The first days of March bring a particular excitement for anyone who pays attention to plants. The light is changing. Something shifts in the hedgerows. The very first green appears, tentative and tender but making its declaration. Spring’s first herbs are among the most medicinally potent of the year: plants that have been concentrating their energy through winter and are now sending it upward in a surge of new growth.
Nettles: The First Great Harvest
Stinging nettles (Urtica dioica) appear early and grow vigorously once they begin. Look for them in nitrogen-rich disturbed ground: the edges of compost heaps, the backs of gardens, hedgerow bases, and stream banks. The young shoots in early spring are the finest thing the plant produces: tender, rich in minerals and chlorophyll, and when gathered with gloves and dried or blanched, extraordinary as both food and medicine. Pick the top four to six leaves of young plants before they flower.
Cleavers: The Sticky Medicine
Cleavers (Galium aparine), the plant with tiny hooked hairs that attach to everything, is one of the best spring lymphatic herbs. As a fresh plant cold-infused in water overnight (a handful of fresh cleavers in a jug of cold water, left overnight in the fridge and strained the next day), it makes a gentle but effective lymphatic tonic particularly appropriate for the spring clearing tradition.
Dandelion: Root and Leaf at Spring Best
March and April dandelion leaves are most bitter and most medicinally concentrated before the plant flowers. These early bitter leaves are excellent as food and as a digestive tonic. The root can be dug in early spring when it is at its most resinous and medicinally concentrated.
Elder: Watching and Waiting
The elder tree shows its first leaves in March. The leaves are not medicinally used in the same way as flowers and berries, but noting where your elder trees are and in what condition they are emerging from winter sets you up for the elderflower harvest in May and the elderberry harvest in September.
The Herbalist Codex app has full identification and harvest guides for all these spring herbs, with notes on the specific window for each and how to prepare what you gather at peak freshness. Step out and see what has arrived.