Online exclusive
Bird watcher and conservationist Peter Langlands adapted his love of science to become one of this country’s few professional foragers, helping top chefs add a point of difference to their menus along the way. Now, he’s sharing his knowledge of what’s safe – and not safe – to take from the wild with the rest of us in a debut book. He talks to online editor Dionne Christian.
On a warm Friday afternoon, Peter Langlands sits in his car at Christchurch’s New Brighton beach on a Zoom call with the listener.co.nz before heading out for a walk to clear his head.
Whereas others might admire the view, Langlands is likely to spot things most of us might miss – like how much food can be found on the beach. With a lifelong interest in the outdoors, he is one of New Zealand’s only professional licensed foragers, sourcing wild produce for chefs around the country and running foraging workshops and group tours for those keen to start to learn what he’s spent a lifetime perfecting.
He can walk out his front door and within minutes find enough ingredients to make a meal fit for a king. In fact, he thinks he could probably survive for a year without having to buy food. As it stands, around half of what he and partner Jackie Phillips eat is foraged.
Before he arrived at New Brighton beach, he’d spent part of the morning foraging in Christchurch’s Red Zone. His haul of 30-40 things included kiwifruit, feijoas, walnuts, different varieties of apples and berries, and wild radishes.
“I think there are a lot of people in the world who are concerned about the way things are going - it certainly feels fairly oppressive,” says Langlands. “It can really help with mental health, act as a reset, for people to know that they can go out foraging or fishing or hunting. It’s a very good way to get people reconnecting with the environment.”
He’s taken the next step in helping foraging enthusiasts and novices alike, as well as nature lovers, by releasing his first book, Foraging New Zealand. Featuring 250 species, it is “a deep dive into the rich tapestry of edible plants and fungi found in the unique ecosystems of New Zealand”.
Meticulously researched and abundantly illustrated, it’s weighty – but portable enough to carry on foraging expeditions – and feels as if it must surely cover the bulk of Aotearoa’s edible flora. But Langlands says he’s barely scratched the surface: there are about 7500 edible species he could have included.
“Deciding what to leave out was tough. We’re really lucky in New Zealand because we’ve got introduced species, but also endemic species. It means we’ve got big diversity. And we can pick up a lot of knowledge, especially through social media, of how to use our [non-endemic] wild plants and fungi because they also occur in other parts of the world.”
Langlands doesn’t suggest that we all head out right now to pick ourselves a salad for lunch. He emphasises the importance of safety, and the book stresses the need for caution and ongoing research, pointing out that many commonly foraged foods haven’t been extensively studied. There are knowledge gaps and evolving recommendations.
He wants readers to be vigilant not just about potential toxins, but also the land they’re foraging from and possible environmental contaminants. Food preparation techniques can also reduce risk.
“Soil health is a really pivotal factor to be aware of”, he says. “There are a lot of areas around Wellington, for example, built on reclaimed landfill sites. Coastal environments away from cities and river margins are good places, and by and large, the edges of cities tend to be good for foraging - but you need to be aware of past land use. We’re more aware of how our actions have impacted on the quality of our environments.”
Langlands started his foraging life as a young child, heading into the Canterbury High Country with his parents, Elizabeth and Ian. His mother was a kindergarten teacher and his father worked in an office. Langlands believes they looked to escape the nine to five by heading away as often as they could.
Wild gooseberries, spearmint, apples and, on the shoreline, samphire are the first foraged foods he recalls eating and, he jokes in his book, he wasn’t shy about putting nature in his mouth. He was watching wading birds at Lake Ellesmere/Te Waihora as a child when he first tried wild samphire.
Given this, a career in botany or horticulture may have looked a distinct possibility. Instead, he studied natural sciences and zoology at the University of Canterbury to pursue his other great outdoor passions – ornithology and marine ecology.
Now in his 50s, Langlands’ career has taken him from researching freshwater and marine issues to working as a fisheries observer, spending over three and a half years on commercial fishing vessels. He has worked for the Department of Conservation on projects related to wading birds, recording godwit/kuaka migration, and establishing a national database for the critically endangered matuku (Australasian bittern), a wetland bird. There have been stints as a fly-fishing guide and tutor.
Common threads through the different jobs and roles include photography and being “wild adjacent” -- allowing Langlands time to develop his foraging skills. “It’s taken me from being a zoologist to an accidental botanist”, he says, adding he spends an average of 200 days working outdoors.
Finely-honed scientific observation skills and a desire to accurately document what he finds have led him to develop a national wild foods database and photographic guide to go with the photo library he already has on Canterbury’s natural history and outdoor recreation sites.
“Having the scientific backing behind me gives me the skills for making accurate identifications, and things like taxonomy are really important for understanding the relationships between things.”
Word of his abilities reached the ears of Vaughan Mabee, of Queenstown’s award-winning Amisfield Bistro. Langlands began foraging for native ingredients, expanding his enterprise to gather for chefs throughout the country. “It really took off with the development of the sort of Noma model [the Michelin-starred Danish restaurant that focused on foraging] when chefs could see how using more locally sourced foraged ingredients added a point of difference to their menus.
“In a short period, just four years, I travelled all around New Zealand to work with a lot of chefs, and took them on field trips to look at what’s available out there.”
Covid put paid to much of that work, he says. Now, through his business Wild Capture, he’s working more with lifestyle-block owners who want to know what food they can find on their land – reflecting his belief that people are seeking increased food security.
So, what does it take to be a good forager? “Observational skills, an awareness of all the different habitats where things occur, developing an understanding of the scope of species and, of course, accurately identifying what you find. There are apps to help - the iNaturalist app is a good one.
“You’ll find rather than just looking at things and thinking that they’re pretty, and photographing them, you can actually eat a lot of what’s out there. But if you’re harvesting a wild resource, I think you should put something back into it. If, for example, you’re foraging in a native forest, then help out with a predator-control programme or something like that.”
He says you can tell immediately when pests such as possums, deer and goats have eaten in areas without restraint because there’s very little of the good stuff left.
Using more of our edible seaweeds is one change Langlands would like to see. Seaweeds get their own chapter in Foraging New Zealand -- he notes we have more than 900 species, of which 25 are useful to foragers.
MPI regulations mean there’s limited commercial seaweed harvesting. “We’re not managing seaweed harvesting in New Zealand commercially and it’s difficult to get permits, so we don’t have a commercial supply of seaweeds for chefs in New Zealand. Being able to integrate and manage that resource would be a positive. It’s used a lot overseas -- in Europe, it’s really popular for vegan and vegetarian dishes.”
He sees it as a failure to manage, at a national and local level, what could be an abundant resource. Like so many things, it comes down to getting various government departments to work together and use science to develop the infrastructure.
He and partner Jackie are using a lot of edible seaweed in their food right now, dehydrating wakame, flash frying it with olive oil, then adding wild fennel seeds to it. Or he just eats it as a crunchy snack.
“It’s got a nice sort of salty and aromatic flavour profile.”
Right now, they’re experimenting with native passionfruit, which he describes as not tasting like passionfruit at all – rather, it has a sort of nutty flavour. He likes to scoop out and dry the seeds and turn them into a kind of dukkah.
“The sky’s the limit, really, with innovation with wild forest foods. That’s the next area I’m keen on doing more about. There’s a lot of the things that can be done, but that probably requires a better kitchen space than I’ve got at the moment…”
