The shepherd's purse that you love to eat can actually be eaten with meat?

The spring breeze first brings the plum blossoms into the garden, followed by the cherry, apricot, peach and pear blossoms.

Shepherd's purse and elm pods are in the deep village, telling me that the spring breeze has come for me.

Spring Breeze by Bai Juyi

With the warm spring breeze, all kinds of ornamental flowers and wild vegetables and flowers in the community are gradually waking up. Shepherd 's purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris), wild peas (Vicia spp.) and alfalfa (Medicago spp.) have broken through the soil, dotted with last night's rain, looking fresh and delicious. This is the best gift from nature to the old men and women in the community.

Shepherd's Purse | Red Queen

Shepherd's Purse in the Poetry (Eating) Man (Goods)

Speaking of spring wild vegetables , the most famous one should be shepherd's purse. Xin Qiji's "Peaches and plums in the city are worried about wind and rain, spring is in the shepherd's purse flowers at the stream" is a popular line. Shepherd's purse is a wild vegetable with a long history. From the pre-Qin period to today, there are more than 600 poems about shepherd's purse handed down, which can be regarded as the king of wild vegetable culture.

In early poetry, shepherd's purse often appears in contrast to "tea" , such as in the "Book of Songs·Gufeng" there is a line "Who says tea is bitter, it is as sweet as shepherd's purse". "Tea" refers to some wild vegetables of the Asteraceae family, which tastes quite bitter . In "Gufeng", it is used to describe the pain of a woman who was abandoned by her husband; while shepherd's purse is more delicious, which is just right to describe the scumbag happily marrying a new wife.

Ixeris chinensis, also known as bitter herb, is one of the most common species of wild grasses in the Asteraceae family, which is also known as "tea" | Frost moth

The meaning of "Gu Feng" is quite special in the history of ancient poetry. Most poems about shepherd's purse use shepherd's purse to sing the beauty of spring, or directly describe how delicious it is. "Qing Yi Lu" in the early Song Dynasty called shepherd's purse soup "Bai Sui Soup", which does not mean that eating shepherd's purse can make you live to be a hundred years old, but that people who live to be a hundred years old have tasted all kinds of delicious food and lost their teeth, but can still enjoy the deliciousness of shepherd's purse.

When it comes to food, we must mention Su Shi . There was a long drought in the spring of one year, and the vegetables he planted did not sprout. He could only eat spring bamboo shoots and pickled vegetables from the previous year, or he would dig some shepherd's purse to make soup and rice. The poem says, " I go around the wheat fields to find wild shepherd's purse , and force myself to make mountain soup for the monks." Su Shi was from Sichuan, and the locals called shepherd's purse porridge "Dongpo soup." Shepherd's purse porridge is also called "Emerald Soup" because of its green soup color. It tastes very delicious. Wu Qijun of the Qing Dynasty described it in "Illustrated Records of Plant Names and Realities" as "milk and butter, there is really no such color and taste."

Lu You was also a fan of shepherd's purse. He wrote more than 30 poems about eating shepherd's purse, as if he spent every spring among the shepherd's purse. " I pick the roots and leaves every day until they bloom like snow. " It seems that Lu You ate shepherd's purse every day until they bloomed.

Shepherd's Purse

When I was a child, I heard a proverb: " On March 3, shepherd's purse is a panacea ." The third day of the third lunar month is probably in early April. At this time, shepherd's purse has finished flowering and fruiting in the Jianghuai region. Shepherd's purse is fresh and delicious before it blooms. After it blooms, it becomes old and inedible. Why is it called a "panacea"? It turns out that the third day of the third lunar month is the traditional festival of the south of the Yangtze River, the Shangsi Festival. During this festival, shepherd's purse flowers have an important status. People collect shepherd's purse flowers, use them to boil eggs , and wear shepherd's purse flowers on their heads . Tian Rucheng's "West Lake Tour Records" in the Ming Dynasty recorded: " On March 3, both men and women wear shepherd's purse flowers . The proverb says: Wearing shepherd's purse flowers in March will make peach and plum blossoms ashamed." It can be seen that this custom has a long history.

People who pick wild vegetables often say that flowering shepherd's purse is easier to recognize. To be more precise, shepherd's purse with flower stalks, fruits and flowers is very easy to identify . Most common cruciferous plants have fruits that are long or short stick-shaped siliques, but only shepherd's purse has fruits that are "in the shape of love" - ​​heart-shaped .

Siliques of shepherd's purse | Beentree / Wikimedia Commons

Many names of shepherd's purse come from the shape of its fruit, including its scientific name Capsella bursa-pastoris. The genus name means a small bag or box , and the specific epithet means " shepherd's purse ", which is also its common name in English. It also has many Chinese common names, such as triangle grass and zongzi grass, which are all used to describe the shape of the fruit. In addition, shepherd's purse has another Sichuanese common name: "shovel grass".

The specific epithet of shepherd's purse has a hyphen in it, which looks awkward, but it is not uncommon. According to the rules of plant nomenclature, the specific epithet should be an adjective or a possessive noun. A phrase consisting of several words cannot be used for the specific epithet. Either write them together or add a hyphen.

