Viola odorata and related Viola spp.
Violets are sweet, perfumed spring flowers with a delicate flavor and a deep purple-blue color. They are a small, distinctly seasonal accent rather than a main ingredient.1
Common blue violet leaves are edible as well as the flowers; the roots are not. With edible flowers, identification and growing conditions matter: UMaine cautions against flowers from florists, nurseries, roadsides, or plants treated with pesticides not approved for food crops.23
The flower’s blue-purple is produced by anthocyanins, a broad pigment group found across many red, blue, and purple plants.4
The perfumed European sweet violet, Viola odorata, is not the same species as the common blue violet of Northeast lawns and woods. The latter is usually V. sororia, a native recorded in every New England state across forests, fields, roadsides, clearings, and lawns. Naming the species matters because “violet” covers a large and variable genus.5
Footnotes
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University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “Edible Flowers: Pretty in Your Garden and a Culinary Delight,” accessed July 17, 2026. ↩
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University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “Edible Flowers: Pretty in Your Garden and a Culinary Delight,” accessed July 17, 2026. ↩
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University of Illinois Extension, “Embracing the Common Blue Violet,” 2017. ↩
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University of Illinois Extension, “How Do Plants Decide What Color to Wear?,” 2017. ↩
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Arthur Haines, New England Wild Flower Society’s Flora Novae Angliae (Yale University Press, 2011), PDF p. 921. ↩