Edibility of Bulbs - Muscari /Helianthus

Nils Hasenbein via pbs pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net
Thu, 25 Mar 2021 02:43:57 PDT

> Last year when removing a bunch that had sprouted up amongst the equally
> colonizing Muscari in the vegetable patch,I added washed Daslook bulbs to a
> vegetable ferment I was making.

Your mention of muscari reminds me that I repeatedly read about Muscari 
comosum being edible, and both the german and the english Wikipedia 
report that it's a delicacy in Greece and especially on Crete. Does 
anybody have any experience eating them? The other Muscari seem to be 
bland to mildy toxic/irritating.

A word on Helianthus tuberosus, Jerusalem artichoke: It is commonly sold 
in Germany in Whole Food (so called "Bio")Markets. Most people I know 
who tried it had severy stomach problems afterwards, due to the high 
inulin content. It is said you can adapt to that, and the taste is 
actually quite nice. They come in many sizes and some colors and are 
actually nice cutflowers (to me), but they are very, very aggressive 
spreaders, regenerating exteremely quickly and hiding quite deep in the 
soil. It took me several years to remove them completely from a patch 
where i planted just a single tuber. Several friends grow them in 
remote, sunny, rich patches of the garden, more for the late summer 
flower display than for food. But I guess when you have no problems 
eating it, it is a very productive vegetable. There is also a spirit 
distilled from it in Germany (as from basically any starchy root...), 
called "Topinambur" (same as the plant'c common name), or "Rossler".

Nils

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