Pretty Enough to Eat?

Photo of Green Bean and Nasturtium Salad With Tarragon Dressing

I found the above photo on foodistablog's photostream on flickr. Pretty, isn't it? I learned something interesting recently, and wanted to share it with you. A lot of people realize that some flowers are edible. Nasturtiums, like the ones shown above in that beautiful salad, dandelions, chamomile and lavender flowers are commonly used as food. There's a great article on What's Cooking America, which goes into detail which flowers are edible and how you can prepare and use them.

The interesting fact that I learned, which I mentioned above, is that morning glories are definitely NOT on the edible list!

Not that I had planned on eating my morning glories, I think they are too pretty to cut. This beautiful bloom is from my own garden, caught after a morning rain.

Eating morning glories can cause LSD-like hallucinations, which in itself doesn't sound all that horrible if that's your cup of tea, but the "...which leads to rapid heart rate, failure, and death" part didn't appeal to me!

The part that bugs me the most is that I can't find the site that listed all of those poisonous plants and the symptoms that accompany contact with them. Let's just say that I was attempting to look up what it was that I tried pulling out of my garden without gloves. The little spines that stuck my hand left my right hand feeling like it had been injected with novacaine for about 24 hours. A little alarming, but it didn't warrant a half-hour drive to the ER at 9pm that night. I took some Benedryl before bed, though!

Word to the wise: know which plants in your area are poisonous, and always wear gardening gloves!