Maple-blossom Season
Eat Spring Flowers for Breakfast
We love eating Maple Blossoms each spring.
Maple Trees are entirely edible. The spring flowers are a beautiful, versatile spring vegetable, tasty raw or cooked, savoury or sweet. Here, Bigleaf Maples (Acer macrophyllum) or ȾŦÁ,EȽĆ (in SENĆOŦEN) or q’umun’ulhp (in Hul q’umi num) grow tall and wild, and are used as food, medicine, and for wood by First Nations. Canada and maples go way back — it's a sappy relationship, but a sweet one. With Canadian-grown foods all the rage, this one is for the maple-curious.
Blooming in late March and early April, Maple flowers offer us a connection with place, season, and the quiet abundance of nature. For pollinators, they provide a full-on petal-powered buffet. Even though maples are predominantly wind-pollinated, their blossoms provide nectar and golden pollen for overwintering bees, flies, and moths, ensuring pollination even in variable spring weather.
The flavour of a Maple Inflorescence is nutty, green, and slightly bitter and floral. I think of them as a very subtle and slightly sweet asparagus. The most common recipe out there is a Maple-flower Pancakes for a “double-maple showdown” when smothered in maple syrup. They are also great in savoury frittatas, stir-fries, added to breads or biscuits, and raw in salads or on cakes as lovely garnish.
This year, our relatives from Thailand were visiting, so we tried something new: Phad Canada!
We’d taken a cooking class on our last visit to Chiang Mai with Pi Kay (Kingkorn Narintarakul), and our cousins brought us some of that wonderful pickled radish from Thailand… So, in this version, we used Turkey eggs from Ruckle Park, Maple syrup instead of palm sugar, added Maple blossoms along with bean sprouts, and topped it with brocco-microgreens from Laughing Apple Farm. Fusion cuisine at its finest!
Making maple blossoms part of our regular spring diet here in Coastal BC, along with other wild and gardened delicasies is all part of a resilient food system. Permaculture empahasizes food forests, because food that grows on trees is perennial (producing year after year without having to collect seeds and replant), trees survive fluxuating weather patterns better than most farm crops, plus importantly they provide habitat for lichens, mosses, pollinators, and wildife.
Forget waving the Maple Leaf, and dish out some true Canadian pride in the beautiful landscape that we call home—with a maple flower meal.
Next, I’d like to try tempura maple blossoms in an air fryer.
Big thanks to Tubtim for great photos of our Phad Canada meal!
The Phad Canada did not dissapoint!😋 Great article:)
I love Bryn’s drawing! Makes me want to do the same.
We often focus on the leaves when thinking about Maple trees, but I just love seeing the Maple flowers pop at this time of year.
Thank you Robin for the resource links you included.