Autumn Foraging: Nuts, Berries and Fungi

Autumn: the year's last great harvest

There is a moment in late September when the countryside seems to lean in and offer everything at once. The hazels are fattening in the hedgerows, the brambles are heavy with fruit, and a warm spell after rain brings the mushrooms up in the old pastures. It is the forager's busiest fortnight of the year — and the one that rewards patience, local knowledge and a good pair of boots far more than it rewards enthusiasm alone.

What follows is a practical guide to the three great autumn standbys: nuts, berries and fungi. Learn these well and you will eat very well indeed. Learn them carelessly and you will waste a morning, or worse.

Hazelnuts, and how the squirrels tell you where to look

Hazel is the forager's friend because it leaves evidence. A ripe hazelnut sits inside a green, fringed husk; when the husk turns yellow-brown and the nut within rattles slightly, it is ready. The trick is beating the squirrels to it — and the squirrels will always be there first. Look on the ground beneath the bushes for shells with a neat, round hole nibbled in the side: that is the work of a squirrel, and it means the crop is ripe. Shells split cleanly in half with tooth marks are usually the work of mice or voles.

Take the nuts while the husks are still slightly green and dry them in a warm, airy room, or on a tray in a low oven. Other autumn nuts worth knowing include:

• Sweet chestnut — the spiny husks appear in October. Do not confuse it with the horse chestnut, whose conkers are mildly toxic. Sweet chestnut leaves are long, narrow and heavily serrated; horse chestnut leaves are hand-shaped with five to seven leaflets.
• Beech mast — small, triangular nuts in prickly husks, good toasted but fiddly.
• Walnut — usually planted, so ask before you help yourself.
• Acorns — edible only after thorough leaching to remove the tannins. A job for the patient.

Leave a generous share behind. Dormice, jays, red squirrels and wood mice all depend on this crop to see them through winter, and a stripped hedge is a hungry one.

Blackberries, sloes and the rest of the hedgerow

Blackberries are the gateway fruit — almost everyone has picked them — but pick them well. Look for berries that come away with a soft tug and are black to the core; any hint of red at the tip means sourness. Avoid fruit growing low beside busy roads, and never pick from a hedge at nose height beside a footpath where dogs pass. Wash everything before eating.

Old country lore says blackberries should not be gathered after Old Michaelmas Day, traditionally 11 October, when the devil is said to spoil them. The practical reading is sound: late fruit is often mouldy, flyblown and tasteless after the first hard frosts.

Beyond brambles, the autumn hedgerow offers:

• Sloes — the fruit of the blackthorn, mouth-puckering raw but superb in gin. Pick after the first frost, or freeze them overnight.
• Rosehips — high in vitamin C, and the base of a fine syrup. Halve them and remove the irritating hairs before use.
• Elderberries — always cooked, never raw, and strip the berries from the green stalks.
• Hawthorn haws and rowan berries — best turned into jellies to serve with game.

Take care to avoid the lookalikes. Yew berries, with their bright red cup and dark seed, are dangerously toxic, as are the shiny black berries of woody nightshade and the red berries of lily of the valley and honeysuckle. When in doubt, leave it.

Field mushrooms, and the golden rules of fungi

Nothing in foraging demands more caution. Fungi are the one group where a mistake can kill you, and where a confident identification by an app is worth absolutely nothing.

The true field mushroom grows in pasture and rough grass, has pink gills that darken to chocolate brown with age, and — crucially — does not bruise yellow. The yellow stainer, which looks almost identical, stains bright yellow at the base of the stem when cut and smells of ink or disinfectant. It will give you a miserable few hours. Cut every stem to check.

Fewer than a dozen wild mushrooms are worth eating, and only a handful are safe for a beginner. Sensible rules:

• Never eat anything you cannot identify with total certainty. Not "probably", not "it looks like". Total.
• Learn from a person, not a screen. Join a local fungus recording group or take a guided walk.
• Take a spore print — leave a cap gill-side down on paper overnight. Colour matters enormously.
• Photograph specimens in place, note the tree or habitat nearby, and carry fungi home in a paper bag or basket, never a sealed plastic bag.
• Cook and eat only a small amount the first time, even of a species you know.

Gather into a shallow basket with a knife and a soft brush, cutting cleanly rather than pulling, so the underground network is left intact.

The forager's code: leave more than you take

Foraging in Britain is a privilege, not a right without limits. You may pick mushrooms, fruit, foliage and flowers growing wild for personal use, but not for sale, and you may not uproot plants without permission. That still means you need the landowner's consent on private land, and many nature reserves, Sites of Special Scientific Interest and public estates restrict or ban foraging altogether. Check before you go, and never dig anything up.

Keep to footpaths, close gates, and take only a small share of any patch — a third at most, and never the last of anything. Move on rather than stripping a site. Wear gloves and long sleeves against thorns, watch for ticks in bracken and long grass, and always tell someone where you are going. A phone signal is not guaranteed under beech.

Go gently, learn slowly, and autumn will feed you for years.