Heather

"The heather is a splendid carpet, flowers crowd for miles around. Hurry, come! In a few years the heath a grainfield will be." H.C. Andersen was wrong: the heath has survived. There are also many forces at work ensuring that it doesn’t turn into forest either, and that you can still forage in this wonderful landscape.

  • Where to Find It

    You'll find heather in open heaths and other expanses where the sun beats down and inhibits most other kinds of plant life, and where the soil is acidic and somewhat exhausted. Raised bogs, edges of woods, and pastures are good places to look for heather. It's especially common on Jutland’s heaths.

  • Grasslands.
  • When to Find it

    Heather blooms from the end of August until September.

  • Flowers: August, September.
  • How to Spot It

    Heather is a small, evergreen bush that blooms with clusters of white, violet, or dark red flowers that look like tiny pots. When in bloom, the plant spread a very special scent of warm spices over the heath. It has a woody stem that grows a couple of centimeters thick, and side shoots that are short and studded with tiny dark-green leaves with mosaic patterns. The heather plant rarely grows taller than half a meter.

  • How to Pick It

    As a forager you'll be interested in the flowers, which grow densely on the branches at the end of summer and can be pulled off by hand.

Risk of misidentifying the plant