Shepard in Call of Duty: "Where's my shepherd's purse wallet?!" (Calendar Girl said she was shivering from the cold) | Game Call of Duty

In neighboring Japan, the common name of shepherd's purse is なつな (夏無), which means that it is not seen in summer. In some areas, it is also called シャミセングサ (三味线草) or ぺんぺん草, which refers to the shape of its fruit attached to the fruit stalk , which is similar to the Japanese shamisen . ぺんぺん (penpen) is an onomatopeia, referring to the sound of playing the shamisen.

There is also a Japanese proverb "ぺんぺん草が生える", which describes a place that is relatively barren and shepherd's purse grows wildly. The Song Dynasty poet Wang Yuanliang wrote a poem "Preface to the Song of the Orioles", in which there is a line "Deer and pigs carry dry shepherd's purse", which has a similar meaning.

In Japan, there is a custom of eating " Nine-Herb Porridge " on the seventh day of the first lunar month. The porridge is made with cabbage, radish, celery, rice spinach (Lapsana apogonoides), shepherd's purse, chickweed (Stellaria media), and qū grass (Gnaphalium affine). It is said that eating "Nine-Herb Porridge" can keep you from getting sick for a year.

This culture of focusing on the seasons is also shown in Crayon Shin-chan. However, the drawings are a bit abstract | Animation Crayon Shin-chan

The flowering and fruiting shepherd's purse is the easiest to recognize, but its edible value is relatively low; the young and tender shepherd's purse is delicious, but it is more difficult to recognize. The pinnate basal leaves of shepherd's purse are the most "popular" leaf shape, and the shape varies , from deeply lobed to unlobed. Even if you are an experienced wild vegetable expert, it is inevitable to make mistakes, especially with the "tea" of the Asteraceae family , such as dandelion (Taraxacum mongolicum ), yellow quail (Youngia japonica), mud cabbage (Hemistepta lyrata), and sow lettuce (Sonchus oleraceus). The basal leaves of these plants look very similar to shepherd's purse.

Dandelion. Note the small triangular serrations on the leaves. The tips of the serrations are all facing the base of the leaves, which is different from shepherd's purse | Red Queen

Shepherd's purse also eats meat

Shepherd's purse is rich in nutrition and has a unique fragrance. It is not only loved by people, but also by wild animals, poultry and livestock. Although it is called "shepherd's wallet", shepherds don't like it very much, because after cattle and sheep eat shepherd's purse, the milk they produce will have the taste of shepherd's purse, which affects the taste. Many plants in the cruciferous family have this characteristic. What you eat tastes the same when you excrete it (think of radish). However, the eggs laid by poultry after eating shepherd's purse are very popular. Such eggs also have the taste of shepherd's purse, and the yolk is darker, close to green-brown, which has a more "local flavor" to some people's taste.

Zhu Gao, a poet of the Southern Song Dynasty, wrote in his poem "Living in the South Pavilion": "The old moths have just left when the lamp is lit, and the new moths have already left when the book is covered". This poem talks about using shepherd's purse to drive away moths and using rue to kill moths. "The Records of the Mutual Sensation of Things" records: "On the third day of March, collect shepherd's purse flowers and place them on the lampstand, then mosquitoes and moths will not dare to approach ". This method is popular among the people in China and Japan, but there is no clear evidence to prove that shepherd's purse flowers are effective in driving away insects.

Illustration of shepherd's purse, plant, flowers and seeds | Amédée Masclef / Wikimedia Commons

Surprisingly, shepherd's purse can indeed kill mosquitoes, but it is not its flowers that have the mosquito-killing effect, but its seeds . In a mosquito control study in the 1970s, researchers found that after the seeds of shepherd's purse were soaked in water, they would release a kind of mucus. This mucus would attract mosquito larvae to attach to the seeds , and then the mosquito larvae would die in large numbers . The seeds also release proteases to digest the "prey" and absorb the digestion products.

Under natural conditions, shepherd's purse seeds are unlikely to encounter mosquito larvae, so the researchers conducted experiments on nematodes, protozoa and bacteria in the soil and obtained the same results. Shepherd's purse seeds do release an attractant to attract these organisms, which are then killed and digested and absorbed. Isn't this the mechanism by which carnivorous plants "prey" on small animals?

Shepherd's purse seeds | Kinori/ Wikimedia Commons

However, researchers believe that although shepherd's purse seeds have the "lure-capture-digestion" mechanism, it is too hasty to define it as a carnivorous plant . Most true carnivorous plants live in relatively poor acidic soils and require additional nitrogen to evolve the insectivorous mechanism . But shepherd's purse is a weed with strong reproductive capacity, and its seeds germinate anywhere, so there is no need for additional nutrition . Similar to what is often said in crime dramas, "This person has no motive for committing a crime, how do you define his behavior?" Although shepherd's purse has sufficient evidence of "criminal" facts, researchers still have reservations about whether it can be defined as a carnivorous plant.

If shepherd's purse is really defined as a carnivorous plant, just imagine that in a few years, carnivorous plant players will compete to show off their old shepherd's purse on the Internet. I am really looking forward to this scene.

What's your favorite way to eat shepherd's purse? | Tuchong Creative

Author: Frost Moth

This article comes from the Species Calendar, welcome to forward

If you need to reprint, please contact sns@guokr.com