Toad lilies (Tricyrtis sp.) are great edientomentals from the Far East; i.e. both food for us to eat (the edi bit), eye food (the mental bit ;) ) and food for the pollinators like bumble bees (the ento bit). I’ve been meaning to try to research this genus properly for many years ever since I ate the young shoots 10 years ago (it tasted mild and good). I’ve tried 10+ species over the years, but only the early flowering species thrive (Tricyrtis latifolia is I think the most successful of the two). Bumble bees love them too as can be seen in the video below! Below the pictures is an overview of how different species Tricyrtis are used in Japan. It indicates that the flowers can also be used at least in moderation for decoration, so I must give it a go!
Blanched perennial veggies eaten on 14th May 2012 were dandelion, Crambe cordifolia , Cicerbita alpina, Lovage, Horseradish, Hosta, Sonchus arvensis, Allium tuberosum, Silene vulgaris, Heracleum maximum and Tricyrtis (latifolia)
Tricyrtis in the kitchen All I have so far is that 6 or 7 species are listed in my comprehensive Japanese foraging book (in Japanese): Wild Food Lexicon (Japan) and this is what it says (there are no warnings of possible toxicity and it encourages the reader to get and grow a couple of the species): Tricyrtis latifolia (Tamagawa hototogisu) Eat young shoots. You can eat other types of Tricyrtis so don’t worry if you make a mistake. Rest assured. You can pick it even if the stems are long, you can pick the soft young shoots until they bloom. Boil in hot water with a pinch of salt, then rinse in cold water. In boiled food, soup, tempura… Tricyrtis macropoda It can be eaten like Tamagawa hototogisu, but the ones with a lot of hairs have an inferior taste. Tricyrtis macrantha Boiled soup. For tempura etc. It has a crisp texture. Boil briefly, soak in cold water, boil, cut into small pieces and season with mustard. The young shoots are the most flavourful amongst the hototogisu. Tricyrtis macranthopsis Seedlings for cultivation are on the market. You can grow it and use it as food. Around May, pick young shoots that grow diagonally. Even those with long stems can be eaten by picking the soft part at the tip of the stem. Tricyrtis perfoliata Young shoots are “hard”? in quality. Floating the flowers in the soup and enclosing them in jelly will make them beautiful. Get it, grow it and taste it!!
After yesterday’s video post about the snow onion (Allium humile) I had to make a snow onion lunchtime salad, so here it is; see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mOcQ4aUQVI Ingredients below the pictures.
Happy Easter 2023 with this floriferous forced Primula elatior (oxlip / hagenøkleblom) in the kitchen window. Unlike England where oxlip is a rare native plant, it was introduced to Norway in the 1800s from further south in Norway and has commonly escaped from gardens naturalising mainly in my area and further north, right to the very north of Norway. This is the first of the three Primulas to flower here, followed by Primula vulgaris (primrose / kusymre) and finally Primula veris (hagenøkleblom).
All 3 species which also commonly hybridise where they grow together, as in my garden, are considered to be edible. I mostly use them in mixed salads, the flowers decorating early spring salads. This is what Cornucopia II says about their edibility:
Another one flowering currently in the window are the forced dandelions which we’ve been eating for since January most days:
Despite the fact that the soil is frozen solid apart from the top couple of cms, I was surprised to discover the year’s first flowers in the garden: 1. I received this as Primula veris subsp. macrocalyx but is always a couple of months earlier than Primula veris, so I wonder if it’s a hybrid?
2. Primula elatior (oxlip / hagenøkleblom) – this could also be a hybrid
I was going to post an album of pictures showing off all the late flowers in the garden this record-breaking mild autumn still without any frost, but as they’re all edible I made a salad instead! There were 33 different edible flowers (see the list below the pictures) plus 30-40 greens and a whopper carrot which I decided to keep whole as a feature! It was cut up when the salad was tossed afterwards. It has a story too as it is one of the Danish accessions rematriated from Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) in the US last winter. I took a few seed before sending the rest on to Danish Seed Savers (Dansk Frøsamlerne). It’s called Kämpe which means Giant in Swedish/Danish (I call it Whopper as it’s probably the biggest/thickest carrot I¨’ve grown here). It’s not a very old variety and SSE informed that it was a cultivated variety originally from the Swedish seed company Weibulls. Anyone know more about it? Salad flowers, all harvested from the garden Salvia (blackcurrant sage / solbærsalvie) Fuchsia magellanica Hemerocallis “Stella de Oro” Taraxacum spp. (dandelion / løvetann) Rubus fruticosus (blackberry / bjørnebær) Papaver somniferum (opium poppy / opium valmue) Viola altaicum Campanula persicifolia (peach-leaf bellflower / fagerklokke) Sonchus oleraceus (common sow-thistle / haredylle) Glebionis coronaria (chopsuey greens / kronkrage) (3 varieties) Daucus carota (carrot / gulrot) (unopened flower umbel) Geranium sanguineum (bloody cranesbill / blodstorkenebb) Brassica oleracea (kale / grønnkål) Oenothera biennis (evening primrose / nattlys) Begonia Malva moschata (musk mallow / moskuskattost) (white and pink flowered) Malva alcea (hollyhock mallow / rosekattost) Monarda fistulosa (wild bergamot / rørhestemynte) Monarda “Elsie Lavender” Calendula officinalis (pot marigold / ringblomst (2 varieties) Campanula trachelium (nettle-leaved bellflower / nesleklokke) Calamintha nepeta (lesser calamint / liten kalamint) Tropaeolum majus (nasturtium / vanlig blomkarse) (2 varieties) Pisum sativum (garden pea / ert) Origanum spp. (wild marjoram / bergmynte) (2 varieties) Campanula lactiflora Alcea rosea (hollyhock / stokkrose) Tragopogon pratensis (Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon / geitskjegg)
Sorry for the silence here on the Edimentals blog. I’ve been busy preparing to produce signs and plant labels for the Allium garden and the World Garden as well as working on various KVANN (Norwegian Seed Savers) projects. However, I had to share the joy of making the first salad where all (25) plants were collected outside in the garden (we’ve been making salads from cellar ingredients all winter). The snow is now gone from most of the garden and the temperature rose to above 5C today which has stimulated a lot of early shooting edibles. No complete plant list, but the salad included various Alliums, Rumex, Dystaenia, Taraxacum, Arabis, Hablitzia etc. The first outside edible flower of 2022 was a Primula veris subsp. macrocalyx.
