Water Hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes)

The water hyacinth is a loathed invasive plant all over the world. It is a floater, with stems that have a bulb containing a cavity with spongy material inside. The plant material is hollow, making for a therapeutic squeeze-ball. It multiplies rapidly by sending runners out, developing whole new plants in a bit more than a week or so. For a lazy gardener with some kind of water receptacle, it is great. When your pond is completely covered, mosquito populations can be controlled. Note the word "completely".



The plant sends up beautiful, fleeting flowers that are a pale violet in color. I was quite shocked to see them. I have just read now that they are fragrant-- and I went outside to check-- but the flowers close up at night.



The water hyacinth builds mass quickly with its roots (which often grow into a mat, like a bad wig). I got a plant from outside someone's house in Ayala Alabang, and grew it in an old refrigerator bin, and then in an antique iron pond-bowl. Their root system has some benefits-- I popped some gabi corms in one day, seeing that the roots created some kind of "soil-in-water" condition. After a week, small leaves came up, and now they live in harmony.



(Eventually, I will probably transition into mostly gabi.)

The water hyacinth is much-loathed, because it multiplies really quickly by both runners and dropping seed, and is known to clog waterways (see photo below, which I selected based on instilled awe, from this blog). Mindanao has seen massive flooding because of the plant. The problem is so great, that people have started to make things like bags out of the "bodies" of the plant. (You know that a resource is a pest when people start to make "unconventional" bags out of them-- e.g. juice wrapper and plastic bag bags). See the end of this post for a note on this whole bag-making thing.*



Water hyacinths have been known to thrive in areas where there are excess nutrients, or even chemical run-off from wetlands into lakes. The plant absorbs toxins and heavy metals while gathering solid waste and silt at its root systems. This characteristic has led to its use in wastewater treatment all over the world. It cleans bum waterways and reduces algae populations, like it did in Laguna.

If your water hyacinth babies are getting too crazy, do not hesitate to yank a few out and lay at the feet of your favorite trees. The plant is an excellent mulch. It contains a lot of moisture, and will keep your ground cool during the summer. If you don't have waterspace, you can actually grow them on land-- in Sri Lanka, they hold a nickname that translates to "Japan trouble", as the British are said to have planted them to give Japanese planes the impression of a body of water, leading to failed water landings.

And lastly, if you're not convinced enough, water hyacinth is actually edible (not only to animals, but to people)! I didn't know this before I sat down to write this tonight. It is added to soups in Thailand, and this guy claims that the stalks and leaves are edible. I will definitely try this soon. If you will too, make sure you know the water source isn't polluted-- grow your own, perhaps. But be careful and don't let it out into the wild.

*I would like to say that I am of the opinion that we should do massive composting or mulching instead with "harvested" water hyacinths. The material is flimsy and needs to be varnished in order to preserve it, so I think other resources are better suited for objects like bags and shoes.

Sesame (Sesamum orientale)

A number of friends would know that, for many years, I'd had an intense pining for a linga or sesame plant. This was the only plant I lacked to complete the backyard diversity song for gardening, the "Bahay Kubo" (that version sounds like prepubescent zombies singing).

Sesame has a special place in my heart, not only because it is delicious and the source of hummus' tahini, but because it marked my interest in ethnobotany, plant history, etc. Like many of my most favored plants, everyone uses it, but nobody really knows how the plant looks.

Let me start by saying that sesame flowers resemble beautiful people's noses. At least, that's what ancient Indian texts referring to dieties say. Some moving verses like:

His beautiful eyes are just like reddish lotus flowers. They are most beautiful, just like lakes of Krishna Prema. His nose is arched and is resplendent just like the sesame flower. (Referring to Sri Chaitanya)



Whose nose, that is beautiful as a sesame flower, is adorned with a round pearl. (Referring to Radha, the female pictured above)

Hindu references to gods with noses like sesame flowers (tilottama) spread out further into South India. Investigation into these phenomena reveals that in South India, the Vijayanagara Empire began to exhibit preferences of sharp noses, with metaphors abounding refering to ellu poo or the sesame flower. (In contrast, the preceding empire favored round, wide noses, with their flower of favorable nasal comparison being that of the kumizhi, bloom of the Gmelina asiatica). Honestly, the flowers look similar to me!


