Tiger Lily, Lilium lancifolium

The word “lily” causes more confusion than four letters ought to be able to make. There are true lilies, usually not edible, some of them quite toxic, a few edible. And there are plants people call lilies which aren’t lilies at all, some quite toxic and some edible. The next layer of confusion comes from the fact many people call many different plants the same name, in this particular case, the Tiger Lily.

The Tiger Lily we’re interested in for the moment is Lilium lancifolium, a native of Asia and Japan but naturalized in the northeast quadrant of North America, and a few other places as well. Most of this Tiger Lily is edible by humans but all parts are toxic to cats. It causes feline kidney failure. In Asia and Japan this lily is grown for its edible bulb. Cooked it resembles turnips in flavor. Flower buds are eaten raw or cooked.

Note bulbils where leaves meet stem

This particular species does not produce seeds. Instead it produces little black bulbs (bulbils) where the leaves meet the stem. You can use those to propagate the lily or the tubers. However, by bulbil it takes three years for them to mature.

Now we get to the pseudo-controversy. All over the Internet there are dire warnings that the pollen of Lilium lancifolium (aka Lilium tigrinum) is toxic, that is, it will make humans throw up and generally be miserable. Oddly, none of the books in my library, except for one, mentions the pollen at all. Save for that one entry none of my foraging books mention pollen nor do any of my flower books mention it. In fact none of my books on poison mention Lilium lancifolium pollen regarding humans. The one reference I have to the pollen is found on page 512 of the Encyclopedia of Edible Plants of North America by Dr. Françoís Couplan. In reference to Lilium lancifolium and Lilium bulbiferum he writes:

“The pollen can be gathered in relatively important amounts and eaten as such or sprinkled over various dishes. It is nutritious and has a pleasant taste.”  The Internet seems to be in disagreement with Dr. Couplan, who has a PhD in ethnobotany. His encyclopedia was published in 1998.

Cornucopia II, which is a compendium of edible plants in the world, also published in 1998, says on page 144  of the Lilium lancifolium: “Flowers both fresh and dried eaten in soups, salads…” No mention of or warning about avoiding the pollen on fresh flowers. It would seem the Internet is at odds with Cornucopia II as well.

The Internet is rife with misstatements. The pollen-is-bad-for-humans warning could have risen out of the real threat it poses to cats. They lick lily pollen off their fur and often die from it. That warning could have morphed from fatal for cats to toxic for humans. There are previous examples with other plants.

Cow in methane capture experiment

Many sites in the last five years have published the warning that pine needle tea can cause abortions in humans, another leap from a known threat animals to certain problem for humans. It started with an article in the Journal of Animal Science (J ANIM SCI 1992, 70:1604-1608.) In the article cows in or after their eighth month of pregnancy which ate several pounds of Ponderosa pine needles did indeed have abortions, the rate ranging from 5 to 8%. Non-pregnant cows were not affected. The article did not cause much alarm as the Internet was in its informational infancy in 1992. However, the United States Department of Agriculture issued a report on the Internet in 2006 — still on line — saying “Ponderosa pine grows in all of the states west of the Great Plains and in western Canada. Pine needles can be made available to cattle from slash remaining after logging operations, windfalls, or dried fallen needles. Discarded Christmas trees have been known to cause abortions in cows. Lodgepole pine (P. contorta), common juniper (Juniperus communis), and Monterey cypress (Cupressus macrocarpa) also contain isocupressic acid and may also cause abortions when eaten by cattle.”

One blog that same year mentioned the cow problem then made the leap by saying Native Americans knew long ago what modern scientists had only recently learned about pines needles and abortions. The blog added the element of Indian woman using pine needles for abortions — no reference given. Included in the blog was one additional comment about pines from the ancient Greeks and the warning was born. From there it proliferated over the Internet. Now pine needles cause abortions in humans, each reference becoming obligatory and more dire. Can you intentionally prepare pine needles to somehow affect a pregnancy in humans? Perhaps, though there seems to be no examples in the medical literature. Then again, too much of anything can probably affect a pregnancy, wine comes to mind. Intentionally preparing an intense dose of pine needles is far different than two pine needles sitting in hot water making a pleasant tea with Vitamin C.

