Hedges and hedges, the natural home pharmacy

The hedges and hedges are the forgotten corners, the unentered places where vegetation shows itself from its wildest side, where plants can still do their own thing.Trees and shrubs, planted or applied by nature, provide shade and keep the soil well moist. As a result, a very own vegetation has emerged. Although the land belongs to someone, the owner usually does little with it. They are neglected edges, too small to call forest, often located at a ditch, stream or hollow road. There's some chopping wood, and every few years it's pruned. The trees and shrubs that feel at home are poplar, hazel, alder, ash, willow but certainly also elderberry and hawthorn. Some are enclosed by ivy or honeysuckle. On calcareous soil, the forest vine joins the climbing company and knows how to hang whole draperies on trees. It is a paradise for birds, for winter king and redbreast. Gnaws rustling through the barren leaf have their burrows here. The leaf remains, blown off wood as well. In late autumn, the poplar leaf rotts to light brown skeletons.

Hedges and hedges, they are long avenues nature. They are narrow strips of semi-natural landscape where clamped between roads and fields, birds and many plants can still find a growing place. And where a lot of plants grow that also humans can make a modest use of both healing and culinary.

The round leaf of look without look, for example, can be found fresh washed under those hedges even in winter and especially in March and we can safely process raw shredded in lettuce or soup. The fact that the plant belongs in the hedge is also reflected in the English name Jack-by-the-Hedge.

In March, celandine is also present, even in buttercup flowering. Not directly intended for kitchen use, although the leaf can be eaten before flowering, and it has a legitimate old reputation against hemorrhoids. His name also refers to that. Hemorrhoids are still called “teat.”

What is also abundant in those hedges is the glutinous herb. In winter we find the brown strings with grey seeds still criss-cross between the bushes. These seeds have once been roasted as coffee substitutes. You can also see the new cruciform leaves coming out of the open ground in March vigorously full of good courage. The plant does not stick, even if it seems so. They are rather fine silicic acid barbs that stick intrusively to fur and clothing. It was previously associated with the devil. An old name is devil's string, although that is now the name of another plant. The German and French denominations teufelsdraht en herbe au diable also refer to that intrusive devil.