Edible Wild Flowers

Edible Wild Flowers

by Green Deane

Wild Garlic putting on cloves

The author of “Florida’s Incredible Wild Edibles” DickDeuerling, now in his 90s, taught me several decades ago that: If it looks like a garlic and smells like a garlic it is a garlic and you can eat it. If it looks like an onion and smells like an onion you can eat it. They must have both, however, look and aroma. We have a lily here in Florida, for example, that looks like an onion but no aroma, and raw it can be deadly. Look and aroma, like horse and carriage and love and marriage. Together.Alliums can also be deceptive. Locally the “wild onions” (read really garlics) grow their cloves on the top of the plant, not underground. And if I remember correctly, an onion always has a singular bulb per plant where as the garlic as sectioned cloves. At any rate there are some 400 species if you include onions, garlic, chives, shallots, and closely related ramps/leeks, the latter having wide leaves. Usually the flowers have a stronger flavor than the leafy parts, and the developing seed head even stronger flavor. Blossoms are usually white but can also be pink. Onion stems are round, as are chives but smaller. Garlic leaves are flat.

Alpine Cress

As the name suggests, you have to go up to find Alpine Cress. It’s no flatland flower, and also as the name suggests, it is in the greater mustard muster. Alpine Cress, Arabisalpina, grows in the mountainous areas of Europe, north Africa, eastern Asia, and the Isle of Skye (Cuillin Ridge.) It is also found in North America including Kentucky, Virginia, West Virgina, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Maine, most of Canada, and Greenland, hardy little soul that it is. It likes to grow in damp gravel and screes. Not surprisingly it can be found in many places intentionally planted in rock gardens. The young leaves and flowers are a good substitute for cress. They are edible raw or cooked and are often mixed with other greens as a flavoring.

Alyssum

Mat-forming Alyssums recently underwent a genus and species name change. They were Allyssumlobularia and now they are Lobulariamaritima. A native of the Mediterranean areas it has traveled far and is found 41 states most of Canada.The genus name lobularia comes from dead Latinand means small globe, referring to the shape of the flower cluster. Maritima refers to its habitat, meaning it likes to grow near the seashore and is somewhat salt tolerant. . Leaves, young stems, and flowers are used for flavoring in salads or any dish where pungency is desired. The flowers candy well. The blossom are honey-scented.

It’s difficult to imagine a kitchen or herbal medicine cabinet without Angelica around someplace. Angelica has long been valued for its seeds, stems, leaves and shoots. The first two for flavoring — such as in Chartreuse — and second pair as cooked greens, particularly in the Izu Islands of Japan where there are a favored addition to springtime tempura. They have a celery-like flavor. North American Indians, however, smoked the leaves for medicinal purposes. Celery-ish may its green parts be the blossoms, however, have a light anise flavor. Don’t confuse the blossom with Poison Hemlock or you will be seeing angels not angelica.

Apple Blossom, eat only a few

Every seed in every Apple is different than the parent apple trees. Every apple you eat of the same kind is a clone because there was only one original apple tree with that apple. That’s how there came to be some 7,000 different kinds of apples over the years. With mechanization that number has about half. Around the home I grew up in were many wild apples of no distinct variety, just something that sprouted from a tossed away core. Each one unique. What most folks don’t know is that you can eat apple blossoms. Soft scented, floral, only consume a few at a time because they contain a precursor to cyanide which gets released during digestion. A little is tasty. Too many is a tummy ache. A lot is a trip to the hospital.

Basswood Blossom

My first association of the Basswood tree was not with flowers but its soft young stems. My father used to make home wood pipes out of apple wood then use a basswood stem for the pipe stem. If the cattail is the supermarket of the swamp the Basswood tree is the supermarket of the forest. Read about it in another article. However, its blossom are edible and make a well-known tea though you may know of it by its other name, Linden tree and Linden tea. The Linden tree is nearly impossible to misidentify in that it is the only one in North America that has what looks like a large tongue depressor under the blossom. The flowers are delicate and have a honey flavor.

Bee Balm

Bee Balm is another huge selection of flowers closely related to the mint family, in this case Monardapunctata. Intense, aromatic, the flavors can vary not only species to species but between cultivated specimens and their wild siblings. The leaves are often used to make tea, some with calming qualities. Often the entire plant is placed in the house to give a pleasant aroma as it dries. The blossoms tend to reflect the flavor of the parent plant but usually have hints of oregano to thyme to citrus flavors.