In another example other sites have being saying the aril of the Momordia charantia is toxic to kids. It’s nearly 100% lycopene, not exactly a toxic substance. If it is toxic to children then maybe watermelon is, too. Professor Julia Morton, an expert on edible and toxic plants in Florida, wrote extensively about the species many times and never made mention of anything related specifically to children. I can remember finding the original site that said the arils were toxic to kids. Again, no reference was given. Last year I met a breast-feeding mom who ate them and kept right on feeding.

Lilium canadense

So, is the pollen of the Lilium lancifolium, toxic to humans? The books say nothing bad about it, Dr. Couplan says it tastes good and can be collected in quantity, the Internet says it is toxic to humans. Can we find a way that toxic view could have been proliferated? Yes, the plant is toxic to cats. It is a short leap for amateur writers to include humans.  I wrote to Dr. Couplan for his opinion on this. He wrote back saying he has consumed Lilium lancifolium pollen in small amounts with no known bad effects. Dr. Couplan asked for a reference on the purported toxicology of Lilium lancifolium on humans. I could not and cannot provide one because I can’t find one, published that is. As best I can tell it is Internet rumor and one reason why I prefer published references.

Among the native lilies of North America the cooked bulbs of the follow species can be eaten by humans: Lilium canadense, (now rare in some places) Lilium columbianum,  Lilium occidentale, Lilium pardalinum, Lilium parvum, Lilum philadelphicum and Lilium superbum. Yes. Superbum (soo-PER-bum) It means superb. Another edible Asian lily is Lilium bulbiferum.

Lilium is dead Latin for the Greek word Lirion, which means lily. Now days they’re called Krinos — meaning lily — which is also a brand of imported Greek food. That said, lilies get around. A few years ago I had the opportunity to visit the Palace of Knossos near Heraklion, Crete. In the museum is the famous “lily” vase, a fresco that dates back 3,500 years. A similar fresco in the same time frame is found on the Greek island of Thera, though it is better known as Santorini. The working theory is the volcanic eruption that essentially destroyed Santorini created a tidal wave that wiped out the Minoans at Heraklion a few hundred miles away. The Minoan civilization never recovered from that disaster. The frescos did.

Lastly, don’t you think it is odd that the plant is called the Tiger Lily not the Jaguar Lily? Jaguar are orange and have spots, orange tigers have stripes. Maybe the Tigris river had something to do with it.

Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant Profile

Lilium lancifolium bulbs

IDENTIFICATION: Bulbs widely ovoid, large scales. Stems minutely woolly, purplish, buds usually flat-sided, somewhat triangular in cross section. Leaves scattered, horizontal and drooping at tips; dark purple axillary bulbils; leaves lanceolate, often narrowly so, edges not wavy.  Flowers hang down, not fragrant; Turk’s-cap-shaped; sepals and petals curve back, orange with many purple-brown spots; stamens stick out, ends purplish,

TIME OF YEAR: Late summer

ENVIRONMENT:  Near damp places in urban areas, roadsides, railroad banks, buildings.

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Bulbs boiled, pickled, or used to make starch. Resemble parsnip in flavor. Flowers both fresh and dried used in soups, salads, omelets and rice dishes.

Hairy Cowpea, Vigna Luteola

It’s called a Cowpea but it’s not THAT cowpea, and it has a famous relative that no one calls by its botanical name.

