Apparently tulips are edible! And they’re really pretty, and they’re perennial, and they grow just fine without irrigation here.
Is anyone breeding tulips with a focus on flavor?
1 Like
Do you eat the actual flowers or the bulbs or what?
And if you have tried them, do you feel like they taste good enough that there is actually a decent starting point to even try breeding for flavor from?
It is a really strange thought to buy a bunch of different tulip bulb varieties with the intention of comparing flavors of each one… would be a fascinating project though.
From what I’ve read, the whole plant is edible. I’ve tasted the flower petals and leaves, which taste a lot like lettuce – mildly sweet, with a pleasingly crisp texture. A bit firmer and thicker than lettuce, which I liked – I can’t be sure, but it seems likely it would take longer to wilt than lettuce does.
I haven’t tried the bulbs. I’ve read that they taste a lot like onions. I don’t like onions, so I don’t plan to try the bulbs, but I imagine someone who is fond of onions may enjoy them.
Do you have a site where you’ve sourced your tulips?
I got a whole bunch of domesticated ones from a neighbor who was getting rid of them. (Yay!) They’re pretty, but sadly don’t make seed pods.
At some point, I want to also buy some fertile ones that can make seeds. I’m thinking of these:
A local gardener I’ve met has that exact mix, and they’re gorgeous and always make seed pods (which are pretty too, so not only does he get seeds, he also gets pretty plants for longer before the leaves die down for the summer). He wasn’t willing to share any seeds because he wants to plant all them himself (totally understandable!), so he told me where he got them from and recommended it as a source. 
1 Like
No first hand knowledge, but have read that there is a yellow center in the bulb that is toxic, so that needs to be removed before eating them. Interested in what you learn about eating the rest of the plant.
1 Like
Well now I’ve just purchased that wild mix and a narcissus mix… I suppose I’ll have a fair bit of fall planting to do this year. 
Or maybe hubs will since I’ll be off working in OK still… 
I haven’t tried eating the center of a main bulb. I have peeled off extra side cloves and eaten those, then replanted the main bulb. It seems like a good way to still have tulips next year. 
There was no yellow part in the cloves on the sides that I ate, and they were tasty. Maybe that’s a good way to have your tulips and eat them too?
1 Like
A forager I trust, Cybele Blanche Derby only eats the flowers. I’ve never heard of the bulbs or leaves being edible, only about the flower petals.
Where did you learn that the entire plant was edible?
An article I read somewhere about the bulbs being eaten widely during World War II in Holland, because they are fully edible and taste pretty good, and the government had loads of rare bulbs stockpiled for selling as ornamentals. They wound up giving them to the people to help stave off starvation.
I’ve eaten the flower petals (which taste like slightly rubbery lettuce), the leaves (which taste like very thick lettuce), and the bulbs (which have a very mild neutral flavor, making them a good choice as an alternative to potatoes). No bitterness, no unpleasant symptoms. It’s just food.
2 Likes
I wrote an article about it too, just for your reference.
2 Likes
Good article! I think the reasons people stopped eating tulips were the same as why many people in that part of Europe won’t eat sunchokes - a reminder of too painful a time, a symbol of famine and need, and once potatoes are back again, everyone will gravitate to a preferred food with no risk of GI distress.
Often if seems novel foods causing GI distress get labelled “poisonous” when like beans and sunchokes it’s a matter of different cooking techniques being needed and adapting to the different indigestable carbs. I found no case reports of tulip poisoning apart from GI symptoms in humans. So I’m not sure where all the site claiming “tulips are toxic” get that information!
On the other hand, just like onion and garlic, also members of the lily family, they can he highly toxic to dogs and cats.
I intend to plant a patch of tulips in my Bulgarian garden this year, if I can get bulbs. There are a few domestic tulips fron the previous owner’s plantings surviving in the garden despite years of drought and STUN, so they seem as if they could be a good emergency food supply that will work in the local climate and soil.
