Wild foods

There is a growing trade in wild foods in Scotland, reflecting people's increasingly adventurous appetites and growing concern with agricultural mass-production. Venison and wild mushrooms, for example, can command high prices in the marketplace.

Most of the fungi and plants traded in this way are gathered informally by self-employed pickers and then sold on to traders (e.g. Caledonian Wildfoods), who often pass them on to expensive restaurants. These include a number of woodland species such as blaeberries, cowberries, wild raspberries, sloes, rosehips, hawthorn, rowan, elder, crab apples, hazelnuts, wild garlic, wild strawberries, wood sorrel and nettles.

A few businesses are also manufacturing food products based on wild-collected plants. These include sloe jelly, elderflower vinegar, hawthorn preserve and wild garlic cheese.