“Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the mind.”
~Luther Burbank
July 27, 2021
In Vermont I mostly saw wildflowers in fields and meadows. The woodland wildflowers had finished blooming weeks earlier. Interestingly, almost all the new flowers I saw are edible!
A showy native plant, common milkweed is the sole source of food for monarch butterfly larvae. I particularly love the boat-shaped seed pods that form later in the summer. The buds and flowers can be boiled and eaten, and supposedly the new stalks are a bit like asparagus.
This stunning purple flower is wild bergamot, a perennial that is found in almost all fifty states! Oil extracted from its seeds has anti-bacterial properties and can be used as a mosquito repellent. Butterflies and hummingbirds love its nectar. The foliage has a lovely smell, something related to oregano, mint, and thyme.
One of my favorite wildflowers, lupine grows abundantly in northern New England. It blooms in June, so I was overjoyed to find this late blooming specimen in a field in Vermont. Cultivated not only as an ornamental plant but also as a food source, lupine is a legume that contains more protein than soybeans! The Romans cultivated lupines throughout the Roman Empire, and even now lupine foodstuffs are common near the Mediterranean. Additionally, lupine can fix nitrogen, fertilizing the soil for other plants, and it can be used for livestock and poultry feed!
Unsurprisingly purple-flowered raspberry does produce edible fruit. However, unlike normal raspberries, these berries are tart, dry, and very seedy. Enjoyed mostly by birds, the berries can be used in jellies and pies.
Queen Anne’s Lace, also known as wild carrot, is a beautiful and common wildflower. Supposedly the flower was named after Queen Anne of England (wife of James I), who was an expert lace maker. Legend has it that one day she pricked herself with a needle, causing a single drop of blood to fall from her finger onto the lace, which left the dark purple floret in the flower’s center. The taproot of this lovely plant looks a lot like a carrot and is edible when young. Supposedly it is nearly as sweet as a beet! Early Europeans cultivated Queen Anne’s Lace for food, and American colonists boiled the taproots in wine as a treat. You can also fry the mature flowers as fritters.