Paper Birch Catkins

There are several advantages to living where it never snows, and a few disadvantages. Many plants need cooler weather to reproduce or fruit or just thrive. Birches do not like Florida though they can be planted in the norther bounds of the state. Birches were a common tree of my youth, white birch, golden birch and paper birch. Birches can be tapped like maples. The twigs and catkins have been used as a wintergreen-ish flavoring for as long as we have written records about North America. And of course there were the famous birch bark canoes. What you also might not know is that an epoxy-like tar can be extracted from birchwood. The original super gule. While most birches have edible parts we are interested in this article in the Paper Birch, Betulapapyrifera. Very young leaves, shoots and catkins can be eaten in salads or stirfried. The sap makes a drink, a syrup or a sugar, depending upon how long you heat it up. It can also be used to make brich beer and vinegar. A tea can be made from the leaves and the wood used to smoke meat.

Bitter Gourd Blossom

The Bitter Gourd, Momordicacharantia, will never with a popularity contest with most people. Though it is a plant that serves us well with many parts edible and medicinal uses it also is bitter and smells like an old, wet, rubber gym shoe. Not exactly a match made in botanical heaven. The leaves can be cooked as a green, and the water used as a tea that controls blood glucose. The bitter fruit is edible cooked and red arils around the seed –the arils not the seed — are edible and nearly all lycopene. And the fragrant blossoms can be used for flavoring.

Black Locust

No accounting of edible wild flowers would be inclusive without mentioning the Black Locust,Robiniapseudoacacia. Just about the entire tree is useful in some way including the flowers. Fragrant, they are made into fritters in America, Europe and Asia. For a tree native to the Southeastern US it gets around. The white flowers are also made into tea. Incidentally, the pink flowers of the Robinianeomexicana are also edible. The Black Locust is sometimes called the False Acacia, which is what its species name means in dead Latin. Planted in France, it is the source of that country’s Acacia Monofloral Honey. It actually produces more honey than the Honey Locust.

Blue Porterweed

I do believe I was the first to publish anywhere in modern times, Internet or otherwise, that Blue Porterweed blossoms are edible. Even the venerated Cornucopia II doesn’t mention it. No doubt their edibility was known long ago because the flower has been used for at least a few hundred years to make tea, beer and as a flavoring. I am sure somewhere along the way someone tried the flowers. Locally we have two versions, a native which grows low, and a tall cultivated one. The flowers on both are edible, and the odd part is they taste like raw mushrooms. As with many delicate flavors the nose is quite involved and it takes a few moments for the flavor to come through. Tasters find it amazing. The flavor does not survive cooking. Incidentally, the leaves are used to make a tea and beer and the stem is used for flavoring.

Blueweed

Closely related to borage and Italian Bugloss, Blueweed, Echiumvulgare, is naturalized througout most of North America, missing only from Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, North Dakota, Arizona, Nevada, California, Canada’s Northwest Territory and the Yukon. A native or Europe, it’s an invasive species in Washington state. What is slightly odd about Blueweed is that the blossoms start out pink and turn blue. However, the stamens remain red making the blossom striking. Echium is grown as an oilseed crop and contains significant amounts of gamma linolenic acid (GLA) and the rarer stearidonic acid. Leaves are cooked and used like spinach. The flowers are candied and added to salads. The plant is covered with spines, so pick carefully.

Caesar Weed

There are many invasive species plants locally, some of them intentionally introduced by the United States Department of Agriculture. One of them is Caesar Weed, aka Caesarweed and Caesar’s Weed, botanically Urenalobata. It was brought to the state as an industry to make fiber and indeed in Africa they still make burlap out of Caesarweed. They ret it like flax, which is to soak it in (preferably) running water which causes the fibers to separate. Young leaves are edible cooked but they are a famine food as they never loose their sandpaper texture. There is a separate article about them on site. Caesarweed is in the mallow family and produces a small, pink mallow blossom which can be eaten raw. Toss it into salads.

Immature Cattail Blossom

You many not think of a Cattail as having a blossom but it does and before it matures it is edible. In fact, both the male part of the flower and the female part of the flower are edible. Later when the male part produces pollen that’s edible as well. When the female parts turn brown it’s way past edible. The male part is the spike on top, the female part the wider portion below the spike. When both are green they can be boiled. The rest of the plant has edibles as well and is a well-know staple of the forager. The cattail rhizome is full of starch. In fact, no plants produces more edible starch per acre than the cattail.

Sprinkle chickweed blossoms on a salad.

