Foraging in Urban areas
- Thread starter Hibrion
- Start date
Councils flowering trees in the autumn
Ohh tastey looking plums. The ones along the road from me should be worth a look soon. Cheers for reminder.
Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.
If you're in Glasgow, then Sauchiehall street is awash with hazelnuts, and since there are no squirrels there, they actually ripen 
Similarly if you're out in Govan there are edible chestnuts on the trees and they're full of nut and not empty shells.
M
Similarly if you're out in Govan there are edible chestnuts on the trees and they're full of nut and not empty shells.
M
Thanks for all the replies
I made a batch of Rowan Jelly and it turned out great. No taste of anything weird anyway. I picked 5 lbs of blackberries today too and just finished making some jam. There were so many on the bushes I hardly made a dent in them. I think I'll have to freeze some for crumbles later in the year. I'm just sitting down to some stewed blackberies and apple with custard now
yum. Urban living isn't quite that bad, I guess. It'll do for now anyway.
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A bit too late to this thread, but wanted to throw whatever useful knowledge I had into it.
The short answer to the OP question should be: It's complicated, and varies a lot between cases. Usually you should be ok if you don't make what turns out to be polluted produce into staple foods. Poisoning is a question of dose. Some poisons accumulate in the body, and some do not.
Someone else might come along and correct me in the "long" answer, but I'll have a go. I work as a landscape architect in and around Stockholm. I've worked closely with environmental people in some projects.
The main cause of pollution in plants and trees can be expected to be the actual soil it grows in. Urban air nowadays isn't all that bad, and even back when leaded petrol was the norm, levels in berries and such weren't your worst enemy. (Inhaling the air was)
The problem comes when stuff grows on land you don't know the history of. The water table can be polluted, or the soil itself can be polluted, from industrial activities decades or even centuries ago. In the UK, mining as widespread a long time ago, and slurry ponds and other nasty stuff could have existed where there nowadays is a lovely park.
Apart from soil samples, the people I worked with used different methods to determine if pollutants where present in trees.
Core samples of trees can be collected to determine if there is a problem. Sometimes plastic bags are placed over branches and gasses emitted from the leaves tested.
Different species of plants collect different toxins. I some cases, certain species of trees have been used to extract toxins from the ground as a long term means of sanitizing larger areas.
You wouldn't beleive what kind of crap turns upp on digs either. Stuff like droplets of mercury free in the soil, other heavy metals come up in lab tests, and high levels of scary carbohydrates. Nowaday many industries are clean, but "Business as usual" was very dirty not too many years ago.
A case from Sweden: In Landskrona, almost all of Swedens car-battery recycling takes place. This is an outdoor process, and means tiny particles of lead becomes airborne. This means green cabbage grown in the area is not safe to eat. Lettuce on the other hand is fine.
Another case: In northern Sweden, (Forgot where) A kennel-owner used to let here dogs play in a nearby picturesque grass land. The litters started having increasing rates of stillborn and deformed puppies. Following an investigation into the matter, the conclusion was, that the dogs were poisoned by contact with the tall grass. The grass land had been a timber treating site that closed decades earlier.
Not to scare anyone off anything. It's not worth the worry, that someone, sometime might have spilled something where you want to harvest. I pick mushrooms on old airfields and dissused firing ranges from time to time. But I don't do it regularly. Just, try to know your surroundings and the history of the area, and don't make a habit of eating lots and lots from one site without checking, and you should be ok.
The short answer to the OP question should be: It's complicated, and varies a lot between cases. Usually you should be ok if you don't make what turns out to be polluted produce into staple foods. Poisoning is a question of dose. Some poisons accumulate in the body, and some do not.
Someone else might come along and correct me in the "long" answer, but I'll have a go. I work as a landscape architect in and around Stockholm. I've worked closely with environmental people in some projects.
The main cause of pollution in plants and trees can be expected to be the actual soil it grows in. Urban air nowadays isn't all that bad, and even back when leaded petrol was the norm, levels in berries and such weren't your worst enemy. (Inhaling the air was)
The problem comes when stuff grows on land you don't know the history of. The water table can be polluted, or the soil itself can be polluted, from industrial activities decades or even centuries ago. In the UK, mining as widespread a long time ago, and slurry ponds and other nasty stuff could have existed where there nowadays is a lovely park.
Apart from soil samples, the people I worked with used different methods to determine if pollutants where present in trees.
Core samples of trees can be collected to determine if there is a problem. Sometimes plastic bags are placed over branches and gasses emitted from the leaves tested.
Different species of plants collect different toxins. I some cases, certain species of trees have been used to extract toxins from the ground as a long term means of sanitizing larger areas.
