You can eat Zizania caduciflora thanks to fungal infection.

The first time I saw white rice was in Yunnan. There was a plate of fried meat like bamboo shoots on my aunt's dining table. However, the feeling of these "bamboo shoots" was a little strange. They weren't as crisp as usual, but a little more chewy. Say it is like dried bamboo shoots, they are softer than dried bamboo shoots, especially in the center part, but there is a bit of sponge feeling. It tasted more like corn stalks chewed as a child and bagasse that had been sucked out of sugar juice. My aunt called this dish Jiaogua, which is one of my first memories of Yunnan vegetables.

Later, restaurants in the north also had fried meat with Zizania latifolia, and the vegetable market also had the whole Zizania latifolia. These vegetables looked like melons and bamboo shoots. They were white and fat, and there were residual green leaves on their heads. However, this thing is neither melon nor bamboo shoot, but a kind of "infected" plant stem. Don't worry, this infection will not affect human health, but will bring us delicious food.

White and fat Zizania latifolia. Photo: en.wikipedia

A niche dish spread all over the country

And we say,"Let's start with the white stuff." To most people, the word "wild" is a completely unfamiliar word, and what it is is even more difficult. Say "Zizania latifolia", many friends in the south will not be unfamiliar, this kind of bamboo-like vegetables also appear more and more frequently in the northern vegetable market. In fact, Zizania latifolia is the swollen stem of Zizania latifolia, and it is a deformed stem.

Like many other plants, the shape of the mushroom is not impressive. These plants grow in paddy fields like clumps of rice, only with longer leaves and denser clusters. Their living areas are all over the north and south of the Yangtze River. They may be seen in paddy fields and swamps in Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Inner Mongolia, Hebei, Gansu, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Fujian, Guangdong and Taiwan. So we Chinese have been dealing with mushrooms for a long time.

Abandoned food crops

If in the circle of plant food seniority, that mushroom is definitely regarded as the number one "character." This kind of grass family wild mushroom plant in that year but can with "grain" equal food crop. In the early stages of agricultural development, wild rice (Hu Diao Rice) was once an important grain. In ancient books such as Zhou Li, the ancients even listed wild rice as the sixth grain juxtaposed with "rice, millet, millet, wheat and Shu."

Rice. Photo: en.wikipedia

In fact, all grasses have starch-rich seeds, but some are too difficult to harvest (like African wild rice, which grows in water), some are too small (like reed), and some are not harvested regularly (like bamboo). In contrast, wild rice is still relatively easy to harvest and utilize seeds. Moreover, wild mushrooms are perennial plants. As long as they are planted, they can provide food for us for a long time like fruit trees.

However, the yield of wild rice is far from comparable to rice. In addition, the flowering period of wild rice is long, the seed maturity period is inconsistent, and the seed falls off from the ear as soon as it matures. It can be said that it is a food crop that is very difficult to serve. Then he was slowly alienated.

After the cultivated mushrooms were abandoned by the mainstream food crop team, they quickly found new jobs in the vegetable stalls, and those cultivated mushrooms that were parasitized by Ustilago returned to the Jianghu.

Vegetables blessed in misfortune

The roots of cultivated wild rice are deformed due to fungal parasitism, producing vegetables like bamboo shoots, that is, wild rice. Not all cultivated mushrooms can produce Zizania latifolia, and those that are not infected maintain their original state, so they are called "male Zizania latifolia."

Infected stems malformed and dilated. Photo: jichitube.com

We often think of plants as having a life-or-death relationship with microbes, such as Penicillium, which makes oranges rot, Aspergillus flavus, which poisons peanuts, and yeast, which makes apples rot. But some microbes and plants can coexist peacefully and get what they want.

The most typical symbiosis in nature is the symbiotic fungi of rhizobia of legumes and orchids. In both cases, the dominant hosts were plants, which deliberately made room for invisible microbes to inhabit.

Each nodule on the soybean root system contains hundreds of millions of rhizobia. Photo by Wally Eberhart /AllPosts

Of course, microbial tenants don't live for free. They serve their landlords. Rhizobia in legumes turn nitrogen from the air into fertilizer for plants, while symbiotic fungi in orchids help hosts absorb water and mineral nutrients. If we look at the roots of orchids, we can understand the secret of symbiotic fungi-the roots of orchids are bare and without a trace of root hair, because fungi completely replace orchid root hair. This is a symbiotic relationship typical of nature.

The root of a catalan without a single hair. Photo: orchids9.blogspot.com

There is no such peace between the black powder fungus and the mushroom. A mushroom parasitized by Ustilago can't bear any more seeds. In addition, the fungus secretes chemicals to stimulate stem expansion. It should be known that the stem of a normal mushroom is as thick as a rice stem. No matter how thick it is, it is no thicker than an ordinary chopstick, but the enlarged stem has already caught up with a rolling pin. This allows Ustilago to expand its living space to a large extent. At the end of the mushroom's growing season, a large number of Ustilago spores are released to infect new plants.

When the Zizania latifolia is dissected, black spores of Ustilago sp. can be seen. Photo: blogspot.com

In fact, cultivated mushrooms have completely abandoned the ability to set seeds. Even cultivated mushrooms that are not infected by Ustilago will only flower and not bear fruit; not to mention those infected will not even bloom, because many nutrients are used on the growing fat stems. How to reproduce without seeds becomes a big problem. Don't worry, Zizania latifolia can be divided into two parts. Just collect the collected Zizania latifolia roots, sort them and plant them in the field. The next season, Zizania latifolia can be harvested again.

The use of white.

In any case, Zizania latifolia is a very good vegetable, especially fresh Zizania latifolia has a lot of sugar and amino acids, so that Zizania latifolia has a unique fresh sweet taste. Slice Zizania latifolia, add garlic cloves, stir-fry or stir-fry with meat slices are delicious together. And so the mushroom found its place in the vegetable family.

Fried shredded pork with Zizania latifolia. Photo: Bean Fruit Delicious Food

The stems and leaves of wild rice are also excellent forage grass, which is suitable for feeding cattle and sheep. They also play an important role in marsh ecology, providing winter shelter for fish and anchoring banks. It seems that the mushroom, once one of the six valleys, can still play its role today.

Precious corn truffles

Coincidentally, the crops infected by Ustilago in nature are not only wild rice, but also the vegetables produced are not only wild rice. Corn, a distant relative of wild rice, can also be infected with smut, forming delicious corn truffles. However, the part where Ustilago parasitizes is not the stalk of corn, but the ear of corn. The seeds of corn infected by Ustilago sp. swell abnormally and turn grayish black in color. Although it doesn't form a normal corn kernel, this abnormal kernel, known as a "corn truffle," is delicious.

By the way, truffle is a general term for truffle fungi. There are about 10 species found so far, most of which grow in the roots of broad-leaved trees such as pine trees, oak trees and oak trees. Truffles have a special smell and are loved by lovers. Large truffles are expensive and are the food that gourmets yearn for.

This article is from Species Calendar 2016, from Species Calendar Author @ Shi Jun.

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