Today we’re finally back with a plant profile!
I want to visit another “edimental” (edible ornamental) plant that strikes me as a very useful addition to edible landscaping and I’m kind of surprised I haven’t appreciated it fully until this year!
This tree is not only stunning and elegant, but it’s also medicinal and has some rare traits that also make it a strategic choice for a food forest.
Plant Profile:
Scientific Name: Cercis canadensis
Preferred Habitat: In the understory or margins of mixed hardwood forests are the most common natural environment to find them in, but you can easily find them in urban landscapes these days as well.
Edible Parts: The flowers, seeds, and leaves can all be eaten. There are some sources that say the bark is also medicinal.
Distribution: The natural range is most of the Eastern US and down into Eastern Mexico, but occasionally it is grown ornamentally outside of that range.
Harvest Season: Spring
Key Identifiers: Pink to magenta pea-like flowers, smooth bark on young trees (scaled bark on older ones) and distinct heart-shaped leaves later in the year.
Toxic Look-Alikes:
There are really no look alikes period, not to mention no toxic ones. This is a really safe tree to forage for!
That said, you may get it confused with pink flowering crabapples or apple blossoms from a distance, potentially ornamental cherry trees as well. All of those are edible and safe however.
Nutrition:
Here is the only data I could find on the nutrient contents:
The seeds contain 22.9 - 27.5% protein
The seeds contain 7.7 - 8.8% fat
The flowers contain high levels of vitamin C (you can actually taste this if you eat a flower! They have a subtle tang to them-that’s the ascorbic acid!)
The seeds are also high in linoleic and alpha-linolenic acid
The seeds are very high in antioxidants
The flowers also contain antioxidants such as anthocyanin
The seeds also contain oleic and palmitic acids which makes them similar in nutrient content to hickory nuts and walnuts
Medicinal uses:
Immune booster
Treats colds and flus
The inner bark was traditionally used for fevers, diarrhea, dysentery, vomiting, and respiratory congestion
Acts as a folk remedy for leukemia
Treats whooping cough
General cough suppressant
Treats congestion
Uses
Redbud flowers are the most commonly consumed part of the plant.
Like other flowers we’ve talked about, they can be used for jellies, syrups, tea, baked goods, lemonades and other beverages, and they can be dried, pickled like capers, or eaten raw in salads.
I’ve seen people putting them in pancakes and fritters as well as dessert breads too!
The flavor of the raw flowers is mild and tastes similar to a sweet pea pod with a hint of tartness as an aftertaste.
Growth Habits
Redbud trees will need very little maintenance in their native range and grow to be a max height of around 25ft or so. I’ve seen some trees stay as short as 8ft and some that grow as tall as 30ft.
The flowers have an interesting habit of growing not only from the branches where you’d expect buds, but also from the trunk and bark of the main limbs! This results in a very odd but pretty phenomenon that reminds me of a Dr. Seuss tree or something (photo below).
If the flowers look familiar to you, that’s probably because they are actually legume trees! That’s right, they are related to peas, beans, lentils, and chick peas! This is interesting because there are not many leguminous trees in our climate.
Sadly, despite being a legume, these trees are not actually nitrogen fixers. That said, they provide a few other major benefits in a food forest setting that make them worth growing in my opinion:
They provide lots of leaf litter
They provide an early source of pollen for pollinating insects when very few other plants are available
The second one is actually pretty huge if you want fruit trees to be pollinated well early in the season!
Typically they’ll grow 1-2ft per year until they hit maturity (which is at about 20 years old).
If you grow from seed (which is possible) you should expect to get flowers in 5-7 years or so. If you buy a tree it is likely already a few years old and you can expect flowers in the next 1-2 years depending.
Additional Information
If you are interested in working with this particular tree these are some areas I’d consider improving it or finding uses for:
I’d love to see someone breed a little more color variation into the flowers themselves. This has been done with the foliage, but I’d like to see something other than pink/purple toned if it’s genetically possible.
Finding a way to breed a large-flowered variety would make it a better food and medicine source and maybe more could be done with pickling the flower buds before they fully open.
If someone is interested in growing them as a crop, I’d be curious to see if you could dehydrate or freeze-dry the flowers to powder and use as a vitamin C supplement powder or something. I think this could be a pretty cool use for them if a farm somewhere happens to have a handful of the trees (or even just a couple mature ones)
Cultivars
As stated, there are a lot of cultivated varieties of eastern redbud, but most are cultivated for their unique foliage. Many cultivars are also bred to be shorter if the height is otherwise a turn-off.
Here are a list of cultivars for you to check out:
Forest Pansy - This variety has earned rewards and has some pretty unique dark heart-shaped foliage as well as the pink blossoms in the spring.
Lavender Twist - This is a natural weeping dwarf redbud that looks very pretty in the landscape.
Rising Sun - This is an incredibly expensive variety that has a unique “3D” effect because of the way the leaves change color as they mature. Very stunning, but also very pricy!
Vanilla Twist - This is one of the only other color options I found with a shade other than pink or magenta! It has white blossoms as the name implies, and the same classic heart-shaped leaves.
Zigzag - This is my favorite variety just because of how bizarre it looks. It has the normal pink flowers, but the branches and trunk are in a natural zigzag pattern that adds a very interesting texture to the landscape.
Pink Pom Poms - I love this one because the flowers are double petaled and appear almost like small roses. A very pretty and soft-looking tree which probably makes one of the better varieties for consumption.
Don Engolf - This is a variety that is bred for heavy yields of blooms. In many cases it produces so many flowers you can hardly see the trunk because of their tendency to cover the surface of the bark!
White Pom Poms - Another double petaled variety but in white!
Pink Trim - This is a fairly standard variety other than it is exceptionally cold hardy. It can handle temps down to -40° when established.
Follow me on social media for behind-the-scenes videos and seasonal photos!
Leave a comment to show the algorithm how legit we are!
Thanks for reading The Naturalist. Please share on social media to support the work!
