Eating wild violets

Does anybody on here eat many wild violets . I like to eat a few leaves and roots while im out in the woods but never tried to collect enough for a prepared meal .

I always wondered if the purple flowers in the Tommy James and the Shondells song were wild violets and if "dig" referred to them living on the bulbs they dug to eat.

"My dog Sam eats purple flowers.
We ain't got much, but what we've got's ours.
We dig snow and the rain and the bright sunshine.
Draggin' the line (draggin the line).
I feel fine."

I have eaten wild violet flowers, but never tried the bulbs. The main character in "My Side of the Mountain" ate a lot of them.

Keith

The bulbs are kindof like okra

That would be caused by african violets.not even the same genus as our wild violets .wild violets are definitely edible and very nutritional even medicinal.

Wild blue violets are edible but here in WI they are our state wild flower and thus picking them won't cause indigestion but incarceration maybe.

Bryce

There are all sorts of wild flower that one can eat. Admittedly some only once.

They are supposed to help digestive problems like dysentery and aid with kidney problems.

I have made jelly from wild violets. It's very tasty and a beautiful color. Got the recipe from Euell Gibbons book " Stalking the Wild Asparagus ".

Have you ever ate a pine tree? Seems like that was a line from a TV cereal ad Euell was doing if I remember right?

I like asparagus. wild or cultivated either one. anybody ever had white asparagus? not white sauce the plant is white.

I have, Danny. Tasts like the everyday aspergrass. I love it in every way shap and form, raw, cooked, pickled, whatever!

I have eaten dozens of gallons of leaves and flowers from several species of violets, mainly V. odorata, raw or cooked over the years.

Click on the "subordinate taxa" tab for a look at the numerous species found across North America.
https://plants.usda.gov/core/profile?symbol=VIOLA

English Sweet violet. Which is a NNIS (Non Native Invasive Species) in North America.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_odorata

State flower of Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Wisconsin.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_papilionacea

All asparagus is white...
until exposed to sunlight.
They keep the stalks covered, usually with dirt, to keep them white. We can do this ourselves, even with wild asparagus. Some say white stalks are more tender, though slightly less nutritious. Age (size) is a bigger factor in my experience.
Good eatin' either way!

I like asparagus too

Bryce
Have you ever looked at the list of plants can't dig or pick here in WI on state land? Whole lot easier to read the list you can take, which is really not that much big scheme of things. But I guess if every person decided to take even a few eventually wouldn't be none.
Anyone want violets I got a bunch in my yard they can have. Might be eating little Diacambia that I sprayed them with. Probably won't kill you though, didn't kill the violets.

Mac

You are likely to have an upset stomach and possibly vomit if you eat a salad bowl of most spring wild edible plants. The reason is that they contain such high levels of vitamin A that your body has a bad reaction to it. One of my favorite exceptions is fresh young leaves on basswood trees. They are very pleasant flavor, and I’ve eaten handfuls with no upset stomach.

I'll stick to purselane as it has a lot better value than a lot of other plants and grows about everywhere from Mn to CA to TX to NY to OR.

lamb's quarters, are one of my favorites.

I make cooked greens with cow greens,lambs quarter, pig weed and stinging nettle .the cowgreens are just starting to sprout

What are cowgreens ? technically ?

Cow greens are another name for cow parsnip, aka Heracleum maximum.


www.laurieconstantino.com/wild-edibles-how-to-harvest-and-cook-cow-parsnip-greens/

http://foragerchef.com/cow-parsnip/

https://preparednessadvice.com/edible_plants/cow-parsnip-a-useful-edible-plant/


Beware:

"There are two problems with this plant. One it closely resembles Poison Hemlock, Water Hemlock and Bulbiferous Hemlock and Giant Hogweed. All parts of these plants are extremely poisonous. Second, Cow parsnip juices contain a phototoxin that acts on contact with skin and is triggered by exposure to ultraviolet light."


