Hey, hey, it’s another new Speedwell for my collection 🙂

This is Brooklime, Veronica becccabunga and you have got to give it points for beccabunga. Wikipedia gives it the alternate name European Speedwell, it is most certainly a Veronica, you can see that from the flowers but nobody calls it European Speedwell, this is Brooklime.

It is almost an aquatic plant, growing along the edge of streams or in very wet, marshy ground.

The only place that it grows on the farm is at the very bottom of the bank where the water gathers and exactly where we will also find the Ivy-leaved Crowfoot.

(Ivy-leaved Crowfoot)

The leaves and stems of Brooklime are the edible bits. (technically)

I have eaten a few leaves and thought that they were quite nice, a bit soapy and leafy. People usually describe the leaves as being tart but then I like Sloes straight off the tree and I think I have probably done my taste buds in a bit.

Lots of things are “edible.”

Have you ever thought, why do we have to live in cities and go to work in factories? Why can’t we just walk around the woods eating bushes, like all of the other animals?

(there is a whole history of how the Human race enslaved itself)

We can walk around eating the bushes but not very many of us.

People talk about animals having no natural predators, especially around here. “The Boar have no natural predators and so there is nothing to control their spread.” That is absolute nonsense. It doesn’t take Wolves to kill Boar. Starvation is the number one natural predator.

Most of the animals that walk around eating bushes are living on the edge of starvation for at least part of the year and they don’t all survive. They have a lot of young to fill any available gaps but if there are no gaps then they die. The land can only support so many. We could do that, with a bit of education but we couldn’t live off the land at our current density.

Like many things Brooklime is edible but that is only really of historical interest today. It would have been important knowledge once.

It isn’t worth going out to hunt for. Not like Wild Garlic or Parasols.

But who cares about all of that? It is another new Speedwell for my collection.

I shall add the pages associated with this post when I get back from walking Tootsie. First things first or at least next things next 🙂