(20 votes, average: 3.15 out of 5)

Fool’s Watercress

Edible

Autumn

Spring

Summer

Winter

View Full Size Image

The easiest way to distinguish fool's from true watercress is the smell, fool's watercress smells of raw carrot, watercress smells of cress.

Although it is usually described as poor mans cress it tastes nothing like cress so it is an unfair comparison, it tastes pleasantly of carrot and is great as a cooked green vegetable.

Hedgerow Type
Common Names	Fool’s Watercress, Poor Mans Watercress
Synonyms	Apium nodiflorum
Scientific Name	Heloscadium nodiflorum
Season Start	Mar
Season End	Dec

Please note that each and every hedgerow item you come across may vary in appearance to these photos.

Leaves

Oval and a bit more serrated than true Watercress.

Flowers

Small white flowers with five petals arranged in an umbel (umbrella like) on stems emerging from the leaf stem joint.

Stem

Smooth, round and hollow.

Habitat

Slow moving shallow water, ponds and wet ditches.

Possible Confusion

True Watercress, pictured, but it smells of cress unlike the carrot smelling Fool’s Watercress. Lesser Water Parsnip, Berula erecta which is more upright, smells of parsnip and has a ring or ridge around the base of the leaf stems and more serrated leaf edges but is not poisonous so this wouldn’t be a fatal mistake to make.

Smell

Strongly of carrot.

Taste

Carrot.

Collecting

When collecting Fool’s Watercress from the wild it must be cooked as out of site upstream there might be sheep and if so there is the potential for liver flukes which can cause fascioliasis, a nasty liver disease.

Back to hedgerow guide