20 years ago on 19th August 2001, the Extreme Salad (Man) was born when I made my first (of two) world record salads with 363 different plants and 382 ingredients (i.e., including flowers and leaves from the same variety). During last night’s garden tour, the occasion was marked by a 120 plant salad (1/3 the number of the 2001 salad)….and it was tasted by the participants! Although far from the world record, it was probably the fastest made extreme salad as I only had 30 minutes to collect the ingredients and 30 minutes to put it together before the participants arrived! The second picture below shows the only known picture of the original extreme salad!
Pål Theodorsen with the 2001 salad
5 years ago…on the 15th anniversary, I made this salad with my garden helper Josefine Marie Dichmann:
40 years ago this month I came to Norway to find a place for us to live as I was to start work at Institutt for kontinentalsokkelundersøkelser (IKU; Continental Shelf Institute) in Trondheim in October 1981. The flat I found was here in Malvik kommune (Torp). To celebrate 40 years in Malvik I made a salad with 40 different genera. The names of the genera are below the pictures!
“WHY IS IT SWIRLY WHEN IT’S LATE?” (MMA, 2020) Probably the last dandelion to flower in the edible garden in 2020! The temperature didn’t drop below +12C last night, but there may be snow later in the week!
There were unusually many plants still flowering in the garden in October this year as we experienced a bit of an Indian summer. We’ve now had our first frost, so time to publish this album of 116 pictures of over 100 species. Most but not all are edible / edimentals and, yes, I should have made a salad.
Tradescantia ohiensis
Monarda didyma “Pink Lace” flowering through Aralia cordata “Sun King”
Ligularia fischeri “Cheju Charmer” – I’m not sure if this really is a late flowerer (my other fischeris are in seed) or just an aberration
Alcea rosea #1
Alcea rosea #2
Aquilegia chrysantha
Origanum spp.
Tradescantia
Allium tuberosum
A pretty Heracleum sphondylium or hybrid
Oxalis tuberosa (Oca)
Borago officinalis “Alba”
Leek (Allium porrum)…no chance for seed here!
Campanula lactiflora “Loddon Anna” has been in flower most of the summer and is popular with pollinators
Sedum “Carl””
Cirsium japonicum
Campanula persicifolia
Fuchsia magellanica “Alba”
The last Tigridia pavonia
Scabiosa japonica alpina
Papaver somniferum
Dystaenia takesimana (see https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=24998) has produced seed and is still flowering
Leonurus cardiaca (motherwort)
Tanacetum parthenium (feverfew) (medicinal)
Lactuca sativa (lettuce)
A pink flowered perennial chicory (Cichorium intybus)
Korean clematis (Clematis serratifolia): the youg shoots have been reported eaten in Korea (not edible flowers)
Clematis vitalba (Old man’s beard) has been flowering like made for a couple of months and is very popular with pollinators (edible young shoots cooked, not edible flowers)
Prunella vulgaris
Parasenecio farfarifolius var bulbifera flowering very late
The bulbils of Parasenecio farfarifolius var bulbifera
Brassica nigra (black mustard)
Saponaria officinalis (soapwort; not edible)
Campanula trachelium “Alba”
Campanula rapunculoides
Meconopsis cambrica (not edible)
Micromeria dalmatica
Hosta “Red October”
Hylotelephium spectabile
Tulbaghia violacea (society garlic)
Chives (Allium schoenoprasum) trying to flower again
Gentiana sino-ornata, a survivor from the time I also grew pure ornamentals
Dianthus knappii
Second flowering (perennialisation) on honesty (Lunaria annua)
Another nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus)
Another nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus)
Salvia officinalis
Hyssopus officinalis
Cryptotaenia japonica “Atropurpurea”
Allium hookeri “Zorami”
Lycopus asper
Madeira Vine (Anredera cordifolia) flowering for the first time outside in the garden…the tubers are overwintered indoors
Yacon (Polymnia sonchifolia) flowering for the first time outside in the garden…the tubers are overwintered indoors
A double form of Silphium integrifolium (wholeleaf rosinweed) from seed
Allium mairei
Broad beans (Vicia faba)
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
