Post by agrorev on Mar 16, 2014 13:14:53 GMT -5
Dave Jacke posted this last year in the Edible Forest Gardens Facebook group:
Sound pretty tasty and prime candidates for a Viola breeding project. I will grow Etain and Rebecca this year. Hopefully they will be able to produce seed.
The discussion below about violets made me think of this: Viola 'Rebecca' is a cultivar (one of 70 or so 'violettas' bred by the same British gentleman some decades ago) that is one of the best tasting I have found so far. It tastes like a mix of vanilla and wintergreen, with the flavor changing as temperatures warm--I think the wintergreen flavors are actually antifreeze chemicals! But this cultivar, along with 'Delicia', 'Little David', and 'Etain' all have similar flavor and properties and are reasonably available on the US market (especially Etain). Readers in Britain will ahve access to more of the cultivars in this group and can test their flavor for the rest of us... But these greens qualify as green candy, in my book. I think even a kid would love them for dinner or as a snack. They are not the greatest groundcover, in my experience, at least in sandy dry soils. But they like shade or part shade, moist soils, and their flowers are gorgeous for a nice month or so in spring. By the way, all violets are edible, but the purple and white ones generally taste better (except for the cultivars here!). There are 450 species of Violas worldwide, and over 1000 cultivars registered at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Britain, and I know of only a handful of those named cultivars that have been tested for flavor. Anyone else interested in testing?
Sound pretty tasty and prime candidates for a Viola breeding project. I will grow Etain and Rebecca this year. Hopefully they will be able to produce seed.
