EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS 



never to have appealed as a flower of contemplation, 

 bnt quite prosaieally as an addition — and an im- 

 portant one — to his dinner table. In this role he 

 found it trebly useful: first, because of the young 

 leaves and footstalks which may be turned to ac- 

 count in the same way as spinach ; secondly, because 

 of the ripened seeds which, roasted or boiled, are 

 palatable and nutritious with a taste that has given 

 rise to the popular name Water Chinquapin; and 

 thirdly, because of the large tubers, weighing some- 

 times half a pound each, which, when baked, are 

 sweet and mealy with a flavor somewhat like a sweet 

 potato. This is the plant whose flower is rather 

 exuberantly referred to by Longfellow in "Evan- 

 geline": 



"Resplendent in beauty, the lotus 



Lifted her golden crown above the heads of the boatmen." 



Though the customary habitat of this Nelumbo is 

 the Mississippi basin, some isolated stations for it 

 are known near the north Atlantic coast, notably in 

 the Connecticut and Delaware Valleys, suggesting 

 the view that it may have been introduced into such 

 localities and cultivated by the Indian inhabitants. 

 However the fact may be, its value as a food source 

 is such as would have warranted such introduction. 



35 



