What Are Earthnuts?

Conopodium majus - a slender umbellifer - related to carrots and cow-parsley, with delicate, loose heads of creamy-white flowers, stiff upright stems and finely-cut deep green leaves that may appear grass or fern-like.

The plant is biennial - forming a small underground tuber in its first year of growth, then producing flowers and seeds the next year.

It is found in open woodland, damp pastures and meadows.

A Closer Look

The plant may be anywhere between 10 and 75cm tall - some specimens being quite bushy and others hardly having any discernible leaves at all.

At the bottom of the stem, attached only by a very thin and brittle stalk, is a small knobbly and irregular tuber, usually no more than about 2.5cm across - and sometimes much smaller.

Gathering Earthnuts

Don't try to pull them up by the stalk - this will certainly fail, as the tubers are about 10cm underground and the stalks are not strongly attached - you will need to dig them up with a trowel or similar.

If you find them growing up through a tangle of other plants and their roots - give up and look elsewhere - because you'll often simply be unable to find the tuber - the best method it to carefully dig and trace the stem all the way down. The stalk is often twisted or curved in such way that the tuber is not directly beneath the visible parts of the plant.

Eating Earthnuts

The tubers can be scrubbed, rubbed or scraped and the soft skin will come away easily, revealing the beautiful polished-ivory surface of the flesh beneath.

They can be sliced and eaten raw in salads, or steamed, stir-fried, roasted or boiled.

The flavour and texture of the raw tuber is quite similar to sweet chestnut (and I suppose this is how they came to be called Earthnuts) - when cooked, it's a sort of nutty-carroty-parsnip-potato thing - altogether very pleasant.

It can be quite a challenge to gather enough of these to make a meal, so I prefer to just take a few and savour them as a special treat.