So which Cowpea is it? Vigna luteola (VIG-nah loo-tee-OH-la) a twining vine found from Texas east through the Old South and then north to Pennsylvania. The famous cowpea is Vigna unguiculata, aka Black-Eyed Peas, the traditional New Year’s Day meal of southerners. And the even better-known relative they both have? Vigna radiata, or the Mung Bean. That means, yes ladies and gentlemen, that the Black Eyed Pea is not a pea but a bean, as is our cowpea. Let’s call  the Legume de jour  by a slightly different name, the Hairy Cowpea (because its pod is slightly hairy.)

Both the Black- Eyed Pea and the Hairy Cowpea are natives of Africa. At one time it was thought the Hairy Cowpea was the ancestor of the Black-Eyed Pea but now they think the “spontaneous” wild Black-Eyed Pea was the ancestor of the cultivated Black-Eyed Pea. Sounds incestuous and confusing.  And just how the African Hairy Cowpea got to the Americas, and is also native in the Americas by some accounts, is a bit of a botanical dilemma we need not worry ourselves about. Edibility not origin is our concern.

Vigna’s Hairy Pods

An article on the Hairy Cowpea was published in 2004 for PROTAbase, which is Plant Resources of Tropical Africa. It reported what many foragers know: The seeds and flowers are edible cooked. They report the flowers are eaten as a boiled vegetables in Ethiopia and Malawi. I eat them raw as a trail-side nibble. They taste like raw peas or green beans. Also in Malawi children dig up the roots, peel them and chew the roots to extract a sweet juice. Hairy Cowpeas seeds are boiled and eaten. The plant is about 17.5 percent protein and has high amount of the amino acid cystine. It is also good food for livestock. Another relative, the blue-flowered Vigna membranacea has edible leaves. They  are eaten after frying or boiling .

The genus is named for Professor Dominico Vigna, a 17th century Italian botanist and director of the botanical garden in Pisa. Luteola means yellowish. There are about 80 species in the genus. The report said nine years ago that the Americas’ Vignas would be moved into a new genus. Don’t hold your breath. It ain’t happened yet.

Green Deane’s “Itemize” Plant Profile: Hairy Cowpea

IDENTIFICATION: Vigna luteola, Twining or trailing perennial herb; stem up to 20 feet (6 m), hairy but hardly so. Leaflets alternate, groups of three like poison ivy;  leaves ovate-lanceolate to lanceolate, flowers in pairs at nodes,  yellow, much wider than long. Pod curved with short curved beak, slightly indented between the seeds.

TIME OF YEAR: Year round but favors summer, fruits in fall

ENVIRONMENT: Vigna luteola grows in wet areas, by lakes and streams, swamps and swales… the lawn you water too much

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Flowers and seeds cooked. Flowers raw but I would go light on them. Yellow blossoms in general tend to be laxative.

Two beans are grown for beauty, the Hyacinth Bean, edible with precautions, and the Scarlet Runner Bean, also edible.

It’s interesting that these two beans are so unlike the rest of the bean world yet so much alike. Both trail, that is, love to climb. They are showy, one towards purple the other red. They are perennials though are treated as annuals, and have starchy, edible roots. Their young leaves are eaten as well as their beans. Like the Hyacinth Bean the Scarlet Runner Bean also has tasty edible flowers. For the Hyacinth Bean go here.

Botanically in Dead Latin the Scarlet Runner Bean is Phaseolus coccineus (fay-see-OH-lus koh-SIN-ee-us.) That’s the bastardization of two living Greek words that mean “Red Bean” though the seeds are multi-colored. (In Greek it’s:  fah-SO-lee  KOH-kee-no.) The Scarlet Runner Bean has also been called the Oregon Lima Bean, Aycoctl by the Aztecs, and Ayocote by the Spanish. It’s native to Central America and has escaped cultivation in many areas. This bean is still on the home kitchen menu in its original range but the rest of the world grows it as an ornamental. Lots of folks also use it as a nectar attraction for hummingbirds and butterflies. Historically, Scarlet Runner Bean was in English and early American gardens by the 1600s.

