Are Pansies Edible? What Parts Of The Pansy Can You Eat?

Pansies (Viola and wittrockiana) refer to a type of edible flowers and their plants.

Many people plant pansies just to add beautiful colors to their gardens. In contrast, some plant them to include them in a dish.

These flowers have a sweet, spicy, and mildly bitter taste, so they go with various foods. That's why they are pretty popular as a flower that you can eat.

It mainly blooms during spring in colder regions and during winter and fall in warmer regions around the world. There are many types of pansies, like johnny jump-ups, delta rose surprise, delta marina, Chalon supreme, princess series, and more. Remember to check if you are allergic to certain flowers, and avoid eating these flowers if you are allergic.

There are many other flowers similar to pansies that are edible, like nasturtiums, calendula, borage, saffron, and more. Calendula petals can be used similarly to saffron.

Read on to learn more, and if you like this article, then also check out are dandelions weeds? And are bay leaves edible?

Types Of Edible Pansies And Their Edible Parts

Many types of pansies (Viola and wittrockiana) can be found around the world, and they are edible. Plenty of people use them in their cooking for their delicious flavor and color, especially the flowers.

Pansies are a hybrid plant that was cultivated to be a flowering garden plant. They come in many colors, white, yellow, orange, purple, and red, and more hybridization has led to more color variations in their colors.

Now even gold, violet, and even near-black colored edible flowers, which are actually extremely dark purple, can be seen. Many people only plant them to increase the variety of flowers in their gardens and to make their gardens more vibrant with the inclusion of these plants.

Little do some people know that pansies can be used in cooking as well.

All types of pansies can be used for eating. They all have slightly different flavors from each other, but they sure taste good.

Mainly in the culinary world, people use edible flowers in dishes. The entire flower, not only the petals, even their sepals, pistil, and stamen, are perfectly edible, so you can pick these edible flowers from the plant and eat them raw.

However, be careful not to eat flowers from pots or gardens where pesticides have been used.

Hence, it's better that you grow these plants in your garden and use the edible flowers from your own plant in your dishes.

Interestingly, seeds of the pansy plants are actually mildly toxic to humans. People eating the leaves or stems of the plants have not been heard, but we don't recommend you to try and eat them since they might be toxic too.

Places You Can Find Edible Pansies

Pansies can be found around the world, but they thrive in a colder climate. They are mainly garden plants and will be found more in homes of people than as shrubs by the road.

Pansies were cultivated as a flowering hybrid plant so they can be found in gardens of people around the world. They are not tropical plants, so it can be hard to grow them in the warmer zones of the world, but during certain seasons, they can be planted.

If you want to plant them, you can easily find them at nurseries or garden centers near you. You can surely grow one from a seed, but that will take a lot more effort from you than if bought as saplings.

Growing them won't be too hard. You can keep them in pots or containers or plant them in your garden.

Please keep them in the full sun or a partly shaded area. Keep in mind that it blooms in a slightly colder climate, so if you live in a tropical country, then plant it in the fall or winter.

Take them away in summer, as they will die in hot weather.

If you live in colder zones, plant them during the spring after the last frost of the winter to see how it blooms, because too cold weather can hurt the plant as well. The soil should be well-drained.

The many varieties of the plant are inspired, deluxxe mulberry mix, delta rose surprise, delta marina, Chalon supreme, princess series, jolly joker, johnny jump-ups, and more. If you want a hanging pansy flower plant in your home, the best option can be the cool wave morpho.

Taste Of Pansies And Recipes Featuring Them

All pansies taste a little different from each other. However, in general, they have a sweet yet spicy, fresh, and sometimes slightly bitter taste, similar to lettuce. They are mainly included in salads and used to garnish various food.

Pansies come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and taste varieties as well. In general, white, yellow, orange, or red, all pansies will taste very much like any other green vegetable, very grassy.

However, they do have a slightly sweet yet spicy, fresh, and sometimes a mildly bitter flavor that can remind you of lettuce.

However, most people don't really use pansies for their delicious flavor; they use them for their beautiful vibrant colors, but if you're using pansies in your dish, we recommend that you treat as you would treat any herb. There are many recipes where you can use pansies.

Salad: whether you're making vegetable salads or fruit salads, you can add the edible flower to give your salad a little flavor and a lot more color. Add a little cheese, a bit of lemon, and the pansy flowers, and maybe some nasturtiums, borage, and marigolds for their spiciness and sugary flavor.

Candies: you can whisk a little egg white and a few drops of water. Then take a paintbrush and brush the mixture on both sides of the petals of the young edible flowers and sprinkle a little confectioners' sugar on the petals and you have yourself a beautiful pansy flower candy.

Garnish on beverages: many people use pansies as a garnish on beverages, like spiced tea, wine, mocktails, cocktails, or punches. You can also get creative and freeze the flower inside ice cubes and add color to your drinks by adding the ice cubes to your beverages. In the case of spiced tea, you can use the flowers for garnishing.

Pansy blossoms cookies: after making cookie dough and cutting out the cookie shape you want, place pansy blossoms on top of it and give a little egg wash on the petals of the edible flower. Then sprinkle sanding sugar over the petals of the pansy blossoms and put it inside the oven to bake your pansy cookie.

Dessert: pansies go well with various types of desserts. People even use them for garnish or put them in desserts to make their desserts prettier and tastier. They can be used in tartlets, cakes, pastries, donuts, and more. Mostly they are used for garnishing on cakes, pastries, and other desserts.

Toxicity Of Pansies

Pansy flowers are edible. While their leaves are not used for eating, they are also not known to be toxic. However, as per a study by the University of California, even one seed of a pansy can prove to be mildly toxic to humans.

Pansy flowers are not only edible, but they also taste good as well. In addition to that, they make food more vibrant.

The entire flower of a pansy can be eaten, but the seeds can cause mild health issues for you. Symptoms will be mild as you will have to weather through symptoms like diarrhea and vomiting. We recommend that you go to the doctor immediately if the signs of toxicity are present.

Pansies are also non-toxic to domesticated pets, like cats and dogs, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA).

However, if your pet has ingested some toxic parts of the plant, it can cause stomach irritation, like vomiting and diarrhea too, but the symptoms will be very mild, the same as in humans. We still suggest that you take your pet to the veterinarian if they have eaten the plant to check for poisoning.

If the vet has diagnosed poisoning, then they will induce vomiting first to get the toxins out of your pet's system.

Then they will give your pet activated charcoal to absorb the remaining toxins in their stomach. You can see them recovering within a very short amount of time, but start taking measures to stop your dog from reaching your plants, like fencing your garden, hanging your pot from the ceiling, and more.

It would help if you also tried training your pet to make them stay away from the pansies.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family friendly facts for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for are pansies edible? Then why not take a look at are hickory nuts edible? Or are gourds edible facts pages?