1 Like
As a side note, one way to eat your bulbs and grow them, too – as well as to avoid eating the yellow part in the center – is to simply dig up the bulbs, remove the newly divided cloves from the sides, eat the cloves, and replant the center bulb. That’s what I did with mine. In that way, you can harvest maybe a third to two-thirds of the mass of the bulbs, and still have just as many next year. It’s also convenient.
“Tulip fingers” sounds a little concerning, but speaking as someone who’s been handling tulip bulbs all day every so often, I don’t think it’s likely to happen unless you’re handling them all day every day for long periods. Most likely that’s just a sign that your body’s telling you, “Too much time with only one species! Move along!”
Last year, I started getting a bit of an itchy mouth whenever I ate carrots, which was upsetting because I love them. I had been eating carrots every day for a few months. I thought that meant I had developed a new allergy and couldn’t eat them anymore, which was a crying shame. But, a year later, I tried eating them again, and it was fine. I think my body was just saying, “Too many carrots! I need more variety in the number of species I’m eating, please. Try something else for awhile.”
In case anyone’s curious, I’m preparing a dry garden area right now that is filled with tulips. I’m also planning to add ookow, grassnut, bush morning glory, and prairie turnip, all of which should be pretty and able to grow in my climate without any irrigation. We get most of our water in the winter, so winter perennials that flower in spring and go dormant in summer strike me as ideal, plus some summer perennials that are extremely drought tolerant to make sure the space is pretty year-round.
Garlic, chocolate daisy, echinecea, and earthnut pea are also species I’m considering adding into the area. I have a few baby fig trees there, and I’ll probably move them while they’re dormant in the winter, because while I’ve found that fig trees can survive without any irrigation here, they won’t fruit, and I want fruit.
2 Likes
By the way, I have a random question that maybe you guys can answer.
While putting some tulip bulbs into the ground yesterday, I came across a bulb that didn’t look like a tulip. It had a purple papery husk, rather than a brown one. And the white interior was round and slightly flattened, rather than teardrop-shaped, and there were no obviously separate side cloves, unlike tulips. It was almost certainly another common ornamental that my neighbors accidentally included with all the tulip bulbs they dug up to give me. Any idea what it was?
Possibly a crocus corm?
Hmmm. I looked up crocus corms, and it looks like their husk is light brown, and more stringy than papery.
Puzzlesome! (Spends awhile longer on Google Images trying various searches . . .)
Hey, maybe it’s a hyacinth bulb? It looks like those sometimes have purple papery husks:
If so, that’s a bummer, because it means it’s not edible, and thus something I don’t really care about.
I could ask my neighbors if they dug it up by accident and want it back.
Yeah, it’s probably a hyacinth bulb, looking at this image:
The caption says, “Bulbs including hyacinths, dwarf tulips, daffodils, narcissus, grape hyacinths, crocuses, miniature irises.”
It’s from this website, to give credit where credit’s due:
Okay, now we can go back to the original subject!
I’ve been finding that tulip bulbs are quite easy to identify because they have a teardrop shape, and their outer husk is dark brown paper that cracks and slips off easily. If you leave them out of the ground with the husk peeled off, they will have grown a brand new husk within a day. Quite an impressive behavior to protect themselves from dehydration, even while fully dormant.
I was initially worried that I might have trouble telling them apart from star of Bethlehem bulbs (which volunteers everywhere in my yard), but it turns out to be very easy to tell them apart. Star of Bethlehem bulbs are just white and rubbery, with no papery husk, and they’re far smaller and close to ovaloid-shaped.
1 Like
Hyacinths smell so amazing tho! They’re so pretty…
When I worked in a florist shop Years ago, hyacinths in our front room were my favorite plant to care for. Their smell is so heady. 
Yes, but if I can’t eat any part of it . . .
That is a good argument in favor of keeping it, though.
Oh! Maybe I could offer it to my mom! She can’t grow edibles because her neighborhood is overrun with deer, but she loves ornamentals, and is actively looking for beautiful flowers the deer won’t touch. Hyacinth may be a good fit for her.
1 Like
Nice! Thank you for you valuable info on your experience! I’ve learn a lot. Neutral flavor alternative to potatoes sounds AWESOME! We need more root crops if we are planning to survive off the food we grow.