Chilopsis linearis

What to Eat

Edible parts: Flowers, Seeds pod

The flowers and youngest, tender seedpods are the main edible parts of desert willow. Fresh flowers have a light fragrance and a mild, slightly sweet, faintly astringent flavour; the trumpet-shaped corolla is the most tender and palatable portion. Flowers can be eaten raw in salads or briefly simmered — boiling softens texture and moderates astringency, producing a mildly aromatic broth suitable as a soup base. Young pods, harvested while still short, soft, and fully green (roughly under 6–9 cm), taste faintly like green beans but with a bitter overtone. Brief boiling improves flavour and digestibility; the cooking water takes on a lightly sweet vegetable character, making the broth more useful than the pods themselves as a bulk ingredient. Once pods exceed that size they become tough, fibrous, and stringy; fully mature pods and seeds are effectively inedible. A tea made from the inner bark, leaves, and flowers appears in ethnobotanical records, though this use is closer to folk medicine than everyday food. Among documented Indigenous uses, the Cahuilla of southern California harvested flowers and young pods opportunistically from spring through autumn as minor, supplementary foods rather than staples.

Where to Find It

It is a temperate plant. It does best in hot, dry climates with cool crisp nights. It grows in mountains up to 2,000 m in Texas. It suits hardiness zones 8-11.

Australia, Central America, Mexico, North America, USA,

How to Identify

A tree. It is willow like. It grows to 9 m high. It has an open habit of growth. The branches are slender and twist. It loses its leaves during the year. The leaves are pale green. They can be 30 cm long. The flowers are 5 cm long. The flowers can be white or pink. They are funnel shaped with ruffled petal like lobes. The fruit are slender seed pods. These can be 15-25 cm long.

How to Grow

Plants can be grown from seed or cuttings.

Propagation: Sow seed in a greenhouse in spring. There are approximately 75,000 seeds per pound, of which only about half are viable; roughly 4,000 plants are typically raised from a pound of seed. Once seedlings are large enough to handle, prick them out into individual pots and grow on in the greenhouse for at least the first winter. Plant out into permanent positions in late spring or early summer after the last expected frosts, and protect plants through their first winter or two outdoors. The plant also grows readily from cuttings.

Medicinal Uses

A decoction of the flowers is used for coughs and bronchial disturbances. Bark and leaf preparations have been used medicinally in various Indigenous traditions for tooth and gum problems, fungal infections, and general tonic purposes.

Other Uses

Young, pliable twigs are woven into baskets; shoots are used unsplit as rod foundations in coil basketry. The bark has been used to make shirts and nets. The wood is coarse-grained, soft, weak, and reasonably durable in the soil, and has been used for fence posts and fuel. Branches have also been used in light construction and as tools.

A deciduous shrub reaching 9 m (29 ft 6 in) at moderate growth rate, hardy to UK zone 8. Flowers in June. Hermaphrodite and bee-pollinated. Tolerates light, medium, and heavy soils with mildly acid to basic pH. Can grow in semi-shade or full sun and prefers moist soil.

Notes

There is only one Chilopsis species.

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