Sunshine Smiles
When I was a child, lesser celandines, or fig buttercups, were favorites of the spring menu, eagerly awaited, as the first greens of the season, for their fresh peppery taste.
Lesser celandines are buttercup relatives, and as such, actually poisonous, but the toxins are easily cooked out of them, and after that they can be eaten in moderate quantities, prepared like nettles or spinach.
Very young leaves can be used raw in salads, but they are safe only before the flowers appear.
People usually compare the taste of fig buttercups to that of spinach, but I’d say they are spicy and peppery, like nasturtiums.
Because of their rich vitamin C, E, calcium and potassium content, lesser celandines used to be recommended as a treatment for scurvy.
Today, their astringent qualities make them useful as medicinal herbs, for external uses only: their active compounds reduce inflammation, especially for ulcers.
Exercise caution. In some people, prolonged direct contact with mature leaves irritates the skin.
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