Zhou Min
Kudzu powder is now like a health care product "net red".
Not long ago, when I went to Ciqikou Ancient Town New Street in Chongqing with a friend, I saw several small shops selling a kind of "kudzu sugar". In the past, when I worked in Guangzhou, the local people liked to use fresh kudzu root to cook old fire soup.
In Chongqing, the most common way to eat is to drink kudzu powder made of soup, just like the lotus flour abundant in the Jiangnan region. My mother likes to drink a bowl in the morning to help lower blood pressure, and I like to drink a bowl after eating a heavy hot pot or jianghu dish, which is both sweet and thirst-quenching. The most delicious kudzu powder in memory is eaten in the ancient town of Fenghuang in western Hunan Province, which is sold now, sprinkled with a layer of peanut crushed on the surface, and the aroma is fragrant.
Kudzu powder has good health benefits. Unless otherwise noted, the pictures in this article are all by the author Zhou Min
Autumn and winter are the best time to harvest fresh kudzu. A friend from his hometown in a suburb of Chongqing brings me some authentic kudzu powder at this time of year. There are also kudzu powders for sale in the market, ranging from 30 yuan to 50 yuan per kilogram, but it is extremely difficult to buy the real thing. Listen to this friend who grew up in the countryside, digging kudzu (especially wild) is very hard, and the production process is quite cumbersome and laborious.
Pueraria montana is a genus of kudzu in the legume family, climbing vine.
A few years earlier, I had found wild kudzu vines around my home, more than one— my neighborhood was originally a city near the edge of the countryside. Its stout, rust-colored vine, with its three large and equally rough leaves, was easy to identify.
Before the Mid-Autumn Festival this year, I went up to Gele Mountain, and just bumped into a large area of flowering kudzu, and the thick vines climbed up the big trees and covered the sky. A few days ago, I went to the free small park near my home - it was originally a barren slope, and the mountain was full of kudzu, and sure enough, I saw a bunch of kudzu flowers hidden among the green kudzu leaves.
Although there are many kudzu in the small park, it takes luck to photograph clear kudzu flowers - they usually bloom on very high branches. On this day, I was lucky enough to find a clump that I could reach out of my hand and admire its gorgeous beauty.
Kudzu blossoms in autumn
Kudzu flowers, very beautiful. The florets are dense , with clusters of flowers growing in clusters every two or three on the nodes of the inflorescence. The color is a beautiful fuchsia-red, standard legume butterfly-shaped flower. There is also a bright yellow spot at the base of the flag flap, like the "pretty eyes" of a beauty.
The inflorescence is indistinct, protruding upright from the leaf axils.
Kudzu flowers, very beautiful.
This time, however, I didn't go to see the flowers. The first time I collected a specimen of the flower on The Gole Mountain, after the dissection and appreciation, I checked the search table and was dumbfounded: there are several species of Kudzu, and the first feature of the definite species is the shape of the leaf.
In the small park, the leaves are long ovate, and the middle is attached to the place where the stem intersects with the petiole. It looks like a pair of clips that protect the petioles in between. Growing in this way, I was the first time I encountered it, and it is botanically called "the back (face) of the leaf (face)".
Toyo's back is the most critical feature of identifying Kudzu
This key feature was identified, coupled with the fact that the lobe at the lowest part of the calyx was significantly longer than the lateral lobe and the keel flap of the flower was longer than the wing flap, and this was successfully determined, which is the pueraria montana.
The keel lobes of the flowers are longer than the wing petals, and the lowest calyx lobes are significantly longer than the lateral lobes
Kudzu is an ancient plant in native China, Chinese have a lot of affection for this plant, not only eat it, but also put it into medicine, and use it to make fibers to make clothing ropes, which is a model of making the best use of things.
Kudzu root medicinal and food dual-use. Chinese medicine classifies it as a medicine that spreads wind and heat, that is, the clear heat that the common people often say. According to the "Compendium of Materia Medica", "Kudzu, which is sweet, spicy, peaceful and non-toxic, is mainly used to quench thirst, body fever, vomiting and other drawbacks, yin qi, and detoxification." "In addition to kudzu, kudzu flowers can also be used medicinally, and decoction with water can quench thirst and sober wine."
The writer Ah Cheng has an old migraine problem, and the formula prescribed to him by Chinese medicine has kudzu root. Ah Cheng once went to the countryside in Yunnan, very familiar with rural life, he has a rich perceptual understanding of Ge -
"Kudzu root, that is, the kind of kudzu root that the skin can weave 'kudzu cloth', it can loosen the muscles and is used to treat coronary heart disease, angina, and high blood pressure. If the wine is drunk, eating its flowers can relieve the wine. Drunks in Venice may wish to try it, hotels in Italy may as well sell this flower, and the wine will surely sell more. ”
"Another kind of pink kudzu root has been the food of the famine since ancient times, when I was in Yunnan, everyone often went up to the mountains to dig up and cook to eat, raw food is sticky, slippery like snot, cooked, really delicious." Be careful of the kudzu root, throw the cracked kudzu root into the river, the fish will fake death, float to the surface of the water, and the people will be jubilant. I would have thought that kudzu made the fish's muscles slack, the pressure of the water stopped the fish's internal circulation, and the fish fell unconscious due to lack of oxygen. Actually not, kudzu is stomach poison. Therefore, when digging kudzu root, it should be noted that the leaves are round and not forked is kudzu, and it will be poisoned when eaten. ”
Pueraria montana var.thomsonii is a variant of kudzu that is now mainly cultivated, with larger flowers than kudzu and is the main source of kudzu powder. Pueraria peduncularis, commonly known as Yunnan kudzu, is mainly wild in the southwest region and Tibet and Guangxi, and one of the main characteristics that distinguish it from kudzu is toyaki.
