The gathering of wild asparagus, li spirnë, is a practice of vegetal foraging widely attested throughout the Gran Sasso area of the province of Teramo, linked to springtime and to the widespread intergenerational habit of traversing woods and uncultivated land in search of Asparagus acutifolius, a perennial plant of the Asparagaceae family characterised by a woody branched structure and a needle-like tip that, once mature, makes it easily recognisable even from a distance. From the mother plant, locally called the mammara, the young shoots emerge in springtime: the edible part and the primary object of the painstaking gathering activity.

In Villa Petto di Colledara, a hillside hamlet on the eastern slopes of the massif, the practice reveals the essential structure of an activity in which botanical knowledge, meticulous familiarity with the territory and silent concentration coexist alongside a playful and recreational dimension. Gathering takes place between March and late spring, with variations depending on seasonal conditions and slope exposure. Foragers traverse oak woods, broom thickets and uncultivated or stony areas, identifying the mother plants and inspecting the surrounding ground in search of the young shoots that have emerged nearby. The technique is minimal: the shoot is detached manually from the base or cut with the fingers, leaving the mother plant intact and preserving the underground rhizome from which new shoots will continue to emerge over the following days and weeks.

Local taxonomy distinguishes the shoots according to colour and flavour: those exposed to sunlight, darker and tending towards violet, are considered more flavourful and richer in iron; those that grow in shaded positions or beneath tall grass, lighter green in colour, are regarded as less intense on the palate. This empirical distinction, transmitted orally among foragers, finds partial confirmation in botany: exposure effectively influences the concentration of pigments and certain secondary metabolites.

Practitioners perceive gathering as an activity with both sporting and contemplative value: it requires good physical fitness, the ability to move across steep and uneven terrain, and an eye trained to identify the shoots among leaves and grass. It is also, very frequently, a relational and competitive experience: people go out in the company of friends or relatives, compare the quantities gathered at the end of the day, and exchange stories about the best spot, the bunch discovered, or the unexplored area.

From a historical and social perspective, the gathering of wild asparagus shoots long represented an important form of dietary supplementation within peasant subsistence economies. Maurizio Cruciani recalls how, in his mother’s memories, asparagus was “highly sought after” during the decades of rural poverty, because it was enough to “have a few hens and some eggs, and you could make an omelette in the evening”. Even today, asparagus omelette remains the reference dish of the local tradition, prepared according to the family recipe with asparagus washed and dried, cooked directly in the frying pan with oil and salt over a low flame and without prior blanching, then bound together with egg.