Problems in the Garden
For the first couple of decades of my life, I enjoyed the seasonal sprouting of little white flowers in our garden. For the last couple of years, we realised these charming blossoms were the signs of wild garlic overgrowth. Since then, we have been at war with the wild garlic, digging it up at the root, and seperating its constituent parts from the compost. The attempt to save our lawn and flowerbeds is, so far, futile.
Worse still, we end up with an unwanted abundance of wild garlic ‘bits’. Last year we collected over 40 gallons of the stuff. This year, we will not be defeated! In a garlic-infused brain fog, we hit upon the idea of wild garlic pesto. And so, multiple expensive blocks of parmesan later, we have been jarring up our garden pest.
All of this got me thinking about how long wild garlic has been with us in Britain. Did our mediaeval ancestors plunder these bulbs from their strips of land? Did the Victorians grab bunches of the pretty white flowers to hand to their beloveds? Would my great-granny have known what to go with a jar of this homemade pesto?
Who first grew wild-garlic?
Judging by the number of names it has been called, wikipedia immediatly suggests that wild-garlic has a long history. My favourite is ‘bear’s garlic’, which is either something to do with a folkloric tradition of brown bears gobbling it up, or a Latin association with northern garlic-growing climates and the north ‘Ursa’ star constellation (Sobolewska, Podolak, and Makowska-Wąs, 2015). The Woodland Trust backs up the bear fact, saying ‘The second half of the Latin name, ursinum, refers to the fact that brown bears loved to eat the bulb. This also gave rise to two of its common names – bear’s leek and bear garlic’ so I do hope it’s true (woodlandtrust).
Regardless, if brown bears, the Romans, and folktales exist alongside the garlic, it must be a very old part of human custom.
Better than a multivit? The health benefits of wild garlic (but actually please keep using medicine and vitamins)
Is eating lots of raw wild garlic better than taking a Vitamin C tablet? Is wild garlic better than having a flu vaccine? Will it cure scrofula?
no
but it’s still better than having 8 mars bars and a diet coke for dinner.
In fact, Native American peoples of the Cherokee and Rappahannock tribes harvested and used wild-garlic expressly for medicinal purposes, believing it could help to heal scurvy and breathing problems (Steckel, 2005). They weren’t necessarily wrong, either. Wild-garlic has healthy amounts of Vitamin C which reverses any issues of scurvy. Although I can’t find any evidence that it helps with asthma.
For some people, the ‘volatile oils and sulfur glycosides’ inside the bulbs provides relief for the bowels by, um, clearing you through (Steckel, 2005)
None of this is the reason we’ve been making pesto from our garlic, however. Here it’s simply more of a supply and demand problem – and we needed to do something with the supply.
So if you are one of my friends, I can only apologise in advance that all of your upcoming birthday and housewarming gifts will inevitably take the shape of a kilner jar full of pine-nutty, olive-oily, and wildly garlicky stuff.
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