asakiyume | Butterburs bud

In Japan, today through January 24 is the microseason called "butterburs bud"

One fond memory I have of living in Japan as a family was the 60-plus-year-old director of the daycare where my kids went teaching me how to prepare fuki. In spring you could buy it in markets, but it's also a wild herb that you can forage. I remember where we foraged ours: there was this cut-through with a little bridge, and then you came up behind/beside the Watanabes' shop, which was a sort of convenience store in their house. We bought our kerosine there. I think I still have the director's hard-to-read instructions somewhere--maybe stuck inside a Japanese cookbook. I hope so, anyway.

I've seen butterbur here and thought of picking it, but I've never done it because I'm afraid it might not be exactly the same plant. It also gets translated into English as "coltsfoot."

Here it is--not a bud, but vigorous leaves:

(source)

And here it is, prepared:

(source)

Wow, I guess when you cultivate it, it can get quite large! The stuff we picked is much, much smaller.

(source)

Wikipedia tells me that the plant known as butterbur in Massachusetts, Petasites hybridus, is also called "bog rhubarb, Devil's hat, and pestilence wort." Gotta love folk names.

Crossposts: https://asakiyume.livejournal.com/916990.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

cmcmck

It's common in the woods hereabouts.

Two traditional things which you may have come across here are coltsfoot jelly and coltsfoot rock (a form of sweet/candy).

From:

asakiyume

That's reminding me of people candying angelica.

From:

cmcmck

Oh yes!

My grandma used to do it!

From:

amaebi

How beautiful!

Tell me, is it possible that in Japan industrialization didn't lead to an urban culture that dismisses agriculture as corny and stupid, and the non-human world as a place for sport and excursions?

You've got me pondering.

ETA: And feeling embarrassedly like Elnors, Girl of the Limberlost.

Edited Date: 2019-01-20 02:20 pm (UTC)

From:

asakiyume

Hmm, well, anything I say is based on 20-plus year-old impressions, followed up by a view from a distance, but I think as a generality, it's culturally approved to be in touch with the seasons and to eat seasonal food and to appreciate the cultural heritage, which includes things like planting and harvesting rice--even though one-tenth of the population of Japan lives in Tokyo. Japan's sense of itself as a rice producer is so important (but this also gets tied up with a sense of food independence) that you'll even find small rice fields in Tokyo proper--or at least, that was true when we lived there. There were rice fields by our train station, and I think in general, urban/rural/industrial/residential are all mixed a little more closely... Again, speaking based on my impressions.

That said, although Confucianism (which was very influential in Japan 1600-1868) rates food producers very highly, in fact peasants were scorned and looked down on by pretty much everyone, the way they seem to be by urban/sophisticated populations the world over, and in the Heian period, when the nobles would go out in nature, it was highly formalized, curated version of nature, not real wilds (except when people were exiled--then they were out in the wilds and were miserable) ... I think the non-human world *was* seen as a place for sport and excursion.

From:

amaebi

Ah, thanks. Well, that's sad. The non-human world curated and objectified in thought there, too.

:(

BTW, I meant "Elnora," not some Latinx "Elnord." Spellcheck.

From:

asakiyume

But there, as here, that doesn't mean that some/many people don't have a sincere and more deep relationship with the natural world. There are lots of people there who do. And here too.

From:

sovay

Here it is--not a bud, but vigorous leaves

I had no idea what that was called! I've seen it around. I always assumed it was a sort of wild rhubarb.

From:

asakiyume

Now I'm wondering if there *are* wild rhubarbs about....

From:

sovay

Now I'm wondering if there *are* wild rhubarbs about....

My parents' house had a patch of rhubarb in the backyard when we moved in, but someone had clearly planted it. (We cooked with it for a couple of years.)

From:

cmcmck

There are!

The Orkney Islands are smothered in it!

From:

asakiyume

Wonderful! Does everyone make lots of rhubarb pie and rhubarb compote?

From:

cmcmck

You find a lot of it on menus for sure.

Not that I'm complaining! I love rhubarb. :o)

There's even rhubarb ice cream, which is sublime!

From:

asakiyume

I like the flavor of rhubarb--I'd love to try rhubarb ice cream!

From:

st_martin_a

You know, I was thinking how similar to rhubarb it looked.
Devil's hat.
: )

From:

asakiyume

Around here, the really huge leaves are burdock leaves, and we definitely made hats out of them!

From:

shalpacafarm

Pestilence wort was the name of my housing development before they renamed it due to 0 sales.

Edited Date: 2019-01-20 03:08 pm (UTC)

From:

asakiyume

Hahaha, yeah, pick your names carefully ;-)

From:

shewhomust

Butterbur grows quite commonly here (in the north of England) especially in damp places along the edge of rivers. It starts out small - in fact, it starts with the flowers - but grows to head height, without any cultivation. There are pictures of the flowers here.

It isn't anything like the plant I know as coltsfoot (picture here), though apparently they have in common that the flowers appear before the leaves.

And yay! folk names! so many great ones...

From:

asakiyume

Those flowers look very much like the flowers on fuki, though the illustrations I've seen of fuki flowers are golden green rather than purply.

Just now, before getting your comment, I was looking at the coltfoot/butterbur thing, and it seems like some things that get called by those names share that they're in the genus Petasites.

Here, the thing I've tentatively identified as butterbur also grows in damp, woodland areas, but I only ever see it about knee height. Then again, things behave very differently depending on nutrients. In my yard, I've had cosmos flowers that were six feet tall and then little tiny ones that were only about four inches tall, depending on whether they were in good soil or bad.