Autumn foraging is a fun way to source delicious and nutritious food for free. Here is a guide to seven easy-to-find autumn foods to look for.
1. Blackberries
Most of us are already familiar with blackberries, and you’ll also often find them on supermarket shelves at ridiculously high prices, much like other soft fruits.
Blackberries are in season during late August and through September, and often there are still some that are good to pick during October.
The fruit is easy to recognise, and because they are so distinctive, there is little to confuse them with, other than a raspberry when in an unripe state.
Blackberries are fun to pick, and are a great way to start a love of autumn foraging. Children especially love picking and eating the fruit. You just need to be a little careful of the thorns.
Identifying Blackberries
Blackberries can usually be found in hedgerows that form field boundaries, woodland, edges of paths and roads, and wasteland in both countryside and urban settings.
Brambles come out in white flowers that appear in early summer, followed by clusters of fruit, known as drupes. Small green berries grow and turn red, then they ripen to a dark purple black.
Blackberries grow on bramble vines that have long, arched and spiky stems that trail to the ground. Once they reach the ground, the stems can take root, eventually forming thick and spreading patch of brambles.
The fruits always grow in clusters, rather like a miniature bunch of grapes, so if you see a single berry that is the same colour, it is not a blackberry, so don’t pick it.
The leaves of the blackberry plant are oval shaped with pointed tips. They have serrated edges and grow alternately along the stem.
Blackberry Picking Tips
Wear old clothing – Blackberry juice stains, so wear old clothing.
Watch out for thorns! You are also likely to get caught on thorns here and there which could put holes in your clothes. Brambles thorns are very sharp so take care when picking. Wear long trousers rather than shorts so you can stand amongst the brambles to get the best fruit. Long sleeves will also minimise getting scratched by thorns.
Use a hooked stick to reach higher stems and bring them lower to allow easier picking. Ripe berries should come off the plans with a slight tug. If it doesn’t, then leave it on the plant to ripen further. Under ripe blackberries are rather sour, so not worth picking.
The tastiest berries are the ones that have ripened in full sunlight, so go for plump, dark berries you can see that are in the sunshine.
Use a container rather than a bag, as blackberries bruise and squash easily.
Storing Blackberries
When you get your blackberries home, don’t wash them until right before you use them, otherwise they tend to turn to mush. Keep freshly picked blackberries in a fridge and eat within 24 hours.
The keep them for longer, try tray freezing. Spread blackberries out on a tray and freeze. Once frozen they can be put in a bag, so you have lots of individual fruits ready to be used, rather than a block of frozen berries.
Tradition says you should never pick wild blackberries after October 11th as the Devil has spat on them! Legend has it that the Devil was cast out of heaven on St Michaelmas day and landed straight in a prickly patch of brambles. In revenge, he cursed the fruit, making any blackberry picked after this date thin, sour, and tasteless. Interestingly, this coincides with the autumn weather turning cold and wet, which is the real scientific reason late-season berries quickly go past their best!
2. Crab Apple
Crab apples are small wild apples that are common in the UK and the rest of Europe, as well as the United States. Think of crab apples like the ancestors of our cultivated varieties, which have been developed over the years to produce larger, sweeter fruits.
Now if any of you have ever tasted a crab apple, you’ll know it for its sour, mouth drying apple flavour. You might be wondering why you should forage for crab apple when they taste so sour, but actually, there are lots of ways to use crab apple in a variety of dishes, such as homemade crab apple jam, and can be treated much like cooking apples.
Crab apple fruits appear from late summer to early winter, and are abundant crop for autumn foraging.
Identifying Crab Apples
Crab apple trees are small in size, and grow with a twisted and gnarly look to them. Mature trees can reach up to ten meters, but they are often smaller and have an irregular, scruffy shape to the canopy, adding to the crabby, almost hunched appearance.
You can often find them growing in hedgerows, woodland and wasteland. Sometime they are found growing in green park areas too, such as village greens or urban and suburban parks, as well as street corners and back gardens.
