Tag Archives: Tricyrtis

Toad lilies: great edientomentals

 

Toad lilies (Tricyrtis sp.) are great edientomentals from the Far East; i.e. both food for us to eat (the edi bit), eye food (the mental bit ;) ) and food for the pollinators like bumble bees (the ento bit).
I’ve been meaning to try to research this genus properly for many years ever since I ate the young shoots 10 years ago (it tasted mild and good).  I’ve tried 10+ species over the years, but only the early flowering species thrive (Tricyrtis latifolia is I think the most successful of the two). Bumble bees love them too as can be seen in the video below!
Below the pictures is an overview of how different species Tricyrtis are used in Japan. It indicates that the flowers can also be used at least in moderation for decoration, so I must give it a go!

Blanched perennial veggies eaten on 14th May 2012 were dandelion, Crambe cordifolia , Cicerbita alpina, Lovage, Horseradish, Hosta, Sonchus arvensis, Allium tuberosum, Silene vulgaris, Heracleum maximum and Tricyrtis (latifolia)

Tricyrtis in the kitchen
All I have so far is that 6 or 7 species are listed in my comprehensive Japanese foraging book (in Japanese): Wild Food Lexicon (Japan) and this is what it says (there are no warnings of possible toxicity and it encourages the reader to get and grow a couple of the species):
Tricyrtis latifolia (Tamagawa hototogisu)
Eat young shoots. You can eat other types of Tricyrtis so don’t worry if you make a mistake. Rest assured. You can pick it even if the stems are long, you can pick the soft young shoots until they bloom.
Boil in hot water with a pinch of salt, then rinse in cold water. In boiled food, soup, tempura…
Tricyrtis macropoda
It can be eaten like Tamagawa hototogisu, but the ones with a lot of hairs have an inferior taste.
Tricyrtis macrantha
Boiled soup. For tempura etc. It has a crisp texture. Boil briefly, soak in cold water, boil, cut into small pieces and season with mustard. The young shoots are the most flavourful amongst the hototogisu.
Tricyrtis macranthopsis
Seedlings for cultivation are on the market. You can grow it and use it as food.
Around May, pick young shoots that grow diagonally. Even those with long stems can be eaten by picking the soft part at the tip of the stem.
Tricyrtis perfoliata
Young shoots are “hard”? in quality. Floating the flowers in the soup and enclosing them in jelly will make them beautiful. Get it, grow it and taste it!!

A visit to a Wasabi farm on the Izu peninsular in Japan

On 3rd April 2016 I was on an amazing study tour in Japan to witness first hand the cultivation of perennial vegetables. These are wild native species which were previously wild foraged in Japan but are now cultivated to meet demands for what is collectively known as sansai (mountain veggies).  There’s a whole section of supermarkets devoted to sansai. The one we are most familiar with in the west is wasabi, but for most of us it is in name only as it is almost always horseradish, mustard and food colouring which are the ingredients of wasabi sauce offered in sushi bars, rather than genuine wasabi (Wasabia japonica).

The farm we visited was on the Izu peninsula, a popular tourist area.  It was one of the most beautiful and naturalistic farms that I’ve witnessed anywhere and could be categorised as a permaculture forest garden with shade-loving wasabi growing in running water diverted from a river into an intricate series of neatly set out beds and intercropped with trees like loquat and other fruit. Most of the work seems to be done manually.

First, a few videos from the farm and below can be found an album of pictures of wasabi and other plants we saw, including at a shrine and associated vegetable garden adjacent to the farm! Wasabi has very narrower ecological requirements to produce well, including shade and running cool mountain spring water.

17th March 2019:  I’m adding three pictures at the bottom of a group of “wild” wasabi plants growing in quite a dry shady environment in the hills near to Toyota in Japan!

 

I’m adding below three pictures of a group of wasabi plants growing in quite a dry shady environment in the hills near to Toyota in Japan:

…and a flowering plant in the Kyoto Botanical Gardens: