Ground Elder — What I'm foraging right now, Part I

Ground elder is one of my favorite wild greens. Flavorful and bright, ridiculously abundant, dependable and easy to use – but my first culinary encounter with this plant was as a stringy, disgusting mess. It all comes down to how you harvest and prepare this tasty weed!

Ground elder was one of the first plants I foraged, and oh boy, we had a rocky start. This was way back before I understood that oh no sweet angel child, no you can NOT cook every wild edible leafy green “like spinach”, no matter what the German foraging guides tell you…

Scary family, easy plant

To understand ground elder (Aegopodium podagraria), it’s helpful to know that it is in the carrot family. If you’ve spent any time reading about foraging, you’ll know that this is a much-maligned family, due to the very real danger of confusing some edible members of the family with potentially deadly toxic lookalikes.

But don’t worry! You’d have to be trying fairly hard to get ground elder confused with one of its toxic cousins, assuming you're located in Berlin or elsewhere in temperate Europe (I can't speak for look-alikes in other regions, however). Though of course you'll need to do your own due diligence, I’m perfectly comfortable teaching it to beginner foragers, and in fact it’s one I include in most of my spring foraging workshops.

Indeed, ground elder shares many of its aromas with other members of the carrot family; I’d describe the scent and flavor as a mix of celery, parsley, and carrot, with a citrusy note, maybe a hint of pepper, and a kind of perfumey, orange-blossom-like muskiness as well.

A perfect leaf for harvesting on the left; a mature, much less palatable leaf on the right.

Tasty timing

The leaf, including the petiole, or leaf stem, can be eaten either raw or cooked. The thing is, the older the leaf, the tougher it is, and the more the perfumed quality comes out. Try to wilt mature leaves like spinach in a pan, and you’ll end up with something absolutely foul – stringy and slimy, with an overpowering, cloying flavor. Ugh ick ugh. Don’t do this.

Instead, the trick is to use only the youngest, most tender ground elder leaves. I personally haven’t ever enjoyed it cooked as-is, but you might try it wilted slightly in a pan. But my best advice is to use it as an herb, similarly to how you might use parsley. I adore it as an addition to wild herb pesto, in salads, or as a fresh garnish or finishing herb in other dishes. Or make it into a chimichurri for something really special.

What about identification?

Ground elder grows in a dense mat in shady, moist areas, including gardens, shady meadows, parks, stream banks, and woods. It creeps and spreads rhizomatically underground, sending up its leaves to poke up singly out of the ground. Young leaves are bright green, translucent, and all folded up on themselves (this is the state you want to pick them in!), whereas mature leaves flatten out and are a matte dark green.

A perfect leaf for harvesting. Note the folded, bright green, almost translucent quality and the grooved stem. The color of the stem will become more green as the season progresses.

Each leaf is compound, being made up of between 3 and 9 leaflets; each leaflet comes to a point and has a serrated edge. The plant is hairless, and the stem has a groove all the way down it, a bit like celery, so that the cross-section would be a smooth U shape. The stems tend to be reddish-purple in early spring, turning bright green as the season warms up.

The best way I can describe the leaf is that it wants to break into groups of 3: you can think of it as three leaflets – one at the tip and two attached opposite each other (the blue numbers in the image above). But these three leaflets themselves each tend towards breaking into a further group of 3 arranged the same way (the pink numbers). So often you'll end up with 9 leaflets; however, they don’t always achieve full three-ness, which is how you often end up with 5 leaflets, or 7 (as in the image above), or sometimes even an asymmetrical 8. Sounds confusing, but look at a few leaves and you'll get exactly what I mean.

If the location, growth habit, and leaflet shape and arrangement all seem correct, check the scent by breaking the stem. You should get a strong, pleasant whiff of celery, with notes of carrot and parsley.

If you can't beat it, eat it!

One nice thing about ground elder is that because of the rhizomatic way it grows, it's incredibly hard to kill (as any gardener with this in the garden will well know). That means it would be very hard indeed to over-harvest. The more you pick it, the more fresh, bright green new leaves it will send up, which means that harvesting ensures you'll have a continual supply of tasty greens lasting into the late spring or even right through the summer and into autumn.

A view of the rhizome, usually underground, with young leaves sprouting at the root nodes.

Why the name? Elder leaves (of the famous elderflower shrub) have a slight resemblance to ground elder, also having an odd number of serrated leaflets that come to a point, with a terminal leaflet at the tip. It’s worth mentioning, however, that elder leaves should not be harvested under any circumstances, as they are incredibly toxic!

In addition, as with other members of the carrot family, ground elder will send up a thick stem to flower (only at this point will you see the leaves branch off from a central stem), and the flowers form an umbel of tiny white flowers which also resembles elderflower. However, once ground elder is in flower, it’s not recommended to harvest the leaves (nor the flower itself), as the plant apparently develops both a soporific and laxative effect.

In the summer, you'll start to see thicker central stems with flower buds forming. It's generally not advised to eat ground elder at this stage of growth.

The scientific name, Aegopodium podagraria, refers to its historical use to treat gout, a painful inflammatory arthritis caused by too much uric acid (pogadra means gout in Latin). Apparently there's some scientific backing to this, as vitamin C does help to reduce uric acid. Aegopodium means 'little goat's foot', which refers to the shape of the leaves.

Smart foraging

As with any wild food, don’t munch on a hunch! Only harvest what you are 100% confident you can identify, and with an understanding of possible contaminants. Though ground elder is a robust plant which would be hard to over-harvest – many gardeners certainly wish it was easier to over-harvest! – do still make sure you are harvesting ethically and conscientiously with an understanding of your impact on the ecosystem and the ecosystem’s impact on you.

Curious to learn more or get some hands-on guidance with wild plant identification? I run in-person workshops in Berlin regularly throughout the year, including donation-based workshops for folks with fewer resources!