Foraging: Wild Food, Wild Medicine: N4: May 11th

Join forager and medical herbalist, Lee Latham for a fascinating morning exploring the edible and medicinal plants that thrive in the city.
About this Event

Join forager and medical herbalist, Lee Latham for a fascinating morning exploring the edible and medicinal plants that thrive in the city. This walk lasts about three hours and involves safely picking and sampling various leaves, flowers, shoots and berries as we go along. There will be herbal remedies, tinctures and creams to try, made from different wild ingredients we have previously picked and prepared. You will learn to identify plenty of common wild plants and the conversation will touch on numerous topics, nutrition, traditional medicine, herbalism, botany, cookery, horticulture and local history.

All London walks last about three hours, involving safely picking and eating various leaves, berries etc as we go along with herbal remedies, tinctures and creams to try (made from different wild ingredients we previously picked), learning to identifying plenty of edible plants and discussion touching on numerous topics including, nutrition, traditional medicine, herbalism, botany, cookery, horticulture and local history.

Lee grew up with his grandparents who were rural folk and passed on their plant knowledge to him. He vividly remembers them taking him to pick elderberries and later making it into wine. In his 20s, after being badly bitten by midges, Lee’s wonderful boss at the time told him to buy lavender essential oil and dilute it in almond oil and apply liberally day and night. He was amazed to experience the reduction in inflammation and itching that a simple plant based remedy could bring. It was years later that while expanding his knowledge of edible plants (Lee attended 3 or 4 of Forage London’s very first courses) that herbal medicine raised its head again. Finding that most of the commonest wild plants also have numerous herbal virtues was a revelation. Lee spent four years studying herbal medicine at the College of Naturopathic Medicine in London and now regularly sees patients with a variety of health issues. He also teaches botany, plant identification and phytochemistry to herbal medicine students as well as running Forage London’s Wild food/Wild medicine walks. Most of his personal foraging is focused on fruit infused alcohols!