I recently stayed on the East coast of Corfu (Greece) for a week, and whilst the intention was to have a week of complete relaxation, I don’t think it’s possible for a forager to ignore plants, ever.

Anyway, I was pleased to see so many plants that I recognised from foraging in the UK, but there were also plenty that I wouldn’t have a clue about – that’s where some local knowledge would help if I intended to stay there and forage!

Quite often on foraging walks, we get onto the subject of lost knowledge, and how in other parts of the world (including some of mainland Europe) they don’t have “foraging” because gathering wild edible plants is just part of life. However, whilst it was encouraging to see some evidence of wild food gathering, it was also clear that the practice is beginning to die out in Corfu too.

Horta forager

In Greece, they have a dish called “horta” which just means greens and will probably have different contents from one restaurant to another. It can include dandelion leaves, amaranths, mustards and chicory. Interestingly, the Greek for vegetarian is hortafagos which translates as “weed-eater”. Anyway, it was encouraging to see that you can still buy horta, gathered by a local forager, from the markets.

Horta in the market

Slightly less encouraging was the amount of perfectly good olives, grapes, prickly pears and other edibles rotting on the plants, or on the floor beneath them.

Edible plants in common with the UK

So what can you recognise their from your foraging here? I’m sure that there is plenty more, but this forager saw:

So, we all know (or should know) that every part of the Yew tree is highly toxic to humans. When I say highly toxic, what I mean is that a very small amount can kill you. All parts contain taxin, a complex of alkaloids which are rapidly absorbed.

If you are poisoned by it, sometimes there are no symptoms, followed by death within a few hours. Where there are symptoms, they include trembling, staggering, coldness, weak pulse and collapse.

So what’s the good news?

Now that I’ve scared the living daylights out of you, there is one part that is not toxic. See those pretty little red berries, the red flesh is not toxic, and is also quite nice and sweet tasting; However, the hard, dark-coloured seeds inside, have probably the highest concentration of toxins of the whole tree. It is said that if unbroken, the seeds will pass through you without being digested and without causing harm.

I’m not sure it’s worth the risk, personally. However, I have been known to pick a few and spit the seeds out. The flesh is really quite nice (although I have heard some people compare the texture to snot – but I couldn’t possibly comment).

I’m assuming that it’s for for safety’s sake that there are no recipes for yew berry flesh, or even many instructions to tell you the safe way of eating them. After all, I could easily imagine someone seeing other people eating them and assuming that they’re completely safe, followed shortly afterwards by a trip to the hospital, or the morgue!

Time to make some yew liqueurs

That said, I decided that I would have a play with the flavours and some spirits to see if anything gave good results. Maybe some kind of yew liqueur?

The first step is to separate the flesh from the poisonous seeds. I tried to freeze them first to make it easier, but they didn’t freeze very well, so it was a quite disgusting manual job. The squeezed flesh went quite sticky.

So finally, I split the berry flesh into three portions and put them into some clean, sterilized Kilner-type jars. Over each, I then poured filtered white rum, filtered gin, and filtered vodka. Then I left them to sit and infuse (hopefully), giving them a helpful little shake each time I passed by.

The results…

So, after infusing for 2 weeks now, so it was time for a little try. At this point, the spirits had started to sweeten slightly, but not much change to colour or flavour.

After 4 weeks, things had moved on somewhat, so I strained and bottled the infusions.

White rum, vodka and gin yew infusions

Now you can see that not only have they taken on slightly different colours across the different spirits, but also I’ve ended up with slightly different amounts of end product, despite the fact that they started with the same volume of berries and spirits.

The judgement

First of all, they are all quite nice. The berries have imparted a slight sweetness, some of their stickiness has come through and made the spirits thicker and smoother, and there’s a very subtle citrus berry flavour.

However, one stands out above the rest. The Gin infusion seems to have worked very well. It’s nice to drink on its own, and if we hadn’t drunk it all it would probably go quite well in a cocktail. Maybe I’ll make it again this year, but try to save some for cocktail experiments, or make some more!