I want to focus on correct identification of plants in the next few newsletters.  This month I'm distinguishing between foxglove Digitalis purpurea (poisonous) and comfrey Symphytum × uplandicum, (edible).

Foxglove leaves are a similar shape to comfrey, but as you see foxglove leaves have small indents on the edge of the leaves and the leaves feel smooth and are soft.  Make sure you really know the difference because foxglove should NEVER, EVER be added to a smoothie.
Newbies to foraging are cautious, which is good. It is those of us who know quite a few plants that can become cavalier and perhaps not so cautious. Even I have seen a foxglove and thought it was comfrey, but I know better and then look again and I realise it is not comfrey. Comfrey tends to send up many leaves in clumps as it expands, but foxglove stays as one plant growing in a rosette = all leaves coming from the middle.

Foxglove grows on the edge of bush or edge of your garden, unless you plant it as a feature plant.  It can come up in a garden though so correct ID is so important.

Comfrey leaves in contrast to foxglove are rough and hairy to touch, but edible and nutritious. It's other name is knitbone as it has been used to mend broken bones as an external poultice and taken internally as tea.

It likes to grow in full sun out in the open and is used to plant around fruit trees in orchards or people have it in their garden. It can be steamed like silver beet and eaten as a vegetable as well as made into tea.

Foxglove in flower with its pretty bell shaped flowers that bumblebees like to pollinate. But never eat any part of a foxglove plant.

Items I used in a recent workshop at my home in Chadwick Road, Greerton. 

I was recently interviewed by Sally Rees in Nelson for Radiofresh FM on edible weeds. Have a listen to our conversation here.

Sally has invited me to run a workshop in Nelson, Sunday 16th September.  For more information and to register for this event in the Brook community garden go here. Sally has her own business Natural Nosh.  She says "I'm here to inspire you to improve your eating habits so that you can live a life with more freedom  and joy."

"Real flowers are much more beautiful than plastic ones, in part because of their impermanence. We appreciate the seasons, the autumn and the spring, because they are a process of change. In this way, impermanence is beauty." - Chögyam Trungpa

This beautiful flower is a Cleome Cleome hassleriana

I've heard that Cleome attract green vegetable bugs and sure enough they do as you see on the seedpods.  These bugs left are juvenile with the dots. Younger ones are smaller and black.  I assume that having been attracted to this plant one then dispatches them, which is what I did.  I always struggle with killing anything, but then these insects cause a lot of damage.

On the subject of trees I am reading this amazing book.  It is an eye opener about many aspects of trees we don't know about because we can't see what is going on.  A review says: "Soon after we begin to recognise trees for what they are - gigantic beings thriving against incredible odds for hundreds of years - we naturally come to ask, 'How do they do it?'. This charming book tells how."

 On this positively wonderful note I'll leave you wishing you an abundant, healthy autumn or spring if you are in the northern hemisphere.

Love Julia