FOOD RESOURCE COLLEGE OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SCIENCES, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
TRAPA NATANS, JESUIT NUT, LING, SALIGOT, TRAPA NUT, WATER CALTROPS, WATER CHESTNUT
Hedrick, U.P. editor. 1919. Sturtevant's Notes on Edible Plants. Report of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station for the Year 1919 II. Albany, J.B Lyon Company, State Printers. [References Available]
is a plant of Europe and eastern Asia. The Thraceans, according to Pliny, baked bread from the flour of the seeds, and the seeds are thus used even now in some parts of southern Europe and, at Venice, are sold under the name of Jesuit nuts. Grant found trapa nuts on the Victoria Nyanza in Africa, and the Waganda use the four-pronged nuts for food. it is enumerated by Thunberg among the edible plants of Japan. Introduced into America, trapa is said to have become naturalized in the waters of the Concord River, Massachusetts. This water plant is extensively cultivated in China and furnishes, in its strangely-shaped fruits, a staple article of nutriment. It has run into several varieties. Williams says its cultivation is in running water and the nuts are collected in autumn by people in punts or tubs, who look for the ripe ones as they pull themselves through the vines over the surface of the patch. The dried nuts are often ground into a sort of arrowroot flour. The taste of the fresh boiled nuts is like that of new cheese.
