Elm Samara: Recipes Using the Tree’s Edible, Winged Seeds

If there ever was a time to learn how to identify elm trees easily, it is in their brief, green samara season. Samara are winged seeds, and the wafer-like seed cases of elm trees are distinctive, as well as tenderly edible. They appear in mid-spring, with each seed wrapped neatly in a soft chartreuse package, which later dries and acts as a wing, to help carry the seed when it is mature and ready to be dispersed. Clusters of spring-green samara give elm branches a plush, ruffled appearance. When they are young, elm samara are a deliciously succulent treat, easy to collect, and often very abundant.

Here are eight ways I like to eat them.

Photography by Marie Viljoen.

Like other fruit, nut, and winged seed trees (like maples), elms can have mast years, or a bumper crop, where branches appear to be bursting with samara. The seeds appear before the trees leaf out, so collecting a couple of handfuls is blissfully easy and does not impact developing foliage.

All elms produce edible samara. The trees I see most often in New York City are the long-time landscape favorites Siberian elm (Ulmus pumila) and Camperdown elm (the European native, U. glabra). While Siberian elms are widely planted in parks, they are also considered invasive in parts of North America. I’d say we’re doing wild areas a favor by collecting their seeds before they mature and are dispersed, but there is no forager capable of denuding a mighty, 80-foot tree. Native American elms (Ulmus americana) have slightly fuzzy winged seeds, and the trees are better-known for having been decimated by Dutch elm disease, a fungal infection spread by elm bark beetles. (For quick identification of four elm species by their samara, the linked iNaturalist post is very helpful.)

Whether you have bagfuls or a handful (which you should nibble on the spot), elm samara can easily be included in a quick meal. At home, wrap or cover them before storing them in the fridge, where they will keep very well for at least a week. Wash them just before using them (or they spoil more quickly).

The samaras’ texture when raw is succulent, almost-but-not-quite-sweet, and delicately starchy (in a nut-like way). Use them in abundance as a pillowy filling for summer rolls, alongside crunchy vegetables and edible flowers in a salad, as a foil for a soft cheese, or scattered across gentle, spring-adjacent toast toppings.