Purple: It's not just for violets any more

May 27, 2019

Vermont in the fog

When Steven and I first got together (11 years ago), he couldn't distinguish one plant from another. He knew the difference between trees and flowers, but everything else was just undifferentiated green.

If you're going to eat food from the wild, you'd better be able to tell one plant from another. Not only to avoid eating something poisonous, but also to develop your powers of observation and appreciation of our natural world.

Take violets, which are abundant right now in the fields and forests. Most of us would recognize the cute purple ones, I think. But did you know they also come in white and yellow?

Flower color is one of the first things we see when we look at plants, but there are many other elements we need to look at to make a positive identification. How many petals are on the flower? How tall is the plant, how broad? The leaves--are the edges smooth, lobed, or toothed? How big are the leaves? How are they veined? Are they hairy?

Since the colors of the flowers may be purple, white or yellow, we can't count on flower color to identify the violet. So let's take a look at other plant features.

Violets are small and low to the ground (about 4-6" high, though the yellow ones seem to grow more vertical than the others). They begin flowering (in New England) in mid- to late May. They can form dense carpets and overtake a lawn (especially the purple ones).

The leaves are heart-shaped and softly toothed. The veins on the leaf start from the base of the leaf and branch gently toward the edges. It's good to be able to identify the leaf, because both the leaves and the flowers are edible--and you can keep eating the leaves, even after the flowers are gone.

The flowers of violets taste bland but slightly floral. The leaves are also fairly bland, and just a little chewy. Violets could be a good plant for a soft entry into foraging for most Americans, since they won't offend our (bland) Western palate. Could they be frozen and used as a substitute for spinach throughout the winter? I'm going to give it a try.

One of the more notable features of the violet flower are the black lines issuing from the flower center outward to the edges edge of the lower petals. They make the flower somehow look like a face. I remember illustrations from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, where the violets are whinging from their cute little striped faces. Maybe as a girl I spent way too much time reading, but those illustrations (I'm still looking for an image to include) forever defined the personalities of violets for me.

We learn about our edible world from many sources. In the case of violets, I didn't even know they were edible, until a friend told me about a salad of shredded beets and roasted sweet potatoes her husband had made, garnished with purple violet flowers. Can you imagine a more colorful, beautiful, and healthy dish?

Here's a good website with more information about violets: https://www.ediblewildfood.com/wild-violet.aspx