In the Illustrated Illustration of famous objects in the Poetry Classic, The Kudzu written by the Japanese Confucian scholar Hosoi Tsutomu in the Edo period was originally stored in the National Diet Library of Japan.
In addition to eating, kudzu fiber is one of the most important weaving raw materials in ancient times. The clothing of ancient civilians in China mainly came from three kinds of plant fibers, namely kudzu, ramie (ramie) and hemp (hemp). In the Book of Poetry, Zhou Nan Ge Qin, there is "Ge Zhi Qin Xi, Shi Yu Zhonggu, Wei Ye Ling." Yellow birds fly, gathered in shrubs, and their chirping. Ge Zhi Qin Xi, Shi Yu Zhonggu, Wei Ye Momo. It is the verse that is the sword, the silk is the silk, and the service is not broken".
"Qin" means to spread, "絺" is fine kudzu, "綌" is coarse kudzu, translated into modern language, a vivid ancient life scene is vividly remembered: kudzu vine is so long, spreading in the valley between the mountains, the lush leaves are green. Beautiful yellow warblers fly from the valley and land softly on the bushes, and the gentle chirping sounds are so beautiful. Kudzu vine is so long, spreading in the valley of the mountains, and the ripe leaves are lush and lush. Cut it back and boil it in a pot, muslin and coarse cloth woven haphazardly, and it's a lot of fun to wear it...
Kudzu vine, the most important source of clothing for ancient civilians in China
Pinnate three leaflets, irregular triple lobes. Many of the leaflets have been bitten by insects and are hollowed out.
However, Ge, who has always been much loved in China, was introduced to the United States and received a very different treatment. British naturalist Richard Mayby describes this story in detail and vividly in The Weed's Tale.
Kudzu first appeared in the United States at the 1876 World's Fair in Philadelphia, USA, when Japanese people brought Kudzu to the exhibition. The booth was so popular that American gardeners began to grow kudzu as an ornamental plant. In the 1920s, a florida farm found cattle nibbling on kudzu vines and began promoting kudzu as fodder. In 1935, the U.S. Federal Soil Conservation Commission advocated the widespread cultivation of kudzu vines in the South, and farmers could receive an eight-dollar subsidy for each acre as long as they planted kudzu vines on their own wasteland.
Who knows that within a few years, people have found that because there is no natural enemy, the tender kudzu vine has transformed into a terrible "monster". In the book, Meby vividly describes the super growth ability of kudzu in the United States: "In the peak season of kudzu growth, they can grow 30 centimeters in 12 hours. A popular joke in the southern States of the United States is that you must close the window at night when you sleep, otherwise kudzu will crawl in overnight. Abandoned buildings can quickly disappear under a thick layer of kudzu vines, and even entire native forests can be engulfed by them. ”
The American writer Francis Ram was also stunned by what he saw when he arrived in Alabama: "There are kudzu vines on the wires, kudzu vines on the trees, kudzu vines on the houses, and even kudzu vines on the kudzu vines." Every few minutes we see a field full of vines. ”
Today, Kudzu is not only known as "America's most feared devil weed," but is also considered an illegal plant by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In the United States, there is even a conspiracy theory that believes in this statement, and people who believe in this statement firmly believe that "Ge was introduced to the United States as a sinister plan by Japan to destroy the American economy."
Endless kudzu vines
This story sounds like a modern international version of the "South Orange North Orange". As Mebi says, even if a plant is mild by nature, it can change its temperament once it reaches a new environment. For weeds, the environment is everything.
That afternoon, as I wandered through the small park, I gradually became aware of the silent and powerful aura it emitted. When they meet the tree, they wind and climb upwards, weaving a large piece of green forest in the treetops; there are also some newborn twigs creeping against the ground, and their stems grow in clusters of fine roots and whiskers, and from here grow a new stem, children and grandchildren, infinitely poor.
Stems are good at winding and climbing
The stems take root and quickly grow new branches
Such a powerful vitality. Looking closely at the kudzu vine in front of me, I once again remembered a sentence in "The Story of Weeds": "Behind civilization, the wild nature has never gone far." ”
(The author, Zhou Min, is a veteran media person, naturalist, and is now a freelancer.) Participated in the compilation of "Understanding Chinese Plants Southwest Rite", personal public number: plant addicts. )
Editor-in-Charge: Wang Yu
Proofreader: Luan Meng