Crab apple trees blossom in spring with five petal, white to pink flowers, this is then followed by growing fruits. The leaves are small, dark green and oval shaped.
Crab apples vary in size, shape and colour, but essentially they just look like miniature versions of eating apples. They can ripen to red, golden and green hues, just like cultivated apples, and if you cut across the core horizontally, it reveals a star shaped centre where the pips are.
Crab Apple Picking Tips
Make sure fruit is ripe. Timing is everything when picking crab apples. You want them ripe for the best taste, but not under ripe or over ripe so they begin to rot. A good way to judge is when you see some apples around the tree that have fallen to the ground. This is an indicator that the rest are ripe or nearly ripe.
Taste it – the flesh of a crab apple should be firm, but not so hard that you struggle to bite it! The taste should be sour with a hint of sweetness. If it tastes bitter then discard.
Check the pips – another way to tell if a crab apple is ripe is to cut it and look at the pips. If they are brown, the apple is ripe.
Storing Crab Apples
Keep in a cool place with air circulating around each apple.
Freeze – crab apple freezes well if you make them into a puree by stewing. You can also freeze them whole. Remove the stems and flower ends first and place on a tray to freeze. You can them put them in bags to use when you want to.
Beyond the kitchen, crab apples have a long history in traditional folk medicine. Herbal preparations were historically used to soothe digestive troubles like constipation, as well as to ease painful conditions like gout. Externally, raw crab apple poultices, made from crushed or grated fruit, were applied directly to the skin to draw out inflammation from wounds, rashes, and minor skin irritations.
You can use crab apple much like cooking apples, but due their small size and sour flavour they’re best added alongside other fruits for pies and crumbles. Check out crab apple nutritional value and recipe suggestions.
3. Elderberries
Now there are lots of things you can do with this plant, including recipes using the flowers, but during late summer and autumn it is the berries that are ready for harvest. Now, there are loads of uses for this fruit, so it is one of the highlights of early autumn foraging.
How to Identify Elderberries
Elderberries grow in many many places in both countryside and urban settings, and are actually part of the honeysuckle family. No matter where you live you are sure to find some growing close by. Good places to look are parks and footpaths nearby and you are sure to find elderberry. You’ll also often find them in hedgerows that divide fields.
Elderberries begin red and then ripen to black during late summer and early autumn. The berries have a tart flavour, and are reminiscent of the taste of a blackberry.
The fruit grows on bushes in hanging clusters, following white umbral shaped flowers. Each berry is around 4ml in diameter and grows singly, but the clusters can be up to 30cm across.
The young stems are green and mature to grey as they mature, and they have distinctive specks on them. When split there is a soft, cork like centre that if removed it leaves a hollow tube.
The leaves are dark green and serrated, and arranged in opposing pairs with one at the top. They give an unpleasant smell if crushed.
Caution! Do not eat elderberries raw as it can cause digestive upset – I speak from experience here as when I was a child I ate loads of elderberries straight from the bush and spent the afternoon feeling sick!
It is only the flowers and berries of this plant that are edible. The leaves and stems of elderberry are toxic, so don’t use them.
Elderberry Picking Tips
Pick the ripe berries only, ones that are dark purple to black. Not only do they have the best flavour as this is when they are soft and juicy, but unripe berries can cause stomach upsets. Unripe berries are hard and don’t come off the stalks so easily, so leave them on the bush to ripen further.
Picking elderberries can be quite time consuming due to their small size, but you could use scissors to snip off whole clusters and the pick off the berries when you get home, or there are berry pickers that are designed to scoop individual berries from the stalks. Some people find these useful, but I personally prefer to take then clusters home as I can get the berries off intact, without squashing them.
For a full breakdown of elderberry health benefits, safe preparation, and wild recipes like elderberry juice and country wine, read our complete guide to Elderberries: Health Benefits & Kitchen Recipes.
Traditionally, elder was cherished as a protective guardian of the home. If an elder tree grew on your property, it was said to keep evil spirits at bay—and hanging a fresh bunch of elder stems outside over the doorway was a common way to guard the threshold.
Beyond folklore, elder wood has a long musical history. Stems were frequently used to make wind instruments like pipes and flutes because the inner pith is so easy to hollow out. In fact, elder’s botanical name—Sambucus—is thought to trace back to an ancient word for a Greek wind instrument or a Latin harp-like instrument!
4. Hawthorn
Hawthorn is an abundant hedgerown plant that can be found growing all over the temperate regions of the Northern hemisphere. The fruit of the Hawthorn are often called Haws, and this plant has been a staple source of human food and medicine for thousands of years.
How to Identify Hawthorn
Hawthorn can usually be found as hedgerow forming shrubs that separate fields that grow alongside country roads and footpaths, but they can also grow as a single tree.
The white flowers blossom in late spring, and are followed by red berries, called Haws, that ripen during the autumn. Haws are small, and oval shaped. They grow on a single stem and have a point on the bottom that looks a little a tiny dry flower.
The leaves have a deep, toothed appearance with rounded edges, and sit on single stems.
Hawthorn Picking Tips
Just as with Sloe berries, Haws taste much better after they have had a frost or two on them.
Pick the plumpest looking berries by plucking them off the stems. Avoid any that have been nibbled or have spots on them.
Pick carefully, as twigs can be sharp.
For full cardiovascular health benefits, digestive properties, and detailed wild recipes like hawthorn tea and fruit leather, explore our complete guide to Hawthorn Berries: Health Benefits & Simple Recipes.
In British folklore, hawthorn carries a fascinatingly dark reputation. When in bloom, its delicate white blossoms release trimethylamine—a chemical compound that gives off a faint scent of decay, strikingly similar to decomposing flesh! Because of this, medieval villagers associated the flowers with the scent of the Bubonic Plague, leading to an age-old taboo against ever bringing hawthorn blossoms inside the home.
On a lighter note, hawthorns were widely revered across the UK countryside as “faerie trees.” Lonely hawthorns standing in fields were believed to belong to the Little People and were left untouched by farmers for generations out of respect (and fear of bad luck!).
Foragers also keep an eye on hawthorns as a traditional weather gauge: countryside lore says that an unusually heavy crop of red haws in autumn is nature’s way of preparing the birds for a harsh, freezing winter ahead.
Love Foraging for Fresh, Free Wild Foods?
Discover how common hedgerow plants and wild greens can transform your health. In Foraging for Health: Hedgerow Plants and Fruits, Georgina Starmer shares a practical guide to identifying nutrient-rich wild edibles safely in the British countryside.
5. Rosehips
Rosehips are the fruit that forms after rose plants hove flowered, and for foragers this mean wild species of roses, such as the wild dog rose and field rose, that grows abundantly across Europe, North Africa and also west Asia. Cultivated roses also produce hips that are edible, and are often much larger, however, the flavour is not nearly as good as wild rose hips
You often see rosehips glowing red in the hedgerows during late summer, autumn and early winter, and it is a plant that has been used as a food and medicine for thousands of years.
Identifying Rosehips
Wild Rose flowers have long stems and flowers with five petals, usually pale pink in colour with yellow stamens. After flowering a green rose-hip is produced that ripens to red.
The hips are usually about half an inch in length, but this can vary depending on the location of the plant.
The leaves of wild roses on thorny climbing stems. They are oval shaped with serrated edges, like cultivated rose plants.
The roses that grow in your garden will also produce hips, and they will be much more rounded, larger and fatter than their wild cousins. They are also edible, however they do lack the flavour of the wild rose hips.
Rosehip Picking Tips
It is said that rosehips taste sweeter after the first frost, as frost tends to soften the flesh of a fruit and break down the cell walls, making them juicier. But don’t worry if can’t wait that long, they still have a delicious sweetness. You could also pick them and put them in your freezer overnight to mimic a frost!
Choose hips that are full looking and rounded, avoid any that look dry or mouldy
Picking rosehips can cause some skin irritation due to tiny hairs on the seeds.
