Happy April, food & foraging friends!
And a happy birthday to me! (Yeah, yeah, that’s why my folks named me April.) I always say that morels are my birthday gift from Mother Nature, as they make their brief appearance during my birthday week, but alas, she had other plans for me this year as my birthday weekend away in the Northern Neck hunting morels with friends got canceled due to my companion’s toddler’s illness. (Apparently hoof and mouth disease did not go out with the plague.)
Instead, stuck in the city, I spent the weekend gathering Mother Nature’s birthday gift, which serves as bouquet, beverage, vitamin supplement and snack: violets!
A perennial that grows via underground rhizome (and reproduces three ways to Sunday), violets are one of the few native wildflowers that I see growing prolifically both in disturbed urban soils as well as our more pristine parklands. There are “invasive” violets (Viola odorata), as well as other a dozen other local native violet species, but the common violet, Viola sororia, the state flower of Rhode Island, is what you’ll typically see growing out of the cracks of the city sidewalks.
Googling violets, you’ll come across lawncare articles claiming to have the key to eradicate them. (If you are currently in a lawn cult, please seek help.) These iconic flowers may look unarmed, but their leaves actually have natural protection against herbicides, so you’re wasting your time and money. They also have little exploding self-pollinated seed pods that can cast their seeds three or more yards away. This Maryland master gardener video has a great botany breakdown of these wily plants, including how they sweet-talk ant babies into planting their seeds. Violets feed butterflies, bees and rabbits too!
Violets also can feed and delight humans. Their leaves are packed with vitamin C and their flowers have pH sensitive compounds that allow you to turn beverage blue, pink and purple (naturally-pink lemonade is a violet classic).
Left/top: Violets and their scalloped, heart–shaped leaves are edible raw and cooked, making them great birthday garnishes!
Right/bottom: Violet flowers contain a pigment called anthocyanin that is sensitive to pH; infusions turn from blue to pink when exposed to acid (top blue photo is steeped in hot water vs. middle right pink photo is in vinegar). The leaves have a mucilaginous property like okra or mallow, especially notable when cooked.
I’m not much of a baker, but I just had to try making some violet sugar, just to see how the color would turn out, and it’s a gorgeous blue-violet I could see as a sugar rim on a cocktail. (Overall, the process is simple; however removing the sepals at each flower’s base is a tedious task best left for ex-noma interns.) I plan to try the sugar in some shortbread with whole flowers pressed on top.
I also infused violets in vinegar to make a festive dressing for a wild salad with redbud flowers, chickweed, dandelion greens and the violets and the leaves themselves. The pH-sensitive anthocyanin in the flowers turns infusions pink when exposed to acid like lemons or vinegar, a fun (birthday) party trick!
Don’t sleep on the violet leaves, either — they are rich in Vitamins A and C, and can be steeped for tea; eaten raw in a salad; or cooked, as in this gomae recipe by Alan Bergo I tried this weekend. The leaves get slimy like okra when cooked, but apparently that mucilaginous nature is also connected with some of its healing superpowers.
Lastly, I used the violets in two drinks: one, a wildflower soda I’m naturally fermenting with juniper berries and dandelions, and second, a violet syrup I plan to serve over club soda as a mocktail.
I’ll be sharing samples of my violet concoctions and doing some other wild food demos in a new class on preserving the spring bounty for Shop Made in DC/Shop Made in Virginia, with the first class happening at Union Market next Sunday! (I also have a couple of art pieces up at Shop Made’s Georgetown location, so pop upstairs for that if you happen to stop by.) There is still plenty of space — spread the word and hope to see you there!
Wildly yours,
April
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PPS: I had too much ground to cover this month (violets are groundcovers, see what I did there?) to go into the fascinating culture and historic lore of violets, but please do yourself a favor and read this Capital Naturalist roundup and learn how this flower connects to Napoleon, the Prophet Muhammad, and the twin cities of the violet crown, Athens and Austin.