Wild Japanese Katakuri #1

1My trip to Japan in early spring 2016 was perfectly timed to witness one of the wonders of the Japanese spring, the mass flowering of katakuri (Erythronium japonicum; Japanese: 片栗), a pink-flowered species trout lily or dog’s tooth violet. Thanks to Kevin Cameron for inviting us along on a hike with a local walking club out of Nagoya! The bulbs were in the past used as a source of starch, the leaves and flowers also being eaten (but shouldn’t be wild harvested nowadays as some sources consider it as endangered). I’ve never seen so many people out flower watching, so many cameras trained at the flowers…a bit like twitchers watching some rare bird….we could call them flitters perhaps!

We took the train from Nagoya to Kanigawa station in Kani city on the edge of Nagoya’s urban sprawl, then walked to Yunohana hot springs spa and market on the river, popped in to one of the walking group’s friend’s house for tea, snack and a garden wander before walking to the katakuri area in a nature reserve area.  Finally, we followed a trail up on to the hill where there was a distant view of Japan’s second highest volcano Mt. Ontake. We followed Kevin and daughter back to the spa for a hot bath, while the rest of the group carried on the trail to take the train back from a different station.
I’ve had a katakuri in my garden for several years but it doesn’t get much larger and seems to be self-sterile (pictures of my plants can be seen in the gallery on this page:  http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=9442

First a gallery of pictures of the katakuri woods followed by 4 videos! This is followed by two more galleries of pictures from this wonderful day! Enjoy…

..and now 4 videos of the katakuri area:

Next, an album of pictures taken on the way from the station to the market and spa and lunch at a Japanese house.

…and finally a gallery of pictures of other plants including a number of edibles on the walk up to the viewpoint with the walking group!

Katakuri at Mt. Iimoriyama

This post documents my visit with Aiah Noack of Naturplanteskolen in Denmark to the historical town of Asuke in Aichi Prefecture near to Toyota, where we’d spent the night, on 28th March 2016.  Asuke and the Korankei Gorge is a popular place to visit to see the autumn colours, with some 4,000 different maples planted here since a priest started beautifying the place in 1634 (see http://japan-highlightstravel.com/en/travel/nagoya/120029). Aiah had contacted an old plant breeding colleague, Teruo Takatomi,  based in Toyota,  who had kindly offered to show us around for a couple of days and this was the first day of the itinerary they had arranged for us visiting natural areas and farms growing sansai (wild mountain vegetables).  Two of Teruo’s colleagues took us to Asuke to see the mass flowering of katakuri (Erythronium japonicum) on Mt. Iimoriyama right next to the town. However, there was much more than katakuri in the wood as the first album documents and at the end of the walk through the woods  we stumbled on a wonderful small nursery specialising in wild and edible plants! The owner ran it as a hobby and kindly invited us back to his house for tea and to see his garden (second album below).

For edimental gardeners, katakuri is one of the most exclusive vegetables, requiring at least 7-8 years to flower from seed!  Two plants I was given by Magnar Aspaker in April 2008 still only produce one flower a year and I’ve never seen a flower, but it’s growing in a less than optimal environment… It has survived the worst of the freezes here including the coldest winter since records began (frozen solid for 3-4 months)! Ian Young relates the same problem in his excellent e-book “Erythroniums in Cultivation” (available for free at http://files.srgc.net/general/ERYTHRONIUMS-IN-CULTIVATION%20-2016-IanYoung.pdf). He says that the bulbs divide slowly and seed is important to increase plants, but it takes time. On the other hand, individual plants can, according to a Japanese site, reach 50 years old with a new bulb every year! This seems to be his favourite Erythronium, easy to grow (although slowly increasing) with dramatic markings on the flowers.

Erythronium japonicum in my garden
Erythronium japonicum in my garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

As an edible plant, it was once an important source of an edible starch, katakuriko, but the plant was overharvested (also due to its popularity for the wild flower industry) and potato starch is used today, retaining the name! Both the leaves and flowers are used in Japan in various ways and I’ve given a few recipes roughly tranlated from various Japanese pages in the following document:

Download (PDF, 257KB)

…or as in this picture from one of my Japanese foraging books:

Katakuri

 

 

 

 

 

 

The leaves are also fermented!

We also spent some time at Sanshu Asuke Yashiki,  a working traditional crafts museum next to Mt. Iimori and had a gourmet lunch at the Kunputei restaurant overlooking the river gorge (third album below). This restaurant specialises on tofu dishes, handmade every morning and we ate konjac for the first time here (Amorphophallus konjac) (see this blog post for my experience with growing konjac:  http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?page_id=845)

Mass flowering of katakuri video!

In the afternoon, we were invited to the house of the nursery owner in the old traditional part of town. He also had a garden full of interesting plants!

Finally, a gallery of pictures from our visit to the traditional crafts museum, Sanshu Asuke Yashiki, and our gourmet lunch at the Kunputei restaurant within the museum grounds:

More seed for stratifying

An early Xmas present from Alexander Naumenko! Thanks!
Several new very interesting Alliums, Taraxacum lilacinum (lilac flowered dandelion…hope they will germinate!), Hyssopus tianschanicus, Tragopogon capitatus, Angelica brevicaulis and Serratula coronata (an important wild edible food plant in the Far East that I’ve been looking for for some time; this species has a very wide geographic distribution and is in the same family as saw-wort/jærtistel, Serratula tinctoria )! Also a nice little book in Russian on the Plants of Kyrgyzstan…
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Diversity of Brassicas in Munich

The best living displays of the diversity of Brassicas  I’ve seen was in the Munich Botanical Garden in Germany in November 2015, including an apparently perennial kale I hadn’t seen before… Braunkohl “Rote Palme”. Please let me know if you know more about this kale, also if you know of a source of seed /cuttings.

 

Cleaning quinoa seed

I’ve found the easiest way to clean quinoa and seed of other Chenopods is using water…the seed sinks and the chaff floats…after separating, the seed is dried…

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Quinoa seed froths up because of the saponins in the seed…
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Cleaned seed


 

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I used the same method with Chenopodium album / Fat hen / meldestokk seed (on the left)…the seed doesn’t froth much, so not such high content of saponins..

 

Skirret-chufa stir-fry

Tonight’s dinner, skirret-chufa stir-fry.

Celebrating chili diversity at Chelsea

Mainly for my friend the Extreme Chili Guy, Chris Fowler, who reportedly maintains a collection of over 1,000 chilis in South Wales, here’s an album of pictures from a little exhibition showing off the diversity of chilis at Chelsea Physic Garden this autumn!

Winter sowing

I’ve sowed 104 new perennial edibles , mostly Alliums… They will spend the rest of the winter outside under my cold frame  and hopefully germinate in the spring!  More information with the pictures on how I do this!

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Seed trays made of recycled milk cartons, one side cut away, holes punched in the bottom for drainage, and the ends stapled together…labels made from sour cream / yogurt pots…I’m careful not to put the same plant family together in the sow trays as the seed sometimes wander a bit.
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The cold frame which is covered with enviromesh which allows moisture through but keeps birch seed and rodents out…heavy deep snow needs to be removed.