Storing Rosehips
Rosehips can be used fresh, or dried to keep a long-lasting store to see you through to the next season.
Dried rosehips are easy to make tea with. Drying rosehips is really simple, and makes removing the hairs really easy.
How to Dry Rosehips
Gather plenty of rosehips, so you will end up with a good amount to store. Wash them and take off the stalks.
To dry, use a food dehydrator. These handy items make it easy to dry and preserve any food. If you don’t have one, you can spread rosehips out of a tray and put in a warm oven, leaving the door open to allow moisture to escape. This may take a few hours.
Another method of drying is to simply leave them in a basket or tray, and leave them for around ten days. You will have to move the hips around daily, but it is a good method if you are not in a hurry.
Once the rosehips are dry, put in a food processer and roughly chop. You want a fairly coarse mixture, giving you nice pieces of rosehip, rather than a crumb!
Get a sieve, and add a handful of the dried rosehips. Shaking the sieve will let all the fine hairs fall through, leaving the chunkier pieces of dried rosehips behind. Store in an airtight container, and use when you wish.
Discover how to make traditional Vitamin C syrup, soothing teas, and rosehip vinegar in our full guide to How to Use Rosehips: Health Benefits & Easy Recipes
Ask almost any older generation of country children, and they’ll fondly remember rosehips as nature’s original itching powder! The hairy seeds inside cause a surprisingly prickly itch, and a classic childhood prank involved splitting open a few hips to scoop out the seeds, waiting for the perfect moment to slip them down the back of a friend’s shirt collar.
On a sweeter note, the plump, glowing red hips have long been seen in British tradition as a symbol of health, abundance, and warmth. Finding a bush laden with big, ripe rosehips was considered a sign of good fortune and prosperity for the coming winter!
6. Sloes
Now this is an autumn fruit that is abundant in hedgerows, and they are the fruits of blackthorn trees or bushes. This plant is Native to Europe, North Africa and West Asia, yet is also naturalised in Eastern North America and New Zealand.
So let’s get straight into how to identify and use this versatile wild berry that is easy to find for autumn foraging.
Identifying Sloes
Blackthorn trees are low growing, and have a crooked, gnarly look to them. It doesn’t get its name for nothing. All along the woody stems are long, sharp thorns. They are strong too, and can pierce through clothing.
The leaves of blackthorn are small green ovals, and during springtime, blackthorn erupts with white flowers, which are in fact also edible!
The sloe berries appear in autumn, and shine bright blue in colour. This is due to a natural yeast that coats the berry, and when it is rubbed off, it reveals a dark shiny skin underneath. The flesh inside is green, and a little taste will reveal a mouth drying sourness that is unmistakable.
Sloe Picking Tips
Take care when picking sloes, the woody thorns are very sharp! You could wear a good set of gardening gloves, have long sleeves on, or just be very careful.
Make sure you pick ripe fruits for the best flavour. The colour should be a rich, dark purple, and the flesh should squash when you press it. If a few have begun to fall off the bush, then that is also a good indicator that they are ripe.
For the juiciest fruits, wait until there has been a frost before picking.
From classic sloe gin and savoury jellies to traditional blackthorn remedies, explore our guide to Sloes: Traditional Remedies, Sloe Gin & Easy Recipes.
Across European folklore, the blackthorn tree holds a powerful and mysterious reputation. Because of its dark bark and wickedly sharp spines, it was deeply intertwined with witchcraft—traditionally believed to be the wood used for Cailleach’s (the Dark Queen of Winter) staff, as well as witches’ walking sticks and magical wands.
Yet despite its dark associations, blackthorn was equally revered as a sacred tree of protection. Farmers planted dense blackthorn hedges around homesteads, trusting the impenetrable barrier of sharp thorns to ward off unwanted spirits, bad luck, and stray livestock alike.
Beyond magic, country folk put sloes to practical use at home: the deep, rich juice from the berries produces a surprisingly strong, dark dye historically used to colour wool and fabrics in shades of purple, blue, and earthy grey.