You wouldn't beleive what kind of crap turns upp on digs either. Stuff like droplets of mercury free in the soil, other heavy metals come up in lab tests, and high levels of scary carbohydrates. Nowaday many industries are clean, but "Business as usual" was very dirty not too many years ago.
A case from Sweden: In Landskrona, almost all of Swedens car-battery recycling takes place. This is an outdoor process, and means tiny particles of lead becomes airborne. This means green cabbage grown in the area is not safe to eat. Lettuce on the other hand is fine.
Another case: In northern Sweden, (Forgot where) A kennel-owner used to let here dogs play in a nearby picturesque grass land. The litters started having increasing rates of stillborn and deformed puppies. Following an investigation into the matter, the conclusion was, that the dogs were poisoned by contact with the tall grass. The grass land had been a timber treating site that closed decades earlier.
Not to scare anyone off anything. It's not worth the worry, that someone, sometime might have spilled something where you want to harvest. I pick mushrooms on old airfields and dissused firing ranges from time to time. But I don't do it regularly. Just, try to know your surroundings and the history of the area, and don't make a habit of eating lots and lots from one site without checking, and you should be ok.
Thank you for contributing to the thread.I agree with pysen78 - context is everything and a little local knowledge goes a long way. Urban foraging can be very productive - parks, the tree lined paths etc they put in through many new housing developments, residential areas etc. However, old industrial site or developments on such sites are another matter. Heavy metal (lead, cadmium, Mercury etc) persist in soils for a very long time - as Tengu says contamination from mining spoil can persist for centuries. Plants can and do extract this pollution from the soil - some plants are so good at this that they are used to decontaminate old industrial sites - so if you are picking from these sites you will be getting your share of toxins (and at much higher levels than in the air these days). You can't see or taste these contaminants - and in fact taste isn't a reliable indicator ( the Romans used to add lead to wine to sweeten it, some authors have conjectured that this may have been a contributory factor in the fall of the Roman Empire). You won't get ill from eating a batch of produce from heavy metal contaminated land, but the problem is that these chemicals accumulate in the body so if you regularly forage in such sites, it won't take long for you to accumulate a dangerous load. Note - there are no safe exposure levels for Mercury!
So would I collect from busy urban road sides that were in use a long time prior to the lead fuel ban, well I have but would not make it a regular practise. Quiet rural road sides and suburban road side where there is less traffic, I wouldn't worry so much. Old industrial sites - probably the worst of all and these can be in surprisingly rural areas - so local knowledge is key. That being said, agricultural countryside can be just as bad. Pesticide spray drift from hedgerows surrounding cereal crops will make you ill fairly quickly. Fortunately these don't tend to persist and after a good shower of rain alls good.
So should we all stop foraging? Of course not and most of what we gather is going to have a lower chemical load than what we buy from the supermarket. A bit of knowledge about the historical land use in your area coupled with a pinch of common sense and you should be happily foraging for years to come and making use of all that lovely produce that everyone else is overlooking and that's got to be good😃
So would I collect from busy urban road sides that were in use a long time prior to the lead fuel ban, well I have but would not make it a regular practise. Quiet rural road sides and suburban road side where there is less traffic, I wouldn't worry so much. Old industrial sites - probably the worst of all and these can be in surprisingly rural areas - so local knowledge is key. That being said, agricultural countryside can be just as bad. Pesticide spray drift from hedgerows surrounding cereal crops will make you ill fairly quickly. Fortunately these don't tend to persist and after a good shower of rain alls good.
So should we all stop foraging? Of course not and most of what we gather is going to have a lower chemical load than what we buy from the supermarket. A bit of knowledge about the historical land use in your area coupled with a pinch of common sense and you should be happily foraging for years to come and making use of all that lovely produce that everyone else is overlooking and that's got to be good😃
A few years back they found a filled in swimming pool in Glasgow Green that had been filled with toxic waste and covered over. Had been a cover up way back and forgotten about. Not that there was much to forage in there but shows that nasty stuff can be hidden in very public areas for years.
I try to take easy precautions, like not picking things below Great Dane piddle height in busy areas.
Unfortunatley a lot of roads are corridors where feral things grow and are tempting places to pick. Though now that lead is out of the petrol I don't feel so bad about collecting fruit from roadsides.
Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.
I try to take easy precautions, like not picking things below Great Dane piddle height in busy areas.
Unfortunatley a lot of roads are corridors where feral things grow and are tempting places to pick. Though now that lead is out of the petrol I don't feel so bad about collecting fruit from roadsides.
Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.
