Violets

Viola spp.

Pete Kooshian
March 04, 2024

Wood Violet

As you all know, I tend to enjoy writing about the slightly lesser-known wild foods. It’s all well and good to go looking for morel mushrooms, but if they’re hard to find they can’t feed your family.

One fairly prolific edible plant are wild violets. Let’s get into it.

Plant Profile:

Scientific Name: Viola spp. (especially Viola sororia, and Viola odorata)

Preferred Habitat: Lawns, meadows, mature forest edges. They tend to favor slightly damp cool areas!

Edible Parts: Flowers (food), leaves (medicine)

Distribution: Viola Sororia (The common blue violet) is present in most of the Eastern half of North America, but there are Viola species almost everywhere.

Viola sororia

Harvest Season: Early to late spring depending on location.

Key Identifiers: Distinct heart-shaped leaves (often curved into cones), 5 petals in a sort of “star” shape with the 5th petal pointing down. The flowers are on individual leafless stems, and each leaf is on its own stem coming up from the base of the plant. Nearly all violets are edible, but yellow ones may cause stomach upset.

Toxic Look-Alikes: There are very few real look-alikes to violets, and the ones that do exist can be identified as not having the flowers that violets do (which is why waiting until they bloom to harvest them is a good idea).

NOTE: African violets are NOT true violets and should not be eaten!

Nutrition: If I had a dollar for every time I couldn’t find nutrient information for wild foods, I’d probably be earning a full-time living writing this newsletter!

When consumed regularly violets can have the following benefits:

Leaves reduce blood pressure
Leaves can prevent early stage cancers
Leaves improve digestion
Violet flowers make a good lymphagogue (they relieve swollen lymph glands)
Leaves are anti-inflammatory
Leaves purify your blood
Violet leaf tea reduces fevers and has a cooling effect
Leaves can be used as a decent pain-killer
Leaves help alleviate skin ailments

A basket of violets I picked for jelly

As you can see above, violets are a pretty potent wild medicine.

Important to note though is that the leaves are the most medicinal part of the plant even though the flowers are good for some foods.

Common uses for the flowers include: jellies, dessert toppings, garnishes, syrups, vinegar, and violet sugar while uses for the leaves are more varied.

Violet leaves can be used for: Soaps, oils, balms, violet-honey, tea, pesto, blended into hummus, and made into tinctures.

I have only ever eaten the leaves raw and had violet flower jelly. The jelly is very good and has a surprisingly fruity taste for being a flower! The taste reminds me of a floral berry flavor, I do recommend trying it yourself!

White violet (no idea what kind)

Violets are a plant that does well in shadier areas. They are a sign of rich soil and tend to grow in cool, moist areas that have high organic matter content.

Violets are perennials and tend to reseed themselves very easily. Once you have an established patch, you shouldn’t need to plant them again!

Violets readily hybridize, so if you ever plant more than one kind in an area don’t be surprised if new ones start to pop up that look nothing like the ones you planted!

They prefer well-draining soil, dappled sunlight (to mimic a forest floor) and do well as a groundcover. They will generally hold up pretty well to foot traffic once established and could be a great alternative lawn (at least for the parts of the year that they stay green).