Top Two Rules of Foraging:
1) Always take the time to be 100% certain of your identification, every time you harvest.
2) When in doubt, throw it out.

"There are old foragers and bold foragers, but no old bold foragers."

If I may ask, wherever did you get such a crazy idea???

What you state has never once been true for me or my friends in 30+ years of foraging edible wild flora and fungi.

As to vitamins in edible wild foods, that varies greatly by species. One simply cannot say that "most" have any vitamin, much less "such high levels".

The seasonal variation in nutrition is indiscernible without laboratory equipment.

To assert that "most" edble wild plants will make you sick after a single serving is an epic falsehood.

How would I know?
Been foraging edible wild flora and fungi for 30+ years. Eaten 150+ species. I eat 40+ gallons of wild vegetation every year. (Mainly use gallon ZipLocs, occasionally 5 gallon buckets, when foraging. So gallons is my usual unit of measure, even for dry goods.)

Oh, and by the way... Do you have any idea how much vitamin A it would take to have any reaction at all??? Apparently not! It is IMPOSSIBLE to get sick from a single DAY of eating AS MUCH PLANT BASED VITAMIN A as you can possibly cram down your stomach!! Much less a single serving, no matter how large.

I suggest a bit more research, and a lot less hype.

"High intake of provitamin carotenoids (such as beta-carotene) from vegetables and fruits does not cause hypervitaminosis A, as conversion from carotenoids to the active form of vitamin A is regulated by the body to maintain an optimum level of the vitamin. Carotenoids themselves cannot produce toxicity."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervitaminosis_A

"I have not seen someone off the street who was taking a toxic level of vitamin A or D -- those are very unusual," says David Katz, MD, director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center in New Haven, CT, whose medical practice specializes in nutrition."
https://www.webmd.com/diet/guide/effects-of-taking-too-many-vitamins

"There is no upper limit for vitamin A from beta-carotene."
https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/supplement-guide-vitamin-a

I really don't know i never looked them up thats just what my grandma and mom called them when we were picking them.Ill poke around a little

I have them cow parsnips here, and I know exactly what they are. They are abundant too.

I asked mom she said another name was crowsfoot but that dosn"t get a picture of the plant on google .the cow parsnips dont look right either

Not to steal the thread.. but anyone ever use the roots from the corn lilies? or at least that is what I always called them. Think maybe day lillies?? Every farm and old home around here seems to have some somewhere on the place. Wife has a bunch of them in the yard here came from my parents place. I heard sometime back that the old timers used the roots for the vitamin C??? I never looked into it but heard it was why they were so common on all old farms. Was told some old timers made a flour from dried roots to use over winter.
Any one know anything about that?

Mac

Unfamiliar with "corn lilies". Common names often refer to several species, usually different ones in different regions.

Roots are generally used for their starches. Typically fruits and leaves are higher in vitamin C than roots, but we really have to look at each species to be sure. Flour from dried and ground roots is a common practice across many species. Historically mixed with wheat flour. The purpose was to make the often times scarce and expensive wheat flour last longer. Also because most other flours lack gluten, which binds things together.

I have eaten the flowers of (common, original, orange) daylily, Hemerocallis fulva and yellow daylily, H. lilioasphodelus. Nice tang to 'em. Have separated the very fine fibers in the leaves for cordage. Retting worked much better than scraping for me.


https://honest-food.net/dining-on-daylilies/

www.eattheweeds.com/daylily-just-cloning-around-2/

https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/how-to-sustainably-harvest-daylilies-zbcz1307

https://plants.usda.gov/core/profile?symbol=HEMER

Hope that helps!

Thanks DuxDawg
Wife informed me ours are a type of Day lilies some call corn, some call ditch lilies. I dug some of the ones I have in my yard form my parents house. OOnce they get going they spread like a weed. I'm pretty sure my mother got them from my grand mother and they originally came from farm my grand mother grew up on. So their and old line been around for awhile what ever they are?? I've even give the bulbs to others who now have them growing in their yards.

Mac

Ttt.