Edible Bean-flavored Flowers

There are some dozen and a half cultivars now. (Cultivars are made by man, varieties are made by nature.) The Dutch Phaseolus coccineus v. alba has white flowers. The “Butler” is stringless, “Painted Lady” has red and white flowers, the “Kelvedon Wonder” is an early variety with long pods, “Sunset” has pink flowers, and the “Scarlet Emperor” …has scarlet flowers. Under right conditions the Scarlet Runner Bean is the most productive of all the planted beans.

Scarlet Runner Beans produce many-color seeds

Like most beans the Scarlet Runner Bean contains small amounts of the lectin phytohaemagglutinin (figh-toe-hee-mah-GLUE-tin-inn.) The highest amount is in uncooked red kidney beans. It’s toxic in large amounts which is why kidney beans are always long-cooked. As few as five raw kidney beans can cause symptoms such as losing fluids and feeling lousy for four or five hours. While there are many people who report they eat Scarlet Runner Beans seeds raw it is a good practice to cook them. The young pods before beans truly develop are eaten raw.

I have planted both to climb guy wires near local telephone poles. It’s a win win win as they say. The ugly wire is covered with an attractive vine and blossom, I get to harvest the bean without having to give up any space or create a trellis, and the birds and bees are happy.

 Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant Profile: Scarlet Runner Bean

IDENTIFICATION: Phaseolus coccineus: Quick-growing vines, typical bean three-leaflet, dark green with purple tinged veins underneath, to 15 feet long/tall, red flowers borne in clusters like sweet peas, slender pods to a foot long. Seeds lima bean shape, color varies from shining black to violet-black mottled with deep red.

TIME OF YEAR: All year in warm climates, seasonally in temperate summer and fall

ENVIRONMENT: Fertile soil, adequate moisture, full sun, preferably something to climb on or it will ball up on the ground. Does better in moderate climates than either very hot or very cold.

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Young tender pods sparingly raw. Usually they are boiled, steamed, sauteed, baked, French-cut (in strips) before cooking; immature seeds used like shelled beans, read cooked; ripe, dried seeds used like dry kidney or Lima beans, long cooked; flowers have a bean-like flavor and are used in salads. Young leaves used as a pot herb, starchy root cooked. It is good food for cattle as well.

Edible flowers: Food for the Eyes and the Palate

Spiderwort, Marigolds, Rosemary, Smartweed, Pineapple Weed, Chamomile, False Roselle, Lavender, Forsythia, Borage

Blossoms are open only one day

Every time I see a spiderwort I think of Pocahontas, the 11-year old Indian girl who save the life of Captain John Smith (see my separate article about them and spiderworts.) There are many reason to praise the mild spiderwort. Its blossom can be candied or tossed plain into salads to add color. There are also ruby and white spiderworts. The blossom are open for only a day but that’s okay because the spiderwort has many blossoms waiting to open. With no particular flavor though with a hint of sweetness the flowers are available throughout their growing season. See separate article on site and video.

Some marigolds are better than others

There’s a lot of Internet misinformation about marigolds. All of them are edible from a non-toxic point of view. The more important question is which ones have an agreeable flavor? All of these get the culinary nod: Tagetes lucida, Tagetes patula, and Tagetes tenuifolia. Their flavor is citrusy. Usually only the petals are eaten. No green parts.  I also use them for yellow coloring in various dishes. Our three marigolds are called the “poor man’s saffron” along with the Calendula.

Rosemary’s sweet and spicy

I can remember the first time I saw rosemary growing in the wild in North America. I was on a business trip to California. Of course it grows wild in its native Greece. There it is called ???????????? (then-dro-LEE-vah-row.) Students in ancient Greece wore it around their necks in garlands or braided it into their hair thinking it improved their memory.  In English Rosemary means “remembrance.” I have two bushes of it growing in my yard. The light blue blossoms are sweet, spicy, pungent and taste of rosemary.

