For nearly fifty years, I’ve been inviting people to join me in discovering the plants that grow naturally around us. We begin by meeting them through observation, touch, smell and taste… Then, after discussing their virtues, their traditional uses and sometimes their dangers, we pick some of them to prepare intriguing wild meals and share these together…
Thanks to our growing success, I’ve built up a team of motivated and skilled individuals who share my passion for plants and nature. And since September 2008, I’ve been running a school to train people who want in their turn to pass on this knowledge. Indeed, this forgotten heritage will become increasingly valuable in the years to come, as our lifestyles undergo major changes. It is not just about botany, but is based upon the longstanding relationship between humans and plants. In my opinion, knowing, picking and eating wild plants, far from being just a trend or a nostalgia for the past, is actually proving to be a new, exciting and necessary way of life.
Internships and books
Why wild plants?
Our field courses are above all practical. What counts is direct contact with plants through all our senses. At the same time, it’s an opportunity to regenerate yourself with the virtues of plants, meet new people and fill yourself with fresh air and joy in often remarkable settings.
We offer two main types of course. Wild gastronomy” is an opportunity to learn how to harvest plants in the wild and prepare them in simple or sophisticated ways, discovering a myriad of new flavors. Gentle Survival” is a wilderness trek where we set off with the minimum of equipment to explore wilderness areas, feeding ourselves mainly on what nature offers. We are also developing other courses on medicinal plants, wild jams, botanical theory and more.
In addition to the courses, you’ll find on this site a presentation of all my books currently available, some of which are out of print and no longer available in bookshops. From manuals for beginners to three-volume encyclopedias for the more demanding, you’ll be able to learn about many aspects of plants and nature: wild edible plants, nutritional virtues, medicinal plants, toxic plants, natural gardening, life in nature, etc.
I hope you enjoy discovering this site.
Plants, source of life
For thousands of years, man has fed on the plants that grow around him in nature. But in recent history, the plants that gave us life have been neglected, deemed unworthy of the civilized men we are supposed to have become.
Fortunately, things have been changing for some time now, and wild plants are making a strong comeback. City dwellers in search of nature and the opportunity to rediscover their roots no longer have the shameful rejection reflex of country dwellers towards these long-despised “starvation plants”. And top restaurateurs are now cooking with wild plants, with great success.
There are good reasons for this. Wild plants offer us extraordinary flavours, of course, but they are also absolutely exceptional health foods, providing everyone with all the elements they need to be at the top of their game. They represent a mine of vitamins, minerals, trace elements, flavonoids and other antioxidants. There’s a lot of talk these days about dietary supplements or “alicaments”: wild plants are the best there are – effective, tasty and free!
Getting your own food from nature is an inexhaustible source of benefits for the body. Walking, breathing deeply, exposing yourself to the sun and the air, far from urban stress, allows you to rediscover a much-needed balance, both psychologically and physically. Thanks to foraging, nature becomes much more than an abstract notion, to be vaguely “protected”. In fact, we can only protect what we respect, and respect what we know.
Connecting with nature
Our field courses are above all practical. What counts is direct contact with plants through all our senses. At the same time, it’s an opportunity to regenerate yourself with the virtues of plants, meet new people and fill yourself with fresh air and joy in often remarkable settings.
We offer two main types of course. Wild gastronomy” is an opportunity to learn how to harvest plants in the wild and prepare them in simple or sophisticated ways, discovering a myriad of new flavors. Gentle Survival” is a wilderness trek where we set off with the minimum of equipment to explore wilderness areas, feeding ourselves mainly on what nature offers. We are also developing other courses on medicinal plants, wild jams, botanical theory and more.
In addition to the courses, you’ll find on this site a presentation of all my books currently available, some of which are out of print and no longer available in bookshops. From manuals for beginners to three-volume encyclopedias for the more demanding, you’ll be able to learn about many aspects of plants and nature: wild edible plants, nutritional virtues, medicinal plants, toxic plants, natural gardening, life in nature, etc.
Warning
Beware: some plants are poisonous and you need to know how to recognize them. Nature’s dangers are generally overestimated, but they do exist and we need to be aware of them. What’s more, some of our flora is endangered, and all plants on protection lists must be respected.
As a general rule, you should always know exactly what you’re harvesting. Books can help, but it’s important to go out into the field with someone who knows the plants and their uses inside out.
The members of our team all have a proven track record in the field, and can give you every guarantee of seriousness. Teaching plants can’t be improvised!
Food for thought...
Man and wild plants
I invite you to follow me on a thought-provoking adventure offered by plants, which will take us on an exploration of the world and ourselves.
