Spring Beauty Corms

The corm is very tough and fibrous but tastes a lot like a potato when you cook it.

Spring beauty corms. Full to partial sunlight. The flowers are quite small but they are produced in such profusion that they make up for their small stature. Once the seeds ripen you need to make sure you sow them right away.

Space them about 3 inches 8 cm apart and deep. This low-growing late winter to early spring ephemeral emerges from an ovoid to globose corm a bulblike underground stem. These seeds will usually mature early in the summer.

The Spring Beauty also Springbeauty is a longtime standard for foragers. Native Americans would use the corms medicinally for several issues. The corms of Spring Beauty are dug up and eaten by some small rodents including the White-Footed Mouse and Eastern Chipmunk Martin et al 19511961.

Spring beauty corms are edible and due to their diminutive size of ½ to 2 inches in diameter they are called fairy spuds an epithet which no doubt contributes to. They are abundant in some areas rare in others. True to its name the attractive wild flower is a sign of spring and easy to recognize from other spring blossoms.

Found often in abundance in open woods fields valleys suburban lawns and sometimes rocky ledges. The corm of spring beauty is crisp and relatively high in starch and digestible sugar allowing it to be eaten raw. Spring Beauty is a small woodland plant flowering in mid to late spring from a small corm.

Thus forage with some local consideration. When collected and cooked shortly after flowering the corms taste much like potatoes. Plant 4 deep and 3 to 4 apart.