We solved a few mysteries of herb and vegetable names from 2004 and have a new set of mysteries from 2005.
The Korean herb-vegetable that looked sort of like chrysanthemum when young and called ssook turned out to be mugwort. A large leafed vegetable plant turned out to be sesame leaf or green leafed perilla. ******************************************************** Here are the new mysteries. If anyone has any ideas I'd be glad to hear them! 1) Fruit-vegetable about the size of a cucumber but lighter green. Wrinkled. When over ripe it's an orange red. Grown by Chinese gardeners. Plant is a vine and supported on fencing. 2) Berry grows on vine. Ripe fruit is shiny black (or so dark purple it looks black). Fruit is round and about the size of a pencil eraser. Grown by Chinese gardeners. Supported on a fence. #1 and #2 are often grown on the same fence. 3) Leaf called Gun-dae by Korean gardeners. It looks sort of like an irregularly shaped swiss chard leaf. Eaten like cooked spinach. 4) Leaf called aahh-ooo (like oo in too) by Korean gardeners. It looks like a hibiscus leaf. Leaves are individually picked with their stems. Stems are peeled before cooking and eating. Leaves cooked and eaten like spinach. 5) Leaf called loboda by Bosnian/Serbian gardeners. It looks sort of like a cross between sorrel and swiss chard, but gardeners distinguish between the three of these. Leaf is triangular and pointy, about 6 inches long. It's cooked and eaten like spinach. It's an annual plant that's affected by frost. Seeds(pods?) are roundish but have a cratered surface and are medium brown, perhaps 1/8 or so in diameter. 6) I was asked for name and where to find plant or seeds by a Bosnian/Serbian gardener for a plant described as Leaves give the skin a bad rash Leaf is rough or irritating Leaves eaten like spinach and make very good soup and pie Very healthy to eat Tasty My first thought was nettles. Unfortunately I haven't seen any around the garden to show what the plant looks like or to collect seeds from. I considered that it might be rue, but with the way he describe it, it seems less likely. Plus the roughness of the leaves sounds more like nettles. And tasty rather than bitter sounds more like nettles. Are there any other leafy greens that would fit this description? If it's nettles does anyone have some extra seed from some especially tasty nettles that I could pass along to him? ***************************************************************** And just as an interesting FYI. One of our gardens has some honeysuckle on the wild edges. Chinese gardeners were busy collecting the blossoms to dry. They said they use them in an antibiotic tea. I knew lots of people liked them fresh or to make syrup, but hadn't realized they could be used medicinally. So I looked them up in the Plants for a Future database and discovered they have quite a few medicinal uses. http://www.ibiblio.org/pfaf/cgi-bin/arr_html?Lonicera+japonica Sharon [EMAIL PROTECTED] ______________________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: https://secure.mallorn.com/mailman/listinfo/community_garden