Let’s start with observable facts. All around us, there are many plants that grow spontaneously in nature. Many of them have been eaten by man. In Europe, I listed some 1,600 in my book Le Régal végétal and I estimate that there are around 80,000 worldwide. This must be set against the thirty or so plants, all cultivated, used on average by Westerners, and the fact that, worldwide, just 29 species account for 90% of plant foods. This raises the question of why these abundant resources are not used.
Perhaps they don’t taste so good? If these plants haven’t changed since the days when they fed our ancestors, our tastes have, however, and it’s clear that some of them have strong, often bitter flavors to which our taste buds are no longer accustomed. But others, such as the young stems of hogweed or burdock, the leaves of perennial lettuce or the fruits of male dogwood are universally appreciated, even by the most delicate palates. And my work with Michelin-starred chefs is proof of the gustatory appeal of wild plants.
Is picking and preparing them too time-consuming? This may be the case for the small leaves of oxalis or the tender wild asparagus, but it takes no more than a minute to harvest enough hogweed or Bon-Henri for ten people, and fields of wild garlic stretch over hundreds of square meters: all you have to do is bend down to pick handfuls of fragrant leaves. What’s more, there’s no need to spend precious time and break your back to grow these plants: nature offers them to us, in abundance, on a platter!
Wouldn’t most of them be dangerous? Aren’t woods and roadsides teeming with “poisonous beauties” ready to send us ad patres? It’s a fact that there are a number of toxic plants, some of which can be lethal in small doses. But their number is limited: it is estimated that around 4% of our flora is dangerous to humans. However, in our ornamental gardens, they represent almost 20%, and in our apartments, this figure rises to 80%. We’re living dangerously! In fact, plants to be avoided are easy to identify: all you have to do is learn to recognize them, which is no more difficult than reading, arithmetic or driving a car.
But are they really worth it? If we’ve forgotten about them, isn’t it because these vulgar herbs have no nutritional value? I had the opportunity to go through the library of the world’s leading food group, Nestlé, and discovered a wealth of nutritional analyses of wild plants, most of them carried out by the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) in Rome. All concur: if we compare the nutrient content of wild plants with that of cultivated vegetables, the former always come out on top. A few examples? Nettle, so common and so despised, contains eight times more vitamin C than oranges, three times more iron than spinach, as much calcium as cheese and significant quantities of magnesium. The champion of vitamin C is rosehips: fifteen times more than citrus fruits! All leafy greens contain proteins (nettles as much as soya), and these are complete, balanced in essential amino acids, i.e. of the same nutritional value as animal proteins – a veritable nutritional bomb, carefully prevented from exploding. They contain lipids balanced between omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids, and are packed with antioxidants such as flavonoids and anthocyanins. Wild plants are therefore genuine natural “alicaments”, tasty and free of charge. What more could you ask for?
For curious minds – and there are a few – the question arises: why have we abandoned these plants which, by simple mathematical calculation, have fed human beings for most of their existence (agriculture is only 10,000 years old, while man is a few million years old)?
The desire to be “modern”? Of course. But why shouldn’t eating plants be? Part of the answer lies in the desire of the ruling class in the Middle Ages to distinguish themselves from the mass of the people through their habitat, clothing, language and diet: to the former, meat and refined products, exotic fruits and vegetables brought to Europe by the far-flung expeditions they financed; to the latter, raw cereals, rustic vegetables and wild plants.
Enjoying green beans or peas means: “I’m a valuable person, because I can afford to hire a gardener to cultivate delicate plants”; being satisfied with nettles and dandelions means: “I’m mediocre, because I can’t afford anything other than plants that cost nothing”.
When peasants moved to the city to become workers, they were eager to adopt the customs of the bourgeoisie, who had themselves monopolized the nobility. And in this context, wild plants are symbols of an inferior status. At the beginning of the 21st century, we’re still here.
But this feudal divide didn’t emerge out of nowhere: its roots lie in the beginnings of agriculture, shortly after the start of our current interglacial. Yet another myth to be debunked: culture wasn’t invented to feed a starving population. Quite the opposite, in fact, since, as archaeological digs have shown, it implied a brutal deterioration in man’s state of health. Rather, it appeared by chance and developed to enable some people to acquire status by accumulating material possessions. This decision, arguably the most important ever taken by mankind, was not without consequences: it is from agriculture that war, slavery, famine, epidemics, social stratification, the concentration of power, monotheistic religions, pollution, mass destruction, the struggle against nature and many other evils stem. In the first seed planted was the germ of the atomic bomb!
The situation is serious, but not inevitable. Without making excuses, we need to understand ourselves and take our destiny into our own hands. It’s not impossible that these neglected plants, though full of virtues, can help us in many ways: there’s much more to a nettle soup or a plantain pesto than flavors, nutrients and a welcome gratuity. We’re beginning to see the way to a better understanding of ourselves and our place in the Universe. It’s up to us!
