Allium ursinum
Thanks wikipedia for these facts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allium_ursinum
Known as ramsons, buckrams, wild garlic, broad-leaved garlic, wood garlic, or bear’s garlic
The Latin name is due to the brown bear’s taste for the bulbs and its habit of digging up the ground to get at them
The name garlic comes from the anglosaxon Gar = Spear Leac = allium family.
The leaves are edible; they can be used as salad, spice, boiled as a vegetable in soup, or as an ingredient for pesto in lieu of basil. The stems are preserved by salting and eaten as a salad in Russia. The bulbs and flowers are also very tasty.
The leaves can be used as fodder. Cows that have fed on ramsons give milk that tastes slightly of garlic, and butter made from this milk used to be very popular in 19th-century Switzerland.
Protection
Eat to ward away evil spirits who do nto like the smell
In Korea eat before crossing the mountains to protect against tigers
Given to Egyptian slaves to stop them from getting ill and give them strength. The slaves building the great pyramids went on strike in 3758BC when their garlic ration was cut
The old Greek doctor Hippocrates said it was good for wounds, cancer, leprosy and digestion. The Russians in WW1 used so much it was called “The Russian Penicillin”
Food
The Neolithic caves have evidence, the Sumerians chiseled stone tablets about a garlic tonic and the Chinese Ching (The book of songs) praised it!
The Roman poet Virgil (79–19 B.C.) tells of a salad called “moretum” made from bruised garlic, thyme leaves, flour, cheese, olive oil and vinegar
In the 12th –14th century in France, “aillee” was a very popular sauce consisting of garlic and almonds or walnuts (depending on the region) and bread crumbs pounded and added to broths. It was typically used as a preventative for colds and coughs.
Wild Garlic Pesto
Really nice to make and eat. Try it as a pesto dip or mixed in with pasta!
Image from Harvest Workers Coop Spring Workshop
https://www.harvestworkerscoop.org.uk/site/seasonal-family-workshops/family-workshop-spring-seeds/
Cows Milk
Oh dearie me don’t you let the cows eat the Ramsons (wild garlic) Their milk goes green and smelly!!
Odysseus and Circe
Odysseus was travelling home 10 years of travel from Troy to Ithaca. Storms and giants and spell singing sirens followed him. Weary he arrived at the island of Circe. She lived in a beautiful house in the middle of a wood filled with tame tigers and lions.
Odysseus’s sailors found the house. OUtside was a table filled with fine food.
Should they eat it? Well they did.
They wolfed it down greedily and were turned into pigs
Odysseus followed them but warned by the messanger of the Gods Hermes he picked a bunch of wild garlic to protect him.
Circe’s magic was broken. Pigs were turned back into sailors. They sailed away leaving Circe rather sad as she rather liked Odysseus.
Creative Storytelling