Sesame flower.


Gmelina asiatica flower.

And the practical, perceivable relationship that sesame has with beauty are many in a few cultures. Ayurveda recommends daily oil massages for health and beauty, and so on, and so forth.

But anyway, the plant.

The plant is amazing. Mine started out as little black seeds which I procured in an adventure to Ilocos. I almost lost them, breaking the clay pot that held them, but thankfully, I was able to take some home.



They were smaller than the typical sesame seeds, and still covered with the black layer that signals viability to plant. Jimmy mentioned he planted a whole field of them so his mom could make the molasses-sesame delicacies she sells in the market (and those were amazing as well).

They progressed to unassuming little seedlings, as I suppose everything does:



And one that I coddled in particular boletd to a potentially overpowering plant with pointed, coarse leaves. It's come to resemble a hydra, aggressive stems reaching out of the netting I wrapped around one plant box to dissuade the chickens from having a salsa party inside.



I read somewhere that the leaves could be a potherb (food), but I find them to be a tad bitter. Of course, that hasn't stopped any major culture for utilizing leaves as nourishment. The flower, that thing compared to so many divine noses, smells like tahini. This is strange, as I wondered if my acquaintance with sesame paste makes me unable to say that the flower is fragrant.





Now thse fall off and give way to pods, green and supple. Mine aren't nearly ready yet to be harvsted, as sesame has sort of a long yield period. I don't mind at all. The pods will dry out and the sesame will start rattling inside. This attribute, which makes sesame perhaps viable as a musical instrument for small mammals, has led to a string of names meaning "echo". These begin with Arabic jaljala and move on to Spanish ajonjoli, Hindi gingli (another term aside from the more common til), and Portuguese gergelim.

In the meantime, I sacrificed a few pods to examine the freakish assemblage of sesame seeds waiting to coat themselves in black.





So how did this thing end up in my garden? Apparently, it was domesticated in the Indian region several centuries BC. I guess they reached the Philippines pre-Spanish period. The predominant Malaysian and Indonesian words are bijan and wijen, respectively. I imagine one syllable bearing resemblance to another from the Hindu gingli-- though I admit it is a laughable stretch.

Old attempts to dictionarize the Malay language show the Javanese word (and current Filipino word) as linga. Thailand calls it ngaa, and Laos, man nga. I have read it written as hei chih-mah and hu ma in Chinese. I'm positing that via.

So yes, it's getting late, and like my "harvest", this is an open-ended story. I will update further on the progress and how I end up using the plant. Til then, think of the plant whenever you eat hummus or things from your local Chinese restaurant.

Pasyonaryang Mabaho (Passiflora foetida)

I've had two encounters with a small, wild passionfruit these past few months. One day, I was in my garden when I encountered an astoundingly beautiful, unmistakably passionate flower (I don't have my own photo, but it looked like this). The fruit was unripe (green) and covered in some kind of weird cocoon of hair.



Our helper told me that the ripe fruit was edible and tasted good. So I chanced upon an orange one (not easy, as birds come at it religiously), ate it, and found the meat to be extremely paltry. Kind of like, 100 times less than a regular passionfruit's. I rolled it around in my mouth and spat it, concluding that yes, it was a relative, tasted good, and was not poisonous.

In a vacant lot in Ilocos, I found it again. I began eating it while waiting for Jimmy to pick up some material at the bus station. Apparently, the whole plant is supposed to smell pretty bad (hence the Tagalog name pasyonaryong mabaho, which means "stinky passionplant", roughly). I didn't touch the rest, so I can't confirm. I'm in the US now, but it is probably one of the first few things I will do when I get home.

The plant originated in South America, but is already, of course, common in the Pacific region. It's used medicinally for wound healing in the Philippines, and for help in itchiness in other Malay regions. More intense use of teas are found around the world. It is sometimes used to make juice. The immature fruit is reported to be slightly poisonous.

