Magnolias

Ingredients

Chufa - [Nut Grass, Tiger Nut, Earth Almond, Cyperus esculentus varieties]
Chufa is a sedge that grows in many parts of the U.S. and Canada where there are mud flats or similar rich grounds. It has been cultivated in North America and Europe for it's edible tubers, sometimes called "Earth Almonds", which are harvested mainly in the late fall.

Chufa was farmed in ancient Egypt as a food crop and taken much later to other Mediterranean areas by invading Muslims. Today it is particularly cultivated in Valencia, Spain where it is used to make a beverage called Horchata. In the U.S. Chufa is grown mainly for hog forage and not as a commercial crop. Photo courtesy of Dr. Stanley Kays

Papyrus - [Cyperus papyrus]
Not a food plant but interesting as part of the sedge family. It illustrates the growth habit of many sedges with a long triangular pith filled reed topped by a splay of thread-like rays forming the flower head. Sedges may have grass-like leaves growing at the base of the reed but in papyrus the leaves are reduced to short paper-like scales.

Pith from papyrus reeds was used for thousands of years by ancient Egyptians for the manufacture of a form of paper of the same name. This resulted in ancient Egypt being both the most literate and most paper ridden society previous to modern times. "Please fill out Papyrus-A using hieratic characters only, no demotic script please, and present it to the clerk at desk 12 who will provide you with the mummification request forms."

While they are acquatic plants (as most sedges are) my papyrus plants are doing quite well in a regular pot and have survived strong dry Santa Ana winds with only minor damage. They are frost tender but that's seldom a problem here in Los Angeles, especially with global warming setting in.

Water Chestnut - [Chinese Water Chestnut, Eleocharis dulcis]
Water Chestnuts are extensively farmed in the Southern China and the Philippines where they grow well in flooded rice paddies. Their crunchy texture and slight sweetness are appreciated in soups and stir fries. A notable feature is that they remain crisp and crunchy even after cooking or canning making them a good texture accent.

They are often available fresh in Southern California and perhaps in some other "blue state" areas of the USA, but can be found canned in grocery stores almost everywhere. The photo shows both live sprouting corms and peeled canned corms.

In India and other parts of Asia where pigs are raised near where water chestnuts grow, eating them (or other aquatic plants) raw can convey the parasitic trematode worm Fasciolopsis buski. This is not a problem with canned water chestnuts (lightly cooked) or fresh ones grown under more sanitary conditions.