The Invasive Edges Where Familiar Things Grow

Foraging in France, Figs, feral margins, and the forgotten fruits of spring

In France, there are an increasing number of wild spaces, but the country is still mostly partitioned into very controlled natural spaces. Our old neighborhood had blocks and blocks of Very Square Trees that had a lot of work put into them to keep them that way. But this country has been divided up, cultivated, owned, worked, and more for hundreds of years on end. There are beautiful green spaces, but still so many of them are cut into farming squares, divided by roads, etc. They are settled or they have been settled. Then resettled, then abandoned and resettled again

The idea of “wild” plants isn’t so clear - and it wasn’t in the US either, but there are more spaces where plants have been left to develop communities amongst themselves.

Foraging here isn’t about untouched wilderness. It’s about odd little spaces in between, what grows on walls, in disturbed land, old edges, forgotten corners.

And there are a lot of those.

This post is about feral figs (unripe and green ones), some othe…