Water caltrop
Channel: all the knowledge of the universe PRINCIPIA
Date: 2022-01-11

Water caltrop, by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1005365 / CC BY SA 3.0

#Lythraceae
#Edible_nuts_and_seeds
#Hong_Kong_cuisine
The water caltrop is any of three extant species of the genus Trapa: Trapa natans, Trapa bicornis and the endangered Trapa rossica.
It is also known as buffalo nut, bat nut, devil pod, ling nut, lin kok, ling jow, ling kio nut, mustache nut or singhara.
The species are floating annual aquatic plants, growing in slow-moving water up to 5 m （16 ft） deep, native to warm temperate parts of Eurasia and Africa.
They bear ornately shaped fruits, which in the case of T. bicornis resemble the head of a bull or the silhouette of a flying bat.
Each fruit contains a single very large, starchy seed.
T. natans and T. bicornis have been cultivated in China and the Indian subcontinent for the edible seeds for at least 3,000 years.
The generic name Trapa is derived from the Latin word for "thistle", calcitrappa, as also is another common name for the water caltrop.
The plant's name in Japanese is hishi, a word that is also used to mean "a diamond or lozenge shape, a rhombus".
The manufacturing group Mitsubishi takes its name and logo from the water caltrop.
It is called Shringataka in Sanskrit, which is shortened to Shingara in Hindi language.
In Eastern India, the samosa a fried or baked pastry is also called Shingara because its shape resembles that of the Shingara fruit.
The water caltrop's submerged stem reaches 3.
7 to 4.
6 m （12 to 15 ft） in length, anchored into the mud by very fine roots.
It has two types of leaves: finely divided, feather-like submerged leaves borne along the length of the stem, and undivided floating leaves borne in a rosette at the water's surface.
The floating leaves have saw-tooth edges and are ovoid or triangular in shape, 2–3 cm （3⁄4–1+1⁄4 in） long, on inflated petioles 5–9 cm （2–3+1⁄2 in） long, which provide added buoyancy for the leafy portion.
Four-petalled white flowers form in early summer and are insect-po...