A wild herb tour in the urban environment
Cities are being reclaimed by nature, it’s said. We can read reports about it, we’re fascinated. This supposedly wild, unfamiliar environment gives us a thrill – safari, adventure, right outside our front door. Herds of wild boar saunter through night-time Berlin, these are the images we have in mind. But essentially, nature never left the city. Neither fauna nor flora. Some species of plants seem to literally thrive in an urban environment – not just in parks and green areas. Broadleaf plantain, gallant weed and lady’s thumb feel very much at home here at our feet. And if these herbs didn’t grow between curbstones and manhole covers, they really would enrich our diets …
At the end of the informative walk through the urban wilderness, a drink is served: a liqueur made with acorns. True, when it comes to trees, we’re more likely to find birches in our cities than oaks. But it’s worthwhile looking out for the latter. Not just because the liqueur tastes so good.
Wolfgang Kienast (Artist)
Wolfgang Kienast aka Martini aka Wolfgang Antonius Kienast, Count Roit zu Hoya, is a DJ at various hip clubs in the region, a guide for cultural, historical and socio-cultural tours of the city. He sometimes works as a visual artist and regularly as an author. He writes both fictional texts and columns, travel reports and features. Since the beginning of 2011, the street magazine bodo has regularly published his monthly Wild Herb Column – a format that allows him to create a link between current social discourse on occasionally humorous issues relating to the food and diets of indigenous city dwellers to seasonal suggestions for cooking with local wild herbs. His favourite edible plants include sweet clover, yarrow and lesser celandine. He is fond of the oak because of the many myths that have evolved around this internationally revered tree.
