Primula veris
I love to forage for tea! When I was little we did it together with my grandmother – Agafija. I thought it was hard work. The basket was too big and flowers were too small or not enough.
Yesterday I did it with my girls and their grandma (my mom) and suddenly I saw myself 30 years ago :). Generations have changed and some say that children aren’t the same as they were back then… but bring them to nature and you see – they are the same! Of course – those who grow in big cities and never seen a woods before need longer time to “be wild” again 🙂
My girls are just like Me – if we talk about Herbal tea foraging :). And I knew it so I was prepared. We had two wheels carriage with grandma power! And we were ready to forage for cowslip. The conditions were perfect:
- We had time.
- The day was sunny.
- Cowslips were blooming.
Our summerhouse’s nearest fields are full of cowslip. And this area is very clean. No need to drive anywhere.
Rules:
- Harvest only in the sunny day.
- Only collect the part of the plant that you plan to use.
- Don’t over harvest.
- Avoid foraging rare and protected wild edible plants.
- Avoid toxic areas.
- Only forage plants that appear to be healthy.
Ilze
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a day in the life of a latvian mom 
beautiful! wonderful! this makes my heart smile 🙂
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🙂 do you have cowslip in Mars? Do you use it as a tea!?
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I am not familiar with them.
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Maybe it’s something only in Europe.
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How nice that you can carry on this family tradition! I’ve heard of cowslip before but have never seen it. Also, I never thought of foraging for tea, but I love the idea. Of course, I live in a huge city (Detroit), so it’s not really practical. Still, I really enjoyed your photos.
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Thank you! Wilderness is something you can get here in Latvia easily!
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How interesting. I have not heard of this before. Beautiful photos too.
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It is a herbal tea used to heal cough.
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Yes, I would say it is not available in Australia, or readily available, at least. There are some really useful things like hyldebaer in Denmark that are great for respiratory infections, or keeping them at bay,so we could definitely use some of it heading into winter. Perhaps we don’t have that plant growing here?
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Australia is more hotter and dryer than Latvia.
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Of course and we have a different composition of flora. Some European plants have been introduced but I don’t think cowslip is one of them.
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Thank you for posting these great photos. I was thinking this plant looks like primrose, and turns out, it’s a type of primrose! I wonder how similar it is to Virginia Cowslip, which is also called Lungwort, interestingly. I think they’re different species, but don’t know much about it.. not sure I’ve ever seen it (I live in the Great Lakes region of the US)
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