Allium ursinum L. (wild garlic) is a perennial herbaceous plant from the Amaryllidaceae family, distributed in temperate regions of Europe and Asia. It normally grows in deciduous woodlands with moist soils.
Besides being another cool green thing to put in your salad (which is already good enough), fresh wild garlic contains high doses of alliin, a sulfoxide that gets converted into allicin, catalyzed by the enzyme alliinase, when the plant tissue gets crushed. Allicin an organosulfur mollecule with strong antimicrobal properties, as well as a role in supporting human cardiovascular health. Allicin is responsible for the specific smell of fresh garlic and its purpose in nature is to protect the plant from the pests. Aliin and aliinase are quite stable, but aliicin is not, hence the well-known recommendations to eat the garlic or wild garlic freshly chopped in order to get the most health benefits from it. It can take less than a minute for alliin to get converted to allicin, which soon starts to decompose into simpler mollecules.
Wild garlic recently started growing in parts of continental Croatia, giving the forests a beautiful garlic-like smell. In these interesting times I hope it is still considered morally ok to take a bike ride to your nearest forest and help yourself to some of nature's goodies. Or maybe I'm kind of a savage. Nevertheless, no humans were encountered in the process of picking these healthy leaves.
Živili!
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