The aquatic ingredient "horse's hoof" is named because the underground stems resemble a horseshoe.
Horsefoot is an aquatic plant whose tubers are shaped like horseshoes, hence its name. The tubers of horseshoes are round or oval in shape, with several raised links on the surface, similar in shape to horseshoes. In addition, the tubers of water chestnuts are white or light yellow in color, crisp and tender in texture, sweet and juicy in taste, and are somewhat similar to the taste of water chestnuts.
Water chestnut is a perennial herbaceous plant belonging to the family Cyperaceae. 15-60 cm high; culms are clustered and cylindrical; flower spikelets are cylindrical and multi-flowered; nutlets are broadly obovate and biconvex. Water chestnuts are mainly divided into two major types: wild type and cultivated type. Generally, the wild type water chestnuts have thinner and shorter leaf-like stems and smaller corms; the cultivated type water chestnuts have thicker and taller leaf-like stems and larger corms.
Most scholars believe that water chestnuts originated in China and India. The earliest record of water chestnuts in China can be found in "Erya" (about 2nd century BC), and the name "water chestnuts" can be found in "The Story of Things" (the second half of the 11th century) and "The Romance of Materia Medica" (1116) written in the Northern Song Dynasty. ) and so on were recorded for the first time. The domestication and cultivation of water chestnuts was relatively late. The earliest information about the cultivation of water chestnuts can be found in ancient books between the two Song Dynasties. Water chestnuts, which are distributed in Western countries, were introduced around