A row has broken out in Cornwall, with residents bemoaning foragers, who they say are poaching wild garlic on their patch. At first one feels sympathy for the locals. They claim that the verges on a lane, normally resplendent with the broad-leaved plant at this time of year, are balding. The foragers are pulling up the plants rather than picking the leaves. That’s wrong – removing a wild plant is illegal. Nevertheless, there’s more than a hint of something mean-spirited in the locals’ complaint.
In England, obtaining wild food is culturally “privatised”. With the exception of a little common land, which actually belongs to local people, our landscape is either owned privately or by the state. It has been that way since William I conquered England and put in place laws to prevent his subjects helping themselves to the public larder.