Is this the wild species?
https://www.wildutah.us/html/plants_scenery/h_viola_purpurea_goosefoot_violet.html
If so, I ought to see if I can find seeds somewhere.
Hmm, this website says they prefer cool temperatures:
Maybe they’re adapted to your part of Utah, at a higher elevation with cooler temperatures, and wouldn’t do as well in my part, with the scorching hot summers.
There are like 3-5 species of yellow violets that grow in the foothills and mountains of Utah. I don’t know how to distinguish one from another.
The valley floors typically support Viola odorata (eurasian sweet violet), and very rarely Viola tricolor (pansies).
All are edible.
Thank you! I need to see if I can get some started in my lawn. I’d rather have those than grass, any day. 
I have a little Violet that grows in my lawn the small but it’s pretty and violent or purple whatever you want to call it thank you I love listening to you guys
Oooh.
Apparently all plants in the mustard family are edible. And a huge, huge number of them are weeds.
This includes hoary cress and shepherd’s purse, which I have, and dame’s rocket, which somebody else has.
Very interesting if there’s an entire family of edible weeds that can be easily identified as safe to eat, even if you can’t figure out the exact species.
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I’m pretty sure this is alfalfa. It grows all over the place as a weed here. The leaves taste decent.
I am pretty sure this is tansy mustard, a.k.a. flixweed (Descurainia sophia). If I’m wrong about the exact species, it’s definitely a brassica, so it should be safe to eat. The initial taste is a bit bitter and the aftertaste is rather spicy, but the in between taste is nice. I ought to see how they taste cooked.
The young leaves looked like carrots, so I let them grow. It turns out they’re not carrots, and their seed pods look like brassica seed pods, so I started to wonder if it was edible anyway.
I’m pretty sure this is madwort (Asperugo procumbens), which is edible. I can’t find any lookalikes that have these exact flowers, and it has the slightly hairy leaves it’s supposed to have. It tastes a lot like a mild radish to me.
This is quite interesting. Even though I don’t have a lot of food I deliberately planted to harvest in my garden right now (mostly garlic and brassicas; the peas aren’t flowering yet), I may have a lot of food in my garden beds in the form of cold hardy edible weeds.
. . . I mean . . . I’m not gonna object to that. If I wind up deciding I like the taste of an edible weed, I’ll probably let some of that species finish their life cycle and collect seeds and toss them around in my grass. I’ll harvest the ones in my garden beds to eat, and happily encourage the rest to stay in my lawn. I want edible groundcovers as a backup food supply, and volunteer edible weeds qualify.
Here’s an amusing tip about an easy way to identify your weeds.
Let’s say you find a wild species in your yard. Take a picture. Do a reverse image search on Google. Check sources very carefully to make sure you identify exactly what it is, and there are no poisonous things you may be mixing it up with. Once you feel at least 99% sure you know what it is, give it a tiny taste and see if it tastes the way the species is supposed to, and if it tastes good. If both things are true, you’ve almost certainly identified it correctly and found a new food.
(Still, wait a day to see if any unpleasant symptoms appear after trying that taste. Remember that it’s possible to turn out to be allergic to a new-to-you species, even if you’ve identified an edible species correctly, so be sensible.)
All of that is good, common sense. Here’s the funny tip.
Once you’ve determined that it’s edible, it tastes good, and it’s reasonable food for your body, run a websearch for ways to eradicate it!
If it’s great at growing in your climate, you will probably find several sources aimed at your climate about, “Here’s how to get that stupid thing out of your lawn!”
Then do the opposite if you want to grow it.
You’re welcome. 
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Yeah with mushrooms i check forndangerous look a likes or doppelgangers.
From the SAS survival handbook i know this tip to test if soomething is edible, take a tiny bit, put it on your lip for ten seconds, take it off, wait 24 hrs. Then put a bit in yoour mouth, spit it out, wait 24 hrs, then eat a bit, wait 48, then eat a leaf etc, slowly build up.
Yeah, that seems reasonable.
It’s also a good precaution to spit something out if it tastes really bitter, even if you think you’ve identified the species correctly, unless a) you’re absolutely certain you’ve identified it correctly, b) the species is definitely edible, c) the species is definitely supposed to taste very bitter, and d) you like very bitter flavors.
Most things that are poisonous taste bitter, and most individual plants within a species that taste more bitter than expected contain more of whatever toxins that species is capable of forming (for instance, latex in lettuce or cucurbitans in squashes).
So it’s usually a good rule of thumb to consider bitterness when taking a taste a bad sign, unless you’re absolutely certain it’s supposed to taste like that and be edible, and you find that flavor palatable. (Because even if it’s edible, why eat something you don’t like?)
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Because it’s good for you! You’ll be strong like a lion! Remember Popeye and Hulk! You be like them. Lol.
(Laugh.) I tend to prefer the approach of finding vegetables I enjoy eating. There are hundreds of thousands of edible plants out there. No reason to eat something I don’t enjoy!
Unless you’re starving, of course, and then beggars can’t be choosers, but that’s one of the excellent reasons to learn all the edible weeds in your neighborhood that you legitimately enjoy. Everyone knows dandelions are edible, so those would disappear quickly, but how many people know they can eat hoary cress? And it tastes much better than dandelions.