Smartweed’s blossoms can be white or pink

This next blossom is either love or hate in my foraging classes, the Smartweed, or Polygonum. I usually ask for a student volunteer to try a small amount. I also ask for someone who likes hot peppers. Once I’ve got the propert victim…ah.. volunteer I have them chew a very small portion of a leaf. It has a slow-to-get-started burn but then it grows like a red pepper heat rather than black pepper. The blossom are even hotter and fire up quicker. But, they have a bitter aftertaste and a perfume quality. Several of the Polygonum species heat up. The heat varies from species to species. In some the leaves can also be used as a green but they are a vasoconstrictor, read they can raise blood pressure in some.

Hardy Pineapple Weed

Most people don’t think of an edible wild flower growing in the middle of your driveway. Our driveway was hard-packed sand and gravel. Every summer it sprouted a determined crop of Pineapple Weed, Matricaria matricarioides. I noticed our horses, which doubled as our collective lawn mower, didn’t eat them. That led to my investigation. The weed is pineapply or applish and related to the next edible flower, Chamomile. Make a tea with the small flower heads. See separate article on site.

Chamomile: More than a sleep aid

Three a.m. has to be the absolute worst time of any day. And when I’m awake then I make myself a cup of chamomile tea. The small flowers taste like the tea, on the sweet side and apple-ish. In a publication North Carolina State University warns that the flowers contain “thuaone” but that is a misprint which has since been proliferated over the Internet. I don’t cut and paste. I do my own research and write every word myself. That’s why there are so many typos. 😆 Chamomile has very low amounts of thujone, which is credited in significant amounts to getting people high. It’s one of the compounds in Absinthe. I’ve had Absinthe in Greece and the liquorish liquor did nothing for me. All chamomile tea does for me, and most, is make me sleepy. If  you are allergic to ragweed, however, you might want to avoid chamomile. The two plants are related and chamomile can bother some people with a ragweed allergy.

False roselle and edible leaves, too

Many a hibiscus flower can go into salads and the like but I don’t know how many I’ll cover because most of them are virtually flavorless but they are pretty and add texture. I happen to like the False Roselle, Hibiscus acetosella, because beside the edible pink flower the leaves are edible as well, raw or cooked.  I use the young leaves for salads and stir fry. They keep their color. A close relative, Hibiscus sabdariffa is the real roselle and is also known as the “Florida Cranberry” or the “Cranberry Hibiscus.” A tart juice can be made from its fat calyxes. Its blossoms are edible as well. To see a related article click here.

Lavender has many uses

Lavender is an old stand-by found in many home gardens including mine. Its flavor is flowery, sweet and citrusy. Lavender has been used to flavor bread, cookies, jelly, beef, wine, sauces, stews, and custards. The blossoms are an attractive addition to champagne. The blossoms are also used around the house to impart a nice aroma from bedding to baths. It is also slightly diuretic.

Forsythia don’t last long

It’s easy to spot the Forsythia in the spring time. Just look for a naked shrub covered with yellow blossoms. You can find them in most urban areas and they escaped cultivation is several locations. The blossoms are spicy, minty, and slightly bitter. They add a cheery garnish to salads, particularly after a long winter. Very young leaves… very young leaves… are edible raw. Better boiled. See a separate article on site.

Borage flowers are sweet

Where I live there are only two plants that smell like cucumber. One is a wild cucumber. The other smells like cucumber but does not taste like cucumber. But you can also cultivate a flower that has the faint taste of cucumber, borage. While it is naturalized in southern Europe most of us have to put it in our herb garden. Borage has a long history of medicinal and culinary use. Currently it is a source of gamma linolenic acid, GLA. The sweet blossoms and leaves have the taste of cucumber. The flowers are often used in salads or as a garnish and do well in many drinks. One technique is to put the blossoms in an ice cube tray and freeze them into ice cubes to be used in drinks.

Next: Edible Flowers: Part Five