ON A CHINESE CULINARY VEGETABLE. 147 
tapering upwards into a conical point, and surrounded and surmounted 
by the leaves and culm, from which they are readily detached. In taste 
the raw shoot is not unlike a half-ripe nut ; but it is never eaten uncooked, 
but by the Chinese is stewed with meat, and by foreigners cut longitudi- 
ually into two or three pieces, well boiled and served with melted-butter. 
Prepared in this way, it is, to my taste, one of the most agreeable an 
nicest vegetables I am acquainted with. It is difficult to describe its 
exaet flavour; but it is, perhaps, nearest to that of unripe maize, as 
boiled and eaten by Americans under the name of “ green corn," though 
it possesses a peculiar richness and delicacy, to which I know no parallel 
n any other vegetable. 
A very slight examination shows that these so-called cane-shoots con- 
sist of the solid base of the stem of a grass; but, though I had long been 
anxious to determine the species, it was not until the other day that I 
succeeded in obtaining growing specimens in flower. On examining 
I was greatly surprised to kind them referable to Hydropyrum 
in la t the conflue e rivers Schilka and Argun 
Am 8 detected on the Upper Ussuri, in Lake Kengka, in 
the neighbourhood of Peking (whence I have specimens gathered by 
r. Swin and in Japan. It is not wild in Southern China, but only 
eultivated (in standing water) for the table; and, as I find it is also 
grown as a vegetable at Kiu-kiang, on the Yang-tsz, I infer, though T 
have no reliable data as to the extent of its culture, that it is very wide 
in this country. 
S a species this is exceedingly close to H. esculentum, Link., the 
* Indian Rice" or “ Water Oats ” of North America, with which Trinius,* 
doubtfully combined it; and even Grisebach,t from want of specimens of 
the panicle being, though spreading whilst alive, as much appressed 1 
the dried plantt as the upper pistillate ones ; by the male florets, which 
are nearly twice as long as in the American plant, having an awn fi 
: f - 
? i 
Grisebach remarks that the cupuliform summit of these pedicels 
i ed 
eb. Fl. Ross. iv. 466. i 
t A similar phenomenon occurs, as I have elsewhere observed (Ann. Sc. Nat. 
5° sér, v. 253), in the common Chrysopogon aciculatus, Trin., of which Loureiro 
truly remarks (Fl. Cochinch. ii. 676) that it is “hominibus valde incommoda ; 
quia vestibus adhaerens taediose avellitur, cum excuti nequeat;" whence it is 
sometimes called by Europeans in Chin - Love-grass." hilst growing, the 
panicle-branches spread horizontally, forming a right angle with the stem ; but, 
after being gathered a little while, though still retaining their rigidity, they 
incline inwards and give the inflorescence a narrow strict appearance, justas it is 
ini Gram. i. 
L2 
