The Washburn times. [volume] (Washburn, Wis.) 1896-1976, 1915-05-06
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NEW VEGETABLE FROM JAPAN.

Experiments With lido Indicate 1t Is a
Welcome Addition to the Table.
prepared by the United States depart
ment of agriculture.
For persons who like novelty in their
food and in their gardens an interest
ing field for experiment is offered by
the new Japanese vegetable, udO.
Nurserymen have grown the udo under
the name of Aralia cOrdata for Orna-
mental purposes for twenty years or
more, but as vegetable it is still com
paratively unknown. On rich soil it
grows to a height of ten feet or more,
producing a very ornamental mass of
large green leaves and, in the late
summer, long, loose flower lusters,
sometimes three feet in length. In APP,
pearance it is much like a larger va.
riety of the spilzenard or petty morel,
q native of our woodlands.
The .blanched shoots of the udo have
characteristic flavor. Properly pre-
pared they are delicious, or so the au-
thor of bulletin "a, just published by
the United States department of agri-
culture under the title of Experiments
With lido, the New japanese Vege-
table," has found them. The plant re-
quires little care and with the same
space devoted to it yields approx
mately the same amount of food for
the table as asparagus and is ready
for use at about the same time in the
spring After the first frost it dies
down each autumn to come up again in
the spring, much as asparagus and rhu-
barb do. A patch of it can be forced
each spring for at least six years and
probably much longer.
lido growing is not yet sufficiently
general In this country for the most
inexpensive methods of cultivating to
have been worked out, and conditions
In America are so different from those
I'm Japan that little benefit can be de-
rived from the experience of oriental
growers. 1t is. however, reasonable to
assume that the cultivation of the udo
presents few difficulties. 1t Is adapted
to wide range of climate, as is shown
by the fact that it grows all over ia
drought. In this country the udo has
done best in moist regions, in particu-
lar in New England, the Atlantic states
as far south as the Carolinas, in the
rainy region of Puget sound and in the
trucking sections of California.
In the cooking of udo there is still
abundant room for innovatOrs. In all
experiments, however, one thing must
be remembered. When raw the stems
contain resinous substance which
gives them a decided and to many per-
sons unpleasant taste of pine. 1t Is,
however, easy to eliminate this by
soaking thin slices of the stems in ice
cold water for an hour or two or by
boiling them in two or three waters, as
is often done with strong favored veg
etables.
A Billion Dollars.
T wonder If we realize when we
talk of q billion dollars what an enor-
nous sum of money it means. We all
know how rapidly an expert counter
Of coins will manipulate them. You
can scarcely follow the motion Of his
fingers as he shifts the coins from one
pile to another and counts them. The
treasury experts will count 4,O0O silver
dollars in an hour and keep it up all
day long, but that Is their limit
working eight hours day, then, an
expert counter of coins will count 3d.
600 silver dollars in a day, but how
long will it take him at that rate to
count a million dollars? Thirty-one
days. But that is only the beginning
Of the measurements of great figures.
for If this same man were to go on
counting silver dollars at the same rate
of speed for ten years he would find
that he had counted 1OO,OO0OO0 of
them and that to count billion dollars
would require 102 years of steady work
at the rate Of eight hours day during
every working day Of every one of the
1O2 years." - o. p. Austin, Former
Chief Of the Bureau of Statistics.