Chickweed, Stellaria, is not a blossom that comes to mind when one things of edible blossoms because one rarely separates the small blossoms from the rest of the chickweed before it becomes food. However, the deeply-lobed tiny five-petaled blossoms can be separated and sprinkled like white snow upon salads. Admittedly this is more for effect but isn’t that part of why we eat pretty flowers anyway? Also note the Native Americans did not let the weed’s small size deter them. They also used the minute seeds to make bread or to thicken soups. And of course, the rest of the chick weed above ground can be used as a potherb. It can be eaten raw if you like the flavor of corn silk. Some folks just toss everything into a blender and make a green drink out of it

Chicory

I can remember the first time I saw Chicory in blossom, or ever for that matter. I was in Alexandria, Virgina, visiting a dear friend for a couple of weeks and wandering amongst parks, monuments, and museums. The mower had somehow missed it and I noticed it immediately. The blue pretty Chicory is a close relative of the dandelion but not sweet at all, In fact it runs towards bitter and earthy. Think radicchio. You can eat the flowers and the bud, or pickle the buds. The root has been roasted and used to extend and flavor coffee.

Citron Melon

The two plants non-foraging people ask about all the time are Society Garlic (covered elsewhere) and those small watermelon like fruit seen in old citrus groves and abandoned fields. The short answer is they are Citron Melons. They used to be cultivated for to make preserves and I have a separate article on them. However, their blossoms are edible if they are not bitter and you remove the pistils. The blossoms should be cooked though usually one never sees the plant until the late fall and winter when one can see the fruit from the seasonal die back. The blossom might be edible raw, I just haven’t tired them. Seminole Pumpkin blossoms can be used the same way. Again remove the pistils.

My mother told me there wasn’t a time when she couldn’t remember not eating white Clover blossoms, Trifoliumrepens. That’s interesting because raw clover blossoms aren’t the easiest to digest. In fact, the entire clover family is on the cusp of edible not edible. It’s high in protein and the flavor of the blossoms is alright but eating clover leaves is more on the famine food side of life. As for the blossoms, they are usually made into tea which brings a precaution. This is usually about sweet clover but should be remembered for all clover. They should be used totally fresh or totally dried, not wilted and never moldy. In fact, moldy clover is how they discovered the “blood thinner” coumadin, read after it killed a lot of cows. So when you use clover, particularly sweet clover, make sure it is either totally fresh, or totally dried and has no mold. And yes, you can eat red clover blossoms, too. Sweet but on the hay side.

Coltsfoot

Coltsfoot has become controversial. Young leaves, flower buds, and young flowers can be use in soups or as potherbs. Fresh or dried flowers are used to make an aromatic tea. A delicious wine is made from the blossoms and ashes from the plant are a salt substitute. Used for centuries it has come under scrutiny for chemical that might cause liver damage, at least in infants. There is one documented case of coltsfoot tea causing severe liver problems in one infant. In another case, an infant developed liver disease and died because the mother drank tea containing coltsfoot during her pregnancy. The plant has also been used for centuries to make a cough suppressant. Indeed, its botanical name Tussilagofarfara means “cough suppressing activity.” A European native it is naturalized in the northeast quadrant of North America as well as Washington State and British Columbia.

Common Mallow Blossom

How many names does this mallow have? There’s Common Mallow, High Mallow, Tall mallow, Mauve des Bois, Cheeses, and botanically MalvaSylvestris, which means mallow of the woods. Native to western Europe as the plant moved with colonialists it picked up various names. It’s an annual in cool areas and a perennial in warmer areas. It is found in most states save the Old South and Nevada though it does grow in South Carolina. the mucilaginous leaves are eaten like spinach, added to soups to give them texture, or used to make a tea. Flowers are used like a vegetable or as a garnish. Unripe fruits are called cheese because they look like a small wheel of cheese. They are a nibble. Look for blossoms from June to September.

Tansy’s Rayless Blossoms

Another escapee from Eurasia now found over most of North America and the rest of the world is the Common Tansy. First mentioned for medicinal uses by the Ancient Greeks, the “bitter buttons” by the 8th century were in Charlemagne’s herb gardens and used by Benedictine monks in Switzerland. In 16th century England it was a “necessary of the garden.” Tansy, related to the thistle, even been used as an insect repellent. In fact, meat (and corpses) were wrapped in it for preservation and keep insects at bay. It is not a good repellent against mosquitoes but does a good job with the Colorado Potato Beetle. Like chamomile it contains thujone so it should be used sparingly. But then again, that’s what spices are for. The blossoms’s flavor is bitter, camphor-like.