Another interesting thing about this is that it is thought of as a protocarnivorous plant. That means that it is slightly carnivorous (technically, it means that it is on its way to being so, which is debatable). It is omnivorous, I suppose. There are sticky excretions on its bracts or "hairs" that form the aforementioned "cocoon". In short, things can play out like a horror movie for little insects that come into contact with the pasyonaryong mabaho. They are digested by enzymes on the surface before being absorbed by the plant.

The sticky bracts also serve as protection, as the flowers and fruit are less damaged because of their presence. This makes me admire the development of this mechanism. Wouldn't it be great if burglar alarm systems could also chop, season and sear offenders for us?

Cotton (Gossypuium malavaceae)

Sir John Mandeville, during the 1300s, spoke of a wool-bearing plant he named "The Vegetable Lamb", or a shrub that had tiny sheep, bent its stalks down so the breathing, hungry babies could feed on the grass, and shed the dead specimens, which were then spun into thread and made into fabric. Even more preposterous than this tale is the fact that people believed it, but I suppose Wikipedia wasn't around since the birth of man.

Some say that Mandeville was referring to cotton, some, to a large fern thing that produced white fibers that were not utilized in cloth production. Then again, most cotton-related accounts of Europeans meeting the people of the Orient contain amazement with the non-animal nature of the fiber source, as they comparede it to wool, which was also spun into yarn, but is heavier and of course, requires pasture and more care.



Now, like most people, I took the clothes off my back for granted, and had a vague idea of what cotton looked like, thanks to movies and photos of US slavery. That was before I read Cotton: The Biography of a Revolutionary Fiber by Stephen Yafa, which chronicles the rough trade routes and eventual industrialization of the crop. (It was also before my grandmother told me that her mom's fancy clothing, made with jusi and piña, had to be taken apart and re-sewn again after every washing.)

Now another step in cultivating my appreciation for the clothes I wear is growing an actual cotton plant, whose seeds I nicked from Nueva Ecija. Over the years, I've heard about it being grown spottily in the Visayas and up in Ilocos-- but the weaving industries there have also began to utilize poly-threads, which are cheap but aren't nearly as gorgeous. I've recently confirmed from someone whose father founded our cotton board (meron?) that Bulacan indeed got its name from the word bulak, which is localese for cotton. I heard that the boll weevil spared no time in wiping out a lot of plantations, probably showing no mercy, as in this song.

The history of cotton in the country is a bit sketchy, full of anecdotes and "if I remember correctly"s, and will probably be more covered in a future post.





So anyway, the cotton plant is hardy with a capital H. My seeds came up almost immediately, and appeared to have the brashness of an okra plant. They are taller than me, which is more than 5 feet tall and 8 feet. I ignored them for a bit and was out of the house and suddenly, yellow flowers came out, then things looking like raw almonds started poking out.





This will begin to become tight and pregnant with white fluff. As it turns brown, the fibers will poke out.



During the beginning I got a bit excited and began prying them apart at this stage. Seeing the white stuff made me do it, with disappointing results.



At one or two points I had worms, which rendered the cotton rejected, in the compost pile.



But most were clean, white, healthy bolls, which I processed as such (similar in scale and amusement levels as the kapok processing I wrote about before).



You can slip the white fluff out with ease, and don't count on getting its casing with it, as that will require effort. When you do pursue the boll, you will see, below the fibers, a layer of seeds. Cotton used for cloth production has much longer fibers.



The seeds are in clumps, looking like segments of a very magnified blackberry, and they are elongated, so they quite resemble blood-filled ticks. I have nothing more to say but you must separate them and pick all debris out, and you will have a nice fluffy cloud of cotton for use, so that your organic facial toner gets organic treatment as well.



A bit more reading and watching, if you are interested: medicinal qualities of cotton root bark, and a quite dorky basic video.

Tenga ng Daga (Auricularia polytricha)

I have a soft spot for tenga ng daga or tainga ng daga mushrooms, because of their charming name (means "rat's ears") and, in addition, because they once grew on my bathroom door. They have made brief appearances here and here on this blog. In English, they are known as cloud ear fungus, black wood ear, or tree ear. They are called bukni in Cebuano.

