Lower Saxony: Police seize 40 kilograms of wild garlic

EA police patrol in Lower Saxony made an unusual find for this time of year on Friday night: in a forest parking lot between Lauenstein and Haus Harderode, the officers came across around forty kilograms of fresh wild garlic, which a 30-year-old man had stowed in black plastic bags in his trunk .

The driver of the VW Golf stated that he had driven specifically from Gelsenkirchen in North Rhine-Westphalia to Lower Saxony to pick the tasty wild plants in the forests of the Ith mountain range.

Police suspect a commercial background

The season for wild garlic, which is often misleadingly and untruthfully marketed as a “low-odor alternative to garlic”, usually begins in mid-March. This year, however, the leaves of the plant sprout from the forest floor much earlier due to the extremely mild February weather.

However, anyone who wants to pick the wild garlic leaves must follow the so-called “hand bouquet regulation” in the Federal Nature Conservation Act. Accordingly, anyone is allowed to “carefully remove small quantities for personal use” of flowers, mushrooms, fruits, mosses, twigs and wild herbs that grow in areas that are not particularly protected.

The man in the forest parking lot told the patrol officers that he had also taken the forty kilograms of wild garlic out of the forest at night just for his own needs. However, the police did not believe the man's statements and suspected a commercial background. The police commissioner in Bad Münder said that administrative offense proceedings had been initiated against the man for violating the Federal Nature Conservation Act.