Aside from brightening and giving life to your garden, edible blossoms can also give your body with several health benefits. You can get your full spectrum of vitamins and minerals by turning your lunch bowl into a flower garden.
Here is the list of edible flowers you may want to consider if you are planning to have your beautiful garden. These blossoms can add unique colors and flavors to your meals.
Dandelions
Dandelions are nutritious edible flowers that are rich in vitamin A and C, iron, calcium, and phosphorus. It also has plant compounds with potent antioxidant properties. You can consume dandelion greens, flowers, and roots. Add its flowers to your cookies or fritters. Its leaves can be a delicious addition to your salads, sandwiches, stews, and casseroles. Its roots can help promote the growth and maintenance of good bacteria in your intestinal tract. Use its root to make a tea.
Lavender
This tiny violet blossom has a sweet floral flavor with lemon and citrus notes. Lavender is famous for its calming effects, its ability to improve sleep, and a remedy for headache. You can use it as a garnish for sorbets or ice cream or as an ingredient for your baked goods, herb mixtures and herbal teas. You can also pair it with chocolate, citrus, berries, thyme, and sage.
Red Clover
Red clover has a small, red-purple globe structure and grows wild in any field during summertime. It helps reduce inflammation, boost the immune system, helps balance hormone and reduce PMS symptoms by simply drinking a tea made from the petals.
Chamomile
Chamomile blossoms are often used in cooking. It adds a slightly sweet, earthy flavor to various dishes. Aside from this, the blossoms are also used to make chamomile tea, syrups, and other infusions for desserts, smoothies, and baked goods.
As a medicine, chamomile can help reduce anxiety and menstrual pain, lower blood sugar, slow or prevent osteoporosis, reduce inflammation, help with sleep and relaxation, and even used as a treatment for cancer.
Hibiscus
Hibiscus flowers are of various colors – white, yellow, red, and different shades of pink. These beautiful blossoms can be eaten raw, or can be used to make teas, jams, salads, and relishes.
Hibiscus can help lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels, boost liver health, promote weight loss, fight bacteria, and contains compounds that may help prevent cancer.
Squash Blossom
These bright yellow, long, rounded bed shape blossoms can be used as a garnish or chopped and add to salads.
Consumption of these can help boost your immunity, prevent eye-related problems, improve sperm quality, and treat common colds and cough.
Calendula
This bright yellow-orange, daisy-like blossoms have numerous health benefits. Its taste ranges from spicy to bitter to tangy and peppery. Calendula can aid in digestion, support the immune system, reduce fevers, and can treat wounds and burned skin when made into topical creams. Add the flowers into your salad, or make them into a tea or dry and ground them and use as a spice.
Rose
Take note that only rose petals are edible. Its taste can gently sweet to slightly metallic to just a little bit gingery depending on the rose type. The darker the petals the more intense the flavor. The white part of the petal should be removed before consuming them because it is tremendously bitter. Eat the petals raw or you can add them to a liquid to produce rose-infused beverages, jams, and jellies or just simply mix them in your salads.
Rose petals contain compounds that can help treat a digestive disorder, menstrual irregularities, and pain from injuries as well as promote relaxation, and reduce anxiety.
Daylilies
For the best flavors, harvest the buds of these plant before the flowers open. They can be great in stir-fries or fritters. The flowers have a mild vegetable flavor, sort of similar to asparagus. They can be sweeter, more floral, or more vegetal or slightly metallic, depending on the variety.
Daylilies help in detoxification, reduce red urine symptoms and jaundice, lessen hemorrhoids, and cure insomnia.
Borage
Borage is a herb with adorable, star-shaped flowers which can be white, pink or blue. The blossoms taste a little bit like cucumbers.
You can cook and add the flowers to soups, sauces, or stuffed pasta fillings. They can also be a great addition to teas or simply add them into salads, desserts, and cocktails.
The flowers are rich in fatty acids that can help regulate your metabolism. It can also treat minor cough or sore throat, and support good cholesterol and blood pressure levels.