I have, in the past, collected them mostly at the stage where they still do resemble ears, like the photo below.



Only during the past month's rains and floods did I get to collect those that look like the dramatic hem of a flamenco dancer's skirt-- one with an overzealous seamstress.



Outside my window is the side of the house, one area that is always moist, mosquito-filled, and full of branches. Early this year, we began pruning the eucalyptus, mahogany, is-is, and balete trees, and their branches dumped by the wall. These branches have now compacted a little bit, retaining enough humidity to welcome the tenga ng daga, which grow well in the heat but can survive a little bit of cold.



I have also removed some from rotting things like stools and benches. I was sorry to delay a bit the decomposition of the broken furniture, but confident that they will get there soon enough. If the sun comes up and your mushrooms dry up, worry not, as I have seen them seem quite dried up and dead when the rains stop, then start to come alive and grow plump once it starts pouring again.




In the Philippines, we often eat them as relatively chunky pieces, like the Chinese. In Japan, a close relative is sliced neatly into strips.These mushrooms have a quality accurately described by many sources as cartilaginous, providing some kind of crunch followed by an interplay of tiny squeaking and... jellyness against your teeth. I say tiny because the mushroom is quite thin, and you are likely to notice the crunch aspect more, but move it around with your tongue while it is still whole, and you will see what I mean. Anyway.

Most of the tenga ng daga that we eat comes dried from China, and some say Indonesia. I have not come across fresh ones being sold here. They are cultivated commercially on sawdust. We have the capacity to forage and cultivate much more. I am, at this point, a bit too lazy to get into mushroom cultivation, as it seems very technical and maselan to me. I get "wild" ones just fine.

The mushrooms are supposed to be good for circulation, for menstrual problems, sore throats, and more.

Munggo (Vigna radiata)

The munggo (pronounced moong-goh, there you have it, I can imagine the awkward attempts at pronunciation otherwise) or mung bean is a fixture in Philippine homes. I would say this is the only bean that remains constant and year-round in the metropolitan savory diet. Wet markets are never without them. They are cheaper and more common than the yellow and red varieties, which are often used for sweets and snacks. Their starch is made into thin noodles called sotanghon. There are documented medicinal properties.

If you have gone through the Philippine school system, you had probably grown some munggo in science class, on a piece of cotton or wet paper. It germinates quickly and demonstrates to children what plants are like and such.



While the mung bean is thought to have been domesticated in India (moong is a Hindi word), where it is commonly used for dhal and other dishes, some research shows that it actually originated from West Asia, or the "Afghanistan-Iran-Iraq area". It may have reached the east via two routes-- the Silk Road (West Asia to India to China to Taiwan) or from India to Southeast Asia.

Our standard munggo stew and our porridge with glutinous rice and coconut milk (f'in yum) seem somewhat common (with variations, of course) throughout Southeast Asian dishes and snacks. The eating of sprouts, (tauge or taugeh in Indonesian and Bahasa Melayu, Hispanized spelling togue for us), seems to have arrived here through East Asia, where its use is much more prevalent.

We grew ours from some market seeds, getting a little more than a dozen green munggo plants beside the okra. These are now bearing flowers and pods. Our companion at home has been extolling the superiority of eating fresh (soft) beans in her province (Bacolod), so we have been harvesting green pods and shelling them. Fresh, soft beans are segregated from the tougher ones from the dried pods which we somehow missed harvesting. When we have enough, we will get a decent dish going. As we are a good number of people at home, this requires patience.



The pods are allowed to dry in commercial production, as it prolongs shelf life, of course, and it is easier to process then. The seeds are extracted by either beating the pods or trampling on them. Here are some dry beans:



Compare the above with the fresh seeds below, which are larger, lighter in color, and tender enough to squeeze and destroy:



Munggo is relatively easy to grow in non-clay soils. The soil needs to be well-drained. They tolerate some amount of drought. A bonus are the little yellow flowers which come in bunches.

