Today (28 Aug 2015) is the Chinese Ghost Festival day in Thailand, so I think I could write about some plant that relate to this festival.
The Chinese Ghost festival day is the day Chinese people believe that the spirits includes their ancestors come out from the netherworld to the human world. So it’s the important task to prepare food to offer them when they’re arriving. The most common food used in this festival is the pyramid-shape stuffed dough.
Originally, this stuffed dough’s pastry is mixed with some kind of weed known as shǔqúcǎo or Gnaphalium affine, a member in Compositae family. This plant is a kind of nativecudweed in East Asia region. Due to its peasant aroma, shǔqúcǎo was used in many Chinese cuisine, both food and sweets. It also contains numerous benefits as the medicinal herb, for example, it is traditionally used as antitussive, expectorant, febrifuge.
 |
| Gnaphalium spp., Phu Thap Boek, Phetchabun province. |
Although it is the native plant in East Asia region, shǔqúcǎo can be found at high attitude region in Thailand, too. However, there is no official Thai name given to this plant until the present day. Other Gnaphalium plants found in Thailand (G. hypoleucum and G. polycaulon) also don’t have Thai name.
No comments:
Post a Comment