Home · Field Guide · Dabberlocks
Dabberlocks
Badderlocks, honeyware, winged kelp — the Atlantic’s own wakame, and the prize of the lowest tides.
By Jayson Byles, forager & chef · Updated September 2026
Dabberlocks (Alaria esculenta) — spelled badderlocks along much of the Scottish coast, and honeyware in older Scots — is the kelp of the exposed lower shore: a single long olive blade with a pale midrib running its whole length and tender wings either side. It is the closest thing these islands have to Japanese wakame, which is its cousin, and it is the seaweed we build our ginger, carrot & chilli pickle on. It is also the one that asks most of the forager: it lives right at the bottom of the shore, on rock that only the biggest tides and the calmest seas will give you.
How do you identify dabberlocks (badderlocks)?
The midrib settles it. No other British kelp carries a distinct pale rib running the full length of the blade — run a thumb down the centre and you will feel it as a firm spine. The blade is long, up to two metres and around 15 cm wide, olive to golden, with soft “wings” either side of the rib that tear easily in the swell, so older blades often look ragged at the edges. At the base, clustered on the short stipe, sit the sporophylls: small paddle-shaped fronds that carry next season’s spores. Below them the holdfast grips bare rock. Its neighbour and look-alike is sugar kelp — crinkled like antique fabric, and with no midrib — which prefers the more sheltered corners; dabberlocks takes the wave-washed points that sugar kelp will not sit on. Oarweed has a stipe and a fan of straps, never a single ribbed blade.
Where and when to find it
Exposed, wave-washed rock at and below the low-water mark — the seaward points and skerries that take the full swell, never the quiet inner shore. On the East Neuk it shows itself only on the big spring tides around each new and full moon, and only when the sea is calm enough to stand where it grows; our tide planner marks those days. Season is spring into early summer: the blades grow through late winter and are at their tender best from around April to June. By late summer the wings are usually tattered and the eating is in the midrib and the pickle jar.
How do you harvest it so it grows back?
Dabberlocks is the seaweed where cut, never pull matters most, because the holdfast and the sporophylls are the whole future of the plant. Make one clean cut 3–4 inches above the sporophylls, leaving them and the holdfast intact on the rock; take the blade, leave the base, and the same plant will feed you next year. A fully mature blade is two metres of dinner, so a few blades make a meal — be selective, take from spread-out plants rather than clearing a patch, and never take more than a third of what is in front of you. The anatomy, and exactly where the knife goes, is in Parts of the Dabberlocks.
What does it taste like, and how do you cook it?
Tender and nutty with a clean sweetness — wakame’s flavour with a Scottish accent. The wings are the eating: raw, shredded into a salad or a slaw; dried and broken into crisps, or crumbled over rice and eggs; blanched for thirty seconds into a miso-style broth, where it turns bright green and silky; or pickled — our ginger, carrot & chilli dabberlocks pickle keeps the seaweed’s snap right through the jar. The midrib is tougher: slice it thin across the grain for crunch, or dry it and grind it into a seasoning. Like the other kelps it is rich in iodine, so a little goes a long way, and a very long way for anyone with a thyroid condition.