Hermann’s Tortoise Diet: What to Feed Testudo hermanni

Weeds, leaves and edible flowers, fed in variety, high in fibre and calcium and low in protein and sugar. Very little fruit. No animal protein at all.

Hermann’s tortoises are the classic British garden tortoise, and they are among the easier species to feed well here, because our weeds are a reasonable match for what they eat in the wild. The mistakes people make are mostly about proportion rather than about individual foods.

You can confirm you have one by the horny nail at the tip of the tail, the absence of spurs on the thighs, and the scute above the tail being split in two. Five claws on the front feet, not four.

What Hermann’s tortoises eat in the wild

Field research gives a clearer picture for this species than for most.

Testudo hermanni is more than 90% herbivorous, living on succulent and herbaceous plants across Mediterranean scrub, sun-drenched stony hillsides and open woodland. Its diet resembles that of the spur-thighed tortoise, with one useful difference: Hermann’s appear to favour legumes and clovers over grasses.

A study of wild western Hermann’s tortoises in central Italy found the population strictly herbivorous, eating mainly legume leaves and grasses in spring, then shifting to flowers and the unripe fruit of butcher’s broom as those appeared in autumn. Tortoises also ate some rare plants in surprisingly large proportions rather than simply taking whatever was most abundant.

Two things follow for a captive diet. Variety is not decoration, it is the pattern the animal evolved with. And the seasonal shift matters, which is why a bowl that looks identical in April and October is less natural than one that changes.

Wild Hermann’s will occasionally take a snail, a worm or carrion. Veterinary guidance is nonetheless to manage them as strict herbivores in captivity, because opportunistic scavenging in a large territory bears no resemblance to protein offered in a bowl.

Food list for Hermann’s tortoises

Clover is worth a comment given the wild preference for legumes. It stays in the rotation band here rather than the daily one, because a captive tortoise offered a clover-heavy bowl every day is not doing what a wild one does when it picks clover among dozens of other plants across a hillside.

Dandelion sits in the same band, and for a different reason. It is a diuretic and carries oxalates, so it belongs in rotation despite almost every other site calling it a staple.

To check anything not listed, the food checker covers 105 foods with a verdict for the Mediterranean group. The full chart is printable if you would rather have it on paper.

UK weeds and flowers to grow

Britain suits this species better than you might expect. Most of what a Hermann’s tortoise should eat grows here as a weed.

Worth learning to identify: plantain, sow thistle, mallow, hawkbit, bristly oxtongue, nipplewort, dandelion, clover, chickweed and bramble. All fourteen foods on our regular list grow in the UK. See best weeds for tortoises for identification.

Worth planting: hibiscus, viola and pansy, calendula, campanula and violet all establish easily and give you flowers through much of the season. Growing your own tortoise food covers sowing an edible pen.

A planted, securely fenced outdoor run is the single best feeding arrangement for this species. It lets the tortoise select for itself, spreads intake across many plants, and makes it work for food rather than finding it in one place.

Two cautions on foraging. Never pick from verges, sprayed lawns, or anywhere slug pellets have been used. And plants bought from garden centres arrive pesticide-treated, so grow them on for several weeks and harvest the new growth.

How fruit and vegetables fit

Fruit is where honest guidance gets more interesting than the usual flat prohibition.

Wild Hermann’s tortoises do eat fruit, specifically unripe butcher’s broom berries in autumn. That is not an argument for feeding banana. A small unripe wild berry taken seasonally, among a diet of scrub vegetation, is a different thing from cultivated fruit bred for sugar content.

The practical position: fruit sparingly, small amounts, occasionally, and never as a routine part of the diet. It is not toxic and it is not a staple. Can tortoises eat fruit goes through the differences between species groups, since forest tortoises work quite differently.

Vegetables are the weaker option throughout. Most are bred for human tastes, which means low fibre and higher sugar or starch than anything on a Mediterranean hillside. Root vegetables are the poorest of the lot, being high in readily digestible carbohydrate and short of calcium relative to phosphorus. Salad leaves are mostly water.

Brassicas sit in between. Kale and spring greens are useful in rotation, helped in kale’s case by an iodine content that offsets some of its goitrogens. Cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower are more heavily goitrogenic and better left out entirely. The vegetables guide has the detail.

Foods to avoid

The list that matters most is short. Animal protein in any form, including dog and cat food, meat, mealworms and boiled egg, causes accelerated growth, shell deformity, liver disease and renal damage in a herbivorous tortoise. Peas, beans and pulses do the same through protein and phytic acid.

After that come the plants that interfere with calcium or thyroid function: spinach, rhubarb, parsley and celery for oxalates, the heavier brassicas for goitrogens. Then the outright toxic garden plants, including buttercup, daffodil, foxglove and lily of the valley.

The full list with reasoning is at foods tortoises should not eat.

One caveat worth knowing. A British Chelonia Group paper on wild Hermann’s in Montenegro documented a number of food plants containing toxins or potentially damaging compounds, eaten apparently without harm. Wild tortoises are not making a mistake. They are taking small amounts of many plants, and their slow fermentative digestion may buffer the effect. It is not evidence that a captive tortoise can be offered the same plant in quantity, and it is not a reason to relax about what grows in your garden.

Supplements and UVB

Calcium and vitamin D3 do most of the work here.

Tortoises need calcium in quantity, and D3 to absorb it. D3 is synthesised from UVB, which does not pass through glass, so time outdoors or an appropriate lamp is required. Without it, a well-fed tortoise still develops metabolic bone disease. Their natural habitat tends to be calcium-rich ground under strong Mediterranean sun, and a British garden in April is neither.

Supplementation matters most in winter, when the diet leans on shop-bought greens with a weaker mineral profile. Calcium and supplements covers what to use and how often.

Water is the other easily overlooked item. Keep it available at all times and bathe regularly, as water and hydration explains.

Pellets are a separate argument. Manufacturers position them as a complete diet while the Tortoise Trust recommends avoiding mass-market pelleted products entirely. Both cases are set out in our guide to tortoise pellets.

Feeding hatchlings

Hatchlings and juveniles have the least margin for error, because bone problems established during growth do not reverse.

British Chelonia Group guidance is one feed a day, portioned so it is cleared in about twenty minutes. Weigh and measure regularly rather than judging by eye, since a growing tortoise that looks healthy can be growing too fast. Keep the diet weed-based from the start rather than beginning with supermarket salad and intending to improve it later.

More in baby tortoise food and how often to feed a tortoise.

Adults hibernate, and feeding stops several weeks beforehand so the gut can empty. See feeding before hibernation for timing, and winter feeding if yours does not hibernate.

For the wider group, the Mediterranean tortoise diet page covers what Hermann’s shares with the spur-thighed, marginated and Horsfield’s tortoises, and tortoise diet explains the nutritional reasoning behind all of it.

Guidance here draws on the British Chelonia Group, the Tortoise Trust, published field research and veterinary sources, checked as described in our sources and review policy. It is husbandry information rather than clinical advice, and our veterinary disclaimer explains where that line sits.

Last reviewed: September 2026.