Maybe you’ve been deliberately cultivating a patch of a local weed in your backyard for years and learned lots of recipes to make it taste good. Maybe you’ve got all you need and don’t need to harvest it from anywhere else. Maybe you can happily tell everyone else in your neighborhood that those particular weeds in their yards are edible because you want them to be able to eat, too. Maybe they’ll ask for some of your seeds from the population you’ve been selecting for years for flavor, productivity, or whatever.
I really think it’s valuable to know the weeds that are already present in your ecosystem that are nutritious and taste good.
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This is an exciting topic to me. The idea of foraging in the wild for food makes so much sense on so many levels. The idea of planting things that will grow on their own to create future foraging opportunities in my local plot of land makes a great deal of sense, especially if that is a palatable version or improved version with better eating qualities.
Resources like iNaturalist, which we discussed on another thread, could be very helpful. I would use it to learn all the locally occuring wild vegetation, whether native or naturalized. I have often made efforts to locate seeds and plant them with the intention of introducing them into the edges of the garden or in hospitable places in the wilder areas here, hoping to achieve a successful permanent introduction of a helpful new plant species.
For me, edibility is one factor, but if you also strive to have plants with medicinal uses, that tends to expand the range of what is interesting and relevant, and lessen the need for the strain to have high palatability standards.
For the moment, I’m noticing that a plant called corn salad (Valerianella) is happily self-sowing in the garden for the first time this season. So there’s one that probably counts as a success.
I talked about the wild, native strawberry species as an effort in this direction. There are three native species in my region.
Other edible wild plants I’ve been working with (to varying degrees): dandelion, nettles, purslane
Bracken is marginal, apparently can be toxic, which is a shame since it’s everywhere.
Medicinal wild plants we’ve used: broad dock, Devil’s club, Cottonwood (buds), Calendula, Galium aparine (Cleavers), Usnea (a lichen), mint, … I’m sure there are more.
If you include edible flowers (I tend not to do much in this space), you have borage for one, probably could make a pretty good list with some thought and reflection.
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I was thinking about riversides, as seeds travel along and end up anywhere on the banks, maybe they’re like natural mixers of differing wild varieties. Natural hybrid swarms!
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I have no land of my own so that’s what I started doing. Which Spots have you found work the best? I’ve Tried a Parking lot, Open Area in an Abandoned Suburban Forrest, Forrest Edges that get mowed, & Other Foraging areas. So Far I’m having success with Parking Lot & Open Forrest Area. I don’t think there is a distinction between Gardening & Foraging, they are both the same activity at it’s core.
I think the distinction is usually whether you planted the seeds on purpose, or whether they were volunteers. But you’re right that the line is quite fuzzy, because self-sowing volunteers are frequently valued in gardening!
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I think every gardener needs to learn Foraging & Every Forager needs to learn Gardening. Foragers who care tend the plants they forage & Gardeners pulling weeds might look up to see if it’s edible.
I can’t imagine how risky it is to grow Carrot Family Crops that look similar to Poison hemlock & By accidentally pick the wrong one. Cherokee Swamp Potato (Oxypolis rigidior) is a good crop/wild edible but it looks extremely similar to Poison Hemlock (Cicuta spp.) & Imagine trying to tell the difference at seedling stage! How would one go about it? Especially when you don’t forage wild edibles like most Gardeners.
Yeah, I think at minimum, the two “different” disciplines share a huge thing in common: the importance of plant identification.
Star of Bethlehem and wild onion are another two species that are often confused by gardeners or foragers. Thankfully, star of Bethlehem isn’t that poisonous – it’ll just give you an upset stomach. Since I have a million star of Bethlehem bulbs in my lawn right now, and they often spread into my garden beds, I have figured out how to tell the difference between them and garlic (which I plant all over the place on purpose) at a glance now.
In case you’re curious, garlic leaves are broader, less waxy, and there’s a little . . . I don’t know what to call it. Fold? There’s a little fold-like thing near the bottom of the leaves and near the top of the bulb. You can see it in this picture:
And in this picture. It’s the yellow part that the green leaves are emerging from:
It’s probably the remnants of an old leaf. Anyway, it’s always there, even with the little itty bitty sprouts within a big clump when I treat garlic as a perennial. (Star of Bethlehem grows in clumps the same way, which is why it can be confusing.) Plus, of course, garlic leaves are going to smell faintly of garlic if you scratch the leaf slightly and sniff it.
My next-door neighbor, who grows grape hyacinths as ornamentals, recently taught me how to tell the difference between them and star of Bethlehem when neither is flowering. The bulbs and leaves look exactly the same, but grape hyacinth leaves droop downwards, while star of Bethlehem leaves poke straight up. That’s very helpful!
Especially since grape hyacinth bulbs are edible, and star of Bethlehem bulbs are very much not. I haven’t tried eating grape hyacinth bulbs because the flavor is apparently similar to onions, which I don’t like, but for someone who has those and doesn’t have a lot of star of Bethlehem to confuse them with, those may be worth trying.
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Have you ever heard of garlicleeks I don’t know if it’s a crossover or what but they say when they’re about 1-in wide they taste just like garlic