7. Wild Plums
Wild plums are a great addition to autumn foraging fayre. They are interesting because there are many different varieties and sub species, due to how easily plum trees cross-pollinate. As a forager, you are likely to come across many types of small plums, either purple or yellow, in a variety of countryside, urban and suburban environments.
I always find that wild plum trees tend to blend in well with other trees and shrubs around them, and often the first sign is a few squashed plums on the floor that get your attention!
Damsons are one type of wild plum, most commonly found in countryside. They look like regular purple plums, only much smaller. Under the purple skin, the flesh is a greenish yellow.
Bullaces are another type of wild plum, with skin that can be different colours from purple to yellow.
While you might find a few plum trees in the wild, for richer pickings suburban parks or wild areas are often a treasure trove for these tasty fruits. You will often find species that have cross pollinated with domestic plum trees from nearby gardens, producing sweeter tasting plums than that of their wild cousins.
Identifying Wild Plums
Leaves – typically dark green, lightly serrated and oval shaped with a pointed tip.
Flowers – blossom appear in spring, grows in clusters or two or three flowers per stem, and is usually white to pink in colour.
Fruits – smooth oval shaped fruits that can be purple, red, yellow or green in colour. Each fruit contains a stone, which is a large, flattened seed, in the centre. There may be a milky coloured coating on the fruits, which is known as ‘bloom’. This is simply a harmless yeast that covers the fruit and can be wiped off is desired.
Stems – the bark of wild plum trees can be rough and craggy. Leaf stems may have hairs.
Nurtitional Benefits of Wild Plums
Wild plums have a host of health benefits, and have more complex set of nutrients due to their mixed breeding, than that of cultivated plums.
One of the most notable aspects of wild plums is how it can ease digestive complaints such as constipation, as well as provided dietary fibre to help keep things moving in the bowels.
The vitamin C in wild plums helps to boost the immune system and fight of colds and viruses.
Wild plums have good amounts of potassium that can help to reduce high blood pressure.
The red or blue pigments in plum skin contains anthocyanins, powerful antioxidants that can help protect cells from damage, may be beneficial in preventing some cancers, and in slowing down the effects of ageing. They also contain the antioxidant quercetin, which studies have shown slows down the onset of conditions such as Alzeimer’s.* (Harvard Health Research).
Low in calories, plums are a great fruit to aid weight-loss, as well as having a low glycemic index that prevent blood sugar spikes and helps you feel fuller for longer.
From immune-boosting antioxidants and brain health benefits to plum cake and clever smoothie hacks, check out our guide to Wild Plums: Health Benefits & Easy Recipes.
Wild plums and their dark cousins, the damson and bullace, carry a rich heritage across the British countryside. The word damson comes from the Latin Prunum damascenum (“Plum of Damascus”), and legionaries brought these trees to Britain over 2,000 years ago—archaeologists regularly find preserved damson and bullace stones buried around ancient Roman camps and Viking-era excavations in York!
In 19th-century Britain, harvesting wild plums and damsons was a vital seasonal economy for rural families. In regions like Shropshire, Kent, and the Lake District, country cottagers famously relied on selling their bumper autumn harvest to local jam factories to pay their entire annual house rent!
Traditional folklore also viewed wild plum trees as symbols of resilience and quiet strength because they yield their rich fruit late in the season, standing firm through early autumn chills to provide sweet sustenance right before winter arrives.
Foraging across the UK throughout the year is one of the most rewarding ways to connect with nature and bring fresh, seasonal flavors into your kitchen. From early spring greens to late autumn berries, our native hedgerows and woodlands offer an incredible variety of free food right on our doorstep.
To keep exploring and planning your harvests throughout the seasons, check out our full guide to Common Wild Edibles in the UK for identification tips, seasonal calendars, and picking advice.
This article helps me to make a decision of making a fruit garden in my home yard. I like the hawthorn that attracts me for its nutritional value. I think it will be great for heart health. Others are looking good also.
Keep up the good posting, Starmer,
Thanks