Flower Candy
I’ve had a sweet tooth all of my life. And the ways that I have tried to satisfy it
have varied widely. Of course, there are
store-bought treats, but those aren’t always at hand. Red clover, one of the natural sweet treats
that grow in these parts blooms much of the summer.
I did a little research and was amazed to learn how
edible the red clover plant actually is.
I say plant because the leaves, roots and flowers are all edible and apparently
very nutritious; they are unusually high in vitamin and protein values. I was even able to find recipes on line. As kids, we didn’t know all of that. If we had known that it was nutritious we
might have shied away from even trying it.
We didn’t do any kind of processing; we just picked the flower heads,
pulled out the flowers and bit the white ends off. For a brief, and I will stress brief moment,
there was a pleasant, sweet taste. As I
recall, most of the gum we chewed when I was a kid also had a very brief burst
of sugary flavor that very quickly faded.
The flowers taught us to be selective and
careful. If you yanked at the flowers
too hard then some of the green plant came along. That green part not only lacked any flavor of
its own; chewing it also masked the sweetness that was there in the
flower.
The site that I read through warned against eating too
much clover at one time as it can lead to indigestion. I know that never happened to me because it
soon seemed like a lot of work for a small return and after sampling a half
dozen flowers or so, we went back to playing baseball or hide and seek. The only thing that the website didn’t
explain to me about red clover is why it is called red clover. The flowers look purple to me. And, as kids, we called it purple clover. Kids are simpler at heart than botanists I
guess.
My yard is full of the smaller white clover
plants. During drier summers the plants
maintain some green to the yard as the grass, goes dormant, brown and brittle. They also let me know that the yard is in
need of a mow. When I look out and see
too much white from the clover blossoms that is my signal to start up the
mower. White clover is a longer-term signal
than the springtime dandelions. Although
the bright yellow of the dandelions is more cheerful and noticeable than the white
clover, they really only bloom strong until early June. The white clover will bloom all the way to
frost. But, fair warning, the smaller,
white flowers have no discernable sweet taste.
Trust me; I know.
The other morning on my walk I decided to see if the
red clover is as sweet as I remembered.
I plucked the flower off of a nearby plant as I walked past. I made sure that the flower was richly
colored and not pale as my memory told me, right or wrongly, the richer the
color the sweeter the taste. I carefully
pulled out a pinch of flowers from the head and bit down on the pale white
ends. There it was, just that simple burst
of sweet on the tip of my tongue. It was
as pleasant as I remembered.
His Peace <><
Deacon Dan
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