Season: Winter (November–February)
Most people assume that foraging ends in autumn. That once the berries are gone and the leaves have fallen, there is nothing left to find. This is understandable, but it is wrong — and the error matters, because what the winter hedgerow and woodland offer are some of the most potent and underused medicines in British materia medica.
Winter foraging asks more of you than summer foraging does. It requires slowing down, looking differently, and being willing to engage with plants that are less immediately appealing than a ripe hedgerow berry or a bright spring leaf. But the rewards — in terms of both the medicine itself and the relationship with the land — are considerable.
Gorse — Ulex europaeus
Gorse flowers almost year-round in mild parts of the British Isles, and Sussex, with its relatively temperate maritime climate, is one of those places where you will find it in bloom even in the depths of January. The old saying goes that when gorse is out of blossom, kissing is out of fashion — meaning, never.
The flowers carry a remarkable coconut-vanilla scent on warm winter days, and can be used to make a delicate infused vinegar, a syrup, or simply added to salads if a mild day brings them out in abundance. Medicinally, gorse is not well-researched in the modern sense, but it carries a long traditional association with kidney support and with lifting the spirits — the Bach flower essence of gorse addresses hopelessness, which is not an unreasonable emotional territory for January.
Collect the flowers carefully — the plant is emphatically thorned — and process them promptly.
Hazel Catkins — Corylus avellana
By late January and into February, the hazel catkins are already appearing — long, pale yellow, swinging in the cold air. They are among the earliest signs that the year is turning, and their appearance in the dead of winter carries a particular emotional significance for those who spend time observing the land.
Hazel has a long history in British folk medicine: the nut, the leaf, and the catkin all carry uses. The catkins specifically have been used in traditional European phytotherapy for prostate and pelvic circulation. They are not widely used in modern British herbalism, but they are worth knowing, and worth harvesting in small amounts to dry and study.
The hazel tree itself is worth pausing at. In the Sussex woodland, hazel coppice is one of the defining features of the managed landscape — it has been cut and regrown for centuries, providing material for hurdles, charcoal, and basket work. The trees you find are often very old at the root, even if the above-ground stems are young. There is a depth to them that rewards acknowledgement.
Evergreen Medicine: Cleavers in Cold Water
Even in winter, cleavers (Galium aparine) can often be found as low-growing, frost-pinched rosettes along the base of hedges. They are not as vigorous as their spring counterparts, but they are there. A cold infusion of winter cleavers — small amounts, well steeped — is a gentle lymphatic support during a season when movement and circulation are reduced, and when the body can become sluggish in ways that will need addressing come spring.
This is one of those practices that rewards the person willing to look when most people have stopped looking.
The Virtue of Stillness
Winter foraging teaches something that no other season can: the value of what is absent. Walking a bare hedgerow in February, knowing what was there in May and what will return in March, is a different kind of botanical knowledge from identification and collection. It is an understanding of cycle, of the relationship between absence and return, of the land's rhythm as something that includes rest as an active state.
The body has its own version of this rhythm. Winter is not a time of depletion. It is a time of consolidation, of gathering inward, of preparing the ground for what comes next. A herbalist who understands the seasonal cycle of plants understands something important about the seasonal cycle of the people they work with.
Come spring, the cleavers will be back. The dandelion will flower. The hawthorn will bloom. It always does.
Sarah Turton, Master Medicinal Herbalist & Iridologist | Sussex Herbal To work with me or join a winter wildcraft walk, visit sussexherbal.co.uk
