Rock Samphire (Crithmum maritimum)

Rock Samphire is quite common round the coasts of Southern Europe and South and South-West England, Wales and Southern Ireland, but it is less common in the North and rare in Scotland. It does not occur in North America. In Australia it is very rare to find Rock Samphire in a (Herb) nursery. And yes, I do grow samphire plants. I will have them available for sale soon.

Rock Samphire is a perennial, frost hardy and easy to grow. It grows in its native environment from rocks and shingle and on cliffs. Pickled samphire was once so popular and saleable that men risked their necks to collect it from the cliffs. It grew abundantly on the Isle of Wight where, according to Coles, 'there is so great plenty that it is gathered, (yet not without danger) for some have ventured so far upon the craggy precipices that they have fallen down and broken their necks, so that '-making a rather sick joke-'it might be said they paid'. Coles described how the plant was pickled and sent to London and other places, 'of all the sawces (which are very many) there is none so pleasant, none so familiar and agreeable to Man's body as samphire, both for digestion of meates; breaking of the stone, and voiding of Gravell in the Reines and Bladder'.

Gerard wrote in 1597: The leaves kept in pickle and eaten in sallads with oile and vinegar is a pleasant sauce for meat, wholesome for the stoppings of the liver, milt and kidnies.  Samphire leaves look like succulents and are at their best and freshest in spring, until early summer, before the plant flowers.
Culpepper wrote fifty years later, that it had in his days gone out of fashion, for it is well known almost to everybody that ill digestions and obstructions are the cause of most of the diseases which the frail nature of man is subject to; both of which might be remedied by a more frequent use of this herb.