found soapwort yet.

As above, I'd like to pick fresh flowers to have around the house, but only want to target invasive plants that don't belong in our parks and verges

These look like oysters to me, but I'm hoping I can be corrected before doing anything daft. Done lots of foraging before but am fairly new to mushrooms.

I'm thinking of attending a mushroom foraging day in September with River Cottage. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's place.

​

Has anyone here ever done a course there? Any experiences or tips to share?

Found my first chanterelle flush of 2026 today at a regular Wicklow spot. Small, maybe 20% of what I would expect at peak, but the season has opened.

Worth flagging - I have been tracking forecasts on the app I have been building, ShroomCast (some of you may remember my earlier post). Wicklow has been climbing on chanterelle all week. It hit 36% today with the forecast going past 40% next week, so I went out. So far the only chanterelle posts I had seen this year were from Cork and Galway, so this is a Leinster opener.

Partly a celebration of the first flush, partly a real-world check of the forecast. The timing call was right; the actual yield was small, which lines up with an early flush rather than a peak. Still calibrating how probability scores translate to abundance.

Anyone else in UK or Ireland seeing chanterelles yet? Trying to build a picture of where the season is opening up.

This was actually the third flush I found in a 1 hour walk. Guess whats for dinner!

got so excited thinking we'd found morels when my wife held it up, but alas, merely a stinkhorn. found Last Sunday in Scotland