What is water chestnut? What does water chestnut look like?

Water chestnuts are made by harvesting the slender, tender rhizomes in the water after harvesting water chestnuts. Every summer, people in water towns cook some water chestnuts. The most classic ways to eat them are cold water chestnuts and garlic water chestnuts. Water chestnuts contain a lot of vitamin A, so they can treat cataracts. If you need it in your life, you can eat some water chestnuts appropriately!

Contents of this article

1. What is water chestnut vegetable?

2. What does water chestnut vegetable look like?

3. How to pick water chestnuts

What is water chestnut vegetable?

Water chestnut is actually shepherd's purse, an annual or biennial herbaceous plant of the genus Capsella in the family Cruciferae, which can reach 50 cm in height, with an erect stem, basal leaves clustered in a rosette shape, petioles 5-40 mm long, narrow lanceolate or lanceolate stem leaves, terminal and axillary racemes, oblong sepals, white petals, and flowering and fruiting from April to June. Shepherd's purse grows on hillsides, fields and roadsides, in the wild, and occasionally cultivated. It is distributed in all provinces and regions of China and widely distributed in temperate regions around the world. The whole plant of shepherd's purse can be used as medicine, the stems and leaves are edible as vegetables, and the seeds contain oil for making paint and soap.

What does water chestnut look like?

Annual or biennial herb, (7-)10-50 cm tall, glabrous, with simple or forked hairs; stems erect, simple or branched from below. Basal leaves clustered in rosettes, pinnately divided, up to 12 cm long and 2.5 cm wide, top lobes ovate to oblong, 5-30 mm long, 2-20 mm wide, lateral lobes 3-8 pairs, oblong to ovate, 5-15 mm long, acuminate at apex, shallowly lobed, or with irregular coarse serrations or nearly entire, petiole 5-40 mm long; stem leaves narrowly lanceolate or lanceolate, 5-6.5 mm long, 2-15 mm wide, base sagittal, clasping, margins notched or serrated.

The racemes are terminal and axillary, and the fruiting period is extended to 20 cm; the pedicels are 3-8 mm long; the sepals are oblong, 1.5-2 mm long; the petals are white, ovate, 2-3 mm long, with short claws. The short siliques are inverted triangles or inverted heart-shaped triangles, 5-8 mm long, 4-7 mm wide, flat, glabrous, slightly concave at the top, and the petals are reticulate; the style is about 0.5 mm long; the fruit pedicels are 5-15 mm long.

Seeds are in 2 rows, oblong, about 1 mm long, light brown. Flowering and fruiting period is April to June.

How to pick water chestnuts

After finding the water chestnuts, aim the shovel at the place where the water chestnuts grow, and shovel hard half a centimeter below the ground surface. When you feel that the roots of the water chestnuts have been cut off, you can pick up the water chestnuts, shake off the dirt on the roots, and put them in a bag.

The most critical part of this step is to make sure to shovel deeper, otherwise the stems of the water chestnuts will be broken and it will be very messy and difficult to wash.

Many weeds look very similar to water chestnuts, and if you are not careful, it is easy to confuse them or even eat them by mistake, resulting in serious consequences. So it is best to find someone who knows water chestnuts to lead the way.