Uses

Several flowers serve for salad dressings, dips or sauces. The plantain lily flower is cooked like other vegetables or can be fried into a dough to make very light doughnuts. Some are the ingredients of deliciously different salads and other add flavor to sugar, syrup, honey, butter, jams, jellies and vinegar. In crystallized form, they produce pretty decorations for cakes and pies. Dried and steeped, some produce delicate herbal teas as well as highly spiced teas.

Most herbs include the use of both flower and leaf, although the latter has a sharper taste. Several vegetable flowers are edible, furthermore, including those of zucchinis and peas, but EXCLUDING tomato, potato, egg-plant, bell pepper, asparagus and a few others. The flowers of certain trees and shrubs, such as the magnolia, rosebush and cherry tree, are also highly appreciated because of their more special tastes.