AN EXPERT on edible plants has been teaching Britain's Armed Forces how to survive behind enemy lines by foraging for wild food.
Marcus Harrison from Lostwithiel is an authority on what can be eaten and what species to avoid, and regularly dines on nettles, brambles and weeds when running his courses.
Mr Harrison's Wild Food School in the town conducts courses on foraging and the safe preparation and cooking of plants not normally found on the dining table.
He has published numerous books on the subject and his latest is entitled The Armageddon Cookbook And Doomsday Kitchen.
He has now been teaching UK service personnel how to survive by gathering edible plants, and ways of extracting drinkable water from plants including trees.
Mr Harrison has just completed a ten-day course with survival training instructors from the Armed Forces at RAF St Mawgan, who will pass on what they have learnt to their students.
Mr Harrison has been interested in edible wild plants since he was a child, after picking up a book on the subject published in 1917.
He said the courses at St Mawgan involved instructors from the DSTO, the Defence SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Extraction) Training Organisation, which is based there.
"The course I run is to instruct Armed Forces personnel on what is edible and what toxic species to avoid, which can maximise their chances of survival if they become separated from their units," said Mr Harrison.
"Fluid intake is also vital and I teach the instructors how to extract water from certain plants and trees, and obviously that's very important if someone is trapped behind enemy lines after three or four days.
"During the course, I spend two or three nights with the instructors sleeping in the open air, although I always pitch my tent a good distance away from them to avoid overhearing something I shouldn't."
The students were also taught to kill and cook wild animals, but that wasn't his department, he said.
Eating wild food has become topical lately, but Mr Harrison said his interest dated back more than 35 years, as he was raised on a farm until his late teens and acquired an instinctive understanding of the English countryside, terrain and landscapes generally.
"People might think I'm a vegetarian, but nothing could be further from the truth; I'm very partial to steak and chips," he said.
