The edible ornamental plants: a resource for urban Mediterranean horticulture

In recent years, the need to identify “new” food crops has grown, in spite of the food consumption homologation. Agrobiodiversity is an important element of sustainability, so identifying new edible plants is one of the most effective strategies for food security. Edible and ornamental plants, which combine the aesthetic aspect with the food aspect, can be a resource especially in urban horticulture and in small cottage gardens because they do not have to be placed in separate areas and allow to obtain great benefits to growing them in associations. Cultivating food plants, especially fruit trees, in ornamental gardens, is a rather widespread tradition in the Mediterranean area and in particular in Sicily. The species that are both edible and ornamental are very numerous and not always known. To individuate the ornamental and edible plants of possible utilization in Mediterranean gardening, a specific survey was carried out through the analysis of different references about edible plants and flora of Sicilian traditional gardens. Almost 8000 taxa of edible plants, belonging to more than 280 botanical families were surveyed. Comparing this list with a previous survey on the species present in historical and/or traditional Sicilian gardens, rich of 1188 taxa, belonging to 559 genera and 141 botanical families, we found that 467 species of these, belonging to 119 botanical families, are edible. Different plant organs for the same species are edible: flowers are edible for 22% of recorded species, leaves for 20%, fruits for 18.0%, and hypogeal organs for 9%. The data show that it is possible to easily design edible ornamental gardens in the Mediterranean environment.