Shooting Times & Country Magazine
It’s time to join the sea beet generation
John Wright heads to the seaside in search of the sweet and succulent leaves of one of his favourite wild plants, Beta vulgaris ssp maritima
People often ask me what my favourite wild plant is. This is always a difficult question and my mind changes every now and then, with sea buckthorn often battling it out with penny buns, but sea beet is up there with them. Of all the edible leaf vegetables, it is certainly the best and something I collect every time I visit the seaside.
I am writing about sea beet in October not because it is at its best then, but because it is still commonly found in excellent condition when so much else has battened down the hatches until spring. Indeed, we have a tradition in our household to collect it on Christmas Eve to go with our dinner the next day. Such a tradition may, however, be harder to maintain in climates less accommodating than that found on my own south coast.
Sea beet is very common, easy to find and, unlike so many difficult species, quite unmistakable. The leaves are distinctly pointed ovals with a long petiole (leaf stem), dark green in colour with a shiny or waxy look to them. Sometimes, the petioles and leaves are beetroot-red.
The leaves are very thick for their size, a frequent characteristic of plants found in the drying conditions of the seaside. However, their size varies enormously, from a postage stamp to A4, with the quality unusually consistent across the entire range. In spring, multiple-leafed shoots grow from the basal rosette of leaves, which eventually produce masses of tiny, clustered flowers. If you have ever had Swiss chard, beetroot or spinach run to seed, you will know what I mean.
Sea beet is found nearly all the way around the coast of Britain — with a few gaps on eastern and far northern coasts — and seldom strays far from the sound of waves and smell of the sea. It is found on the clifftops, the upper beach, in cracks along the promenade, beach-side car parks and the bottoms of cliffs and seaside hedges.
In most places, it grows in edible condition all year round, with a hiatus in late spring and early summer when the basal rosette largely disappears, the energy being transferred to the flower spikes. Even then, the great genetic variations displayed in this plant ensure that some won’t flower at all in some years, so there is nearly always one or two to be found with a full complement of edible leaves.
Though the developed flower spike is inedible, the very young spike is extremely succulent and of excellent flavour. The leaves alone are best during the weeks before the flower spike first appears.
It is a perennial plant that sports a substantial and (just about) edible root. This is quite large at perhaps
10in long and a good inch in diameter. Unfortunately (or not), digging up the roots of wild plants is forbidden without permission from the landowner, so it is unlikely that you will get the chance to (legally) try it.
Mesolithic feast
Ancient humans had no such laws and remnants of a Mesolithic dinner of sea beet root have been discovered in archaeological digs in Denmark. Frankly, no self-respecting modern forager who wasn’t starving would dig up this source of tasty leaves.
Along with wild staples such as fat hen and spear-leaved orache, sea beet is in the same botanical family as spinach, the goosefoot family.
The leaves of sea beet can be used in the same way, with the exception of a salad, where you might find them a little too bitter. That bitterness soon
“Apart from tasting better than spinach, sea beet does not suffer the spinach effect”
disappears with cooking to produce a sweet and succulent leaf.
Apart from tasting better than spinach, sea beet does not suffer the ‘spinach effect’. We are all familiar, no doubt, with spinach reducing from a bucket or huge plastic bag full to a half a cup full of soggy green when cooked. Sea beet does not do this, its substantial nature leaving the leaves intact and with a distinct bite. It can
be siply steamed, boiled or sweated in a little butter. Ten minutes is usually more than enough.
I once ran several seashore forays for a restaurant where a chef went with the maxim “if they grow together, they go together”. He made a truly superb tart consisting of dulse seaweed, smoked pollack and sea beet. It was the best tart I had ever had, though it did pall rather by the sixth day.
Beet connections
The botanical name of sea beet is
Beta vulgaris ssp maritima. There are several other Beta vulgaris subspecies, one or another of which have been cultivated to produce or contribute to familiar dinner-table delights. Such efforts have been made since, or perhaps before, the Babylonians, with sea beet believed to have been one of the more unlikely inhabitants of the Hanging Gardens.
I have doubts about the modern subspecies. It is either to the original Beta vulgaris, or its natural subspecies, that we owe perpetual spinach, Swiss chard, beetroot, mangel-wurzel and sugar beet. It is extraordinary that a single species could produce so much variety, but the variation in sea beet is a clue.
The red on some of the stems and leaves is reflected in Swiss chard and beetroot, while the sweet and slightly beetrooty flavour of the roots and the distinct concentric rings show further connections. We should be thankful for all of these, with the obvious exception of beetroot, a vile vegetable that tastes of dirt.