Gabi (Colocasiodeae )

Gabi or taro is something that I've always seen, but never really paid much attention to until last year or so. Being rice-centric, I've only ever considered it as something to eat in sinigang (which I just had last night) and Chinese food, or, on a lucky day, laing. We cultivate it as a food crop here, but not as a staple as in Polynesia and other places in Southeast Asia, where it is the most important food crop. In many places in Asia, it is cultivated in sunken fields, at the volumes that we grow rice. Here we have smaller-scale production, usually in areas of a farm or home where water is accumulating, or at the side of properties. I have also seen them in water-purifying systems outside kitchen waterways.



So it turns out that gabi or taro is actually a general term for a couple of kinds of edible plants from the family Araceae tribe of Colocasiodeae and, without science books and all, they are classified by people according to their cultivation.

One is the wet-cultivated one, the Colocasia esculenta variety, said to be native to India or Bangladesh. It is what we have always grown, currently as the great-grandchild of the one my dad had in his garden growing up in Fort Bonifacio. When they transferred homes, one of my uncles took some to plant. When we transferred to our lot, my dad took some to grow himself:



The wetland variety is in a soft heart shape and has waterproof and velvety leaves. The undersides are light in color and beautiful (see first photo of this post). As far as I know, this is the sort whose leaves we use in Filipino dishes, as I've never seen the upland leaves being dried at all. We use the tubers too, of course, and I'm convinced this is what we've been eating mostly, although I can't be sure if I've been eating the upland ones. Here is another one that I got from Quezon, which is a swampy place:



The upland or dry-cultivation variety has more angular basal lobes (the curved parts of the heart) of the Xanthosoma genus, supposedly a native of South and Central America. They generally grow bigger and have shiny leaves. You need to care for them less than the wet ones, apparently. Here is one that I got from Sagada recently, where the high elevation makes them ideal:



As a note, both varieites can grow out of their classified environments. We have been growing the swamp sort in a very dry environment for a long time, and the larger dryland ones can grow in swamps. I am not sure about the difference in taste of the tubers (this we will find out in maybe a year more), but some say the upland tubers have less sweetness.

Some are grown for cultural reasons. This variety, very wavy and stuff, and with a dark purple petiole or stem, is grown outside homes in the Visayas to ward away bad spirits. I took it from a Quezon City home of a possible migrant. Soon it will be driving away spirits here too (still letting it grow a bit).





Filipinos sometimes grow gabi for animal feed. These large dryland type above was taken from Cavite, where they were grown for feeding as fattening mash to pigs, boiling away at the back of the farmer's home.



And about cooking, you need to do this well, as there are oxalic acids in the leaf and root which can be extremely itchy. Filipino tips would be not to talk while cooking, not ever to stire laing while cooking, and so on. I guess this roughly translates as: pay attention to the food, do not stir it mindlessly while yakking, and don't stir the leaves before the portion touching the pan can cook adequately. For the wetland variety, drying out the leaves is said to help in removing the poison. Here is a good primer on preparing or selecting gabi with the poison and palatability in mind.

Over other staples, gabi is said to be better digestible at 98.8%, with little allergies caused. Lower dental maladies and diseases are present in Hawaiian babes born on taro and sweet potato eating populations than in rice and bread. Something to think about! It also might be good for vegetarians like me, as it contains more vitamin B-complex than whole milk. The cooked leaves are comparable (in nutrition) to spinach. Maybe eating gabi in place of rice for a few days a week can yield interesting results. I am going to pursue some poi making, to add to my list of fermented food.

It is fairly easy to get out of the ground and take home-- I usually take a corm (yes, that is what they call the root) with some leaf attached to it, and put it in water or some soil and nurture a bit-- then transplant. You can plant the corm alone, or even a portion of the peel with a bit of a bump coming out, but I'm not so patient. I have done that unintentionally, though.



Last note: When harvesting and peeling, be careful as your hands will get itchy! I didn't know this as I decided to cook some Cambodian spring rolls out of our gabi once, and my hands burned up. It was painful! I stuck my hands in some grated coconut and pressed the oils out, which provided an almost-immediate kind of relief. I later read that this is how they do it in Hawaii, and that they keep their spent coconut beside the kitchen for such episodes.