Between the last Winter Chanterelles and the first St George's Mushrooms in late April there is a long hungry gap. Two fungi keep going regardless, and the hedgerow starts to offer green things a good two months before anyone expects it.
What is still fruiting
Velvet Shank, Flammulina velutipes, is a genuine winter mushroom. Tacky orange caps in clusters on dead elm, ash and beech, with a distinctive dark velvety stem base. It survives being frozen solid and carries on afterwards. The stems are too tough to bother with; take the caps.
Jelly Ear, Auricularia auricula-judae, is on elder all year but is at its best after winter rain when it is plump and rubbery. Little flavour of its own, but superb texture in a broth.
Both are wood-dwellers, which means both share ground with Galerina marginata and with Sulphur Tuft. Check the spore print.
The first greens
Cleavers, the sticky goosegrass that clings to your sleeves, comes up early and the young growing tips are good raw or briefly wilted. Take the top few inches only.
Bristly Oxtongue, Helminthotheca echioides - older books call it Picris echioides - produces a rosette of rough bristly leaves that are perfectly good cooked once the bristles soften.
Wintercress, Barbarea verna, gives peppery leaves through the cold months in damp ground and on disturbed verges.
The warning that matters more than any mushroom
Cow Parsley shoots up early and looks like an invitation. So does Hemlock, Conium maculatum, and so does Hemlock Water-dropwort, Oenanthe crocata, which is the most poisonous plant in Britain and which grows along exactly the wet ditches where you will be looking.
Hemlock has purple blotching on a smooth hairless stem and smells foul and mousy when crushed. Hemlock Water-dropwort has parsley-like leaves and a cluster of white dahlia-like roots. Both are lethal in small quantities.
If you are not completely certain about an umbellifer, leave every umbellifer alone. There is nothing in that family worth the risk to a beginner.