Skip to content

Your account

With an account, your progress (modules read, XP, badges, cards, notebook, pack, challenges) follows you on every device. Without one, it stays in this browser.

or
Harmless🍽️ Edible

🌿 Glasswort (Samphire)

Salicornia europaea · Amaranthaceae (Chenopodiaceae)

🐚 Coastline
🧠 To remember it“Marsh samphire salts itself” - no need to add salt to a vegetable that grows with its feet in seawater.
Glasswort (Samphire) — Salicornia europaea

🔍 Identify it without mistakes

Small succulent annual plant, with no visible leaves, made of articulated bright green cylindrical stem segments turning red at the end of the season, branched into small dense bushes close to the ground.

  1. fleshy stems articulated into successive segments, with no distinct leaves
  2. bright green in summer, turning red in autumn
  3. grows in dense mats on mudflats and salt marshes flooded at high tide
Size10-30 cm
Floweringsummer, tiny flowers embedded in the stem segments
Habitatsalt marshes, mudflats and coastal marshes worldwide, areas regularly flooded by salt or brackish water

⚠️ Not to be confused with

Sea Spurge (Euphorbia paralias)modérée — toxic and irritating milky white latex (vomiting, skin and digestive burns), growing on the same beaches and dunes as glasswort

To tell them apart: glasswort has no visible leaves at all, formed entirely of fleshy articulated stem segments that only release clear, salty sap; sea spurge bears small, clearly visible fleshy blue-green leaves spiraling along the stem, and releases a milky white latex as soon as it is broken — this latex is the decisive test, glasswort never produces it

🍽️ Eating it

Partsentire fleshy stems, preferably young ones
SeasonMay-September, before fruiting which hardens the stem
Tastenaturally very salty, crunchy, slight iodized flavor

Preparation : eaten raw in salads (crunchy and salty) or briefly blanched/sautéed in butter like a vegetable, without adding any extra salt

💊 Healing with it

no major documented medicinal use beyond its value as a highly mineralized vegetable

Level of evidence : traditional use — Wikipedia - Salicornia

⚠️ should be limited by people on a low-salt diet due to its very high natural sodium content; some species contain saponins that can be potentially irritating in high doses

🪓 Other bushcraft uses

  • seeds of some species pressed for an edible oil
  • ongoing research on glasswort as a source of low-sodium salt substitutes
Sources (1)

No entry replaces a certain identification in the field, or medical advice. When in doubt: don't eat it. If ingestion is suspected: poison control or 112/911.