Now here's a rose that I like to eat! I don't know the variety - it's been on this homestead for at least 35 years. It blooms vigorously in several spurts throughout the summer, so I get to enjoy its petals in a lot of meals.
Camera: Sony DSC-RX-10 // Lens: 9-73mm f/2.8 @ 55mm // Shutter Speed: 1/800 sec // Aperture: f/6.0 // ISO: 125
From the mottled leaves with some black spots here and there, you can tell that I don't spray it with fungicides. But I don't think these leaves make the rose any less pretty. And the rose plant doesn't seem to mind. It would be nice if more roses were allowed to be less than perfect, because then more folks could appreciate eating them.
An older post, Eat Flowers, shows a salad I made with petals from this rose. And here's another good meal using its petals, too - this mix of flowers and greens was great as a base for some vegetarian pot-stickers!
Upper panel, clockwise from the top left: field pea shoots, garden mustard flowers, dandelion greens, petals from the yellow rose and a Joseph's Coat rose, black locust flowers, and Bristly Hawksbeard.
Do you eat rose petals? Would you rather have perfect roses or perfectly edible roses?
If you want to see how I use rose petals in another salad, check out the last salad in this post: Salads from Trees, Weeds, Flowers and Seeds
Plant list:
- Field Pea – Pisum sativum - young shoots
- Curly mustard - Brassica juncea - yellow flowers
- Dandelion – Taraxacum officinale – leaves
- Roses - Rosa spp. - Unknown yellow rose and Joseph's Coat - flower petals
- Black Locust - Robinia pseudoacacia - flowers
- Bristly Hawksbeard - Crepis setosa - leaves