Storying Salicornia: Cuisines, Coastlines and Salty Futures in Europe

This article focuses on the cultural lives of the saline plant salicornia and its entanglement with cuisines, nature conservation and market dynamics across European coastlines. A succulent native to salt marshes, beaches and other brackish ecosystems, salicornia has a long history of being foraged; throughout the 2010s and early 2020s, it has evolved into a gourmet ingredient, resulting in its commercial cultivation. Yet the plant’s growth, harvesting and commercial availability are all threaded through with complex interrelations between coastal communities, their environments and their envisioned futures. Using case studies from culinary nature conservation and climate justice activism in Venice, Italy, and Burgas, Bulgaria, we show how salicornia comes to embody the strategies communities employ to affirm and uphold their stakes in their coastal wetland landscapes. In this way, our own rendition of salicornia offers a fusion of blue humanities, food cultural history and both critical plant and conservation studies.