The particulars
Season
May–June
Picked
By hand, a few from each tree
Tastes of
Lemon peel, pine, green resin
Field notes
Every May the Norway spruce puts out new growth at the end of each branch: a soft, pale green tuft, wrapped at first in a papery brown cap. For about three weeks it is tender enough to eat and tastes more of lemon than of forest.
We pick in managed woodland with the owner’s blessing, from late May into June, and never from the leader or from trees under shoulder height. A tip taken is a branch that will not grow this year, so we take a few from each tree and move on.
Back at the shed the caps are rubbed off and the tips are bruised lightly and steeped cold for a day with strips of lemon zest. The resin stays in the tree, mostly. What ends up in the can is the bright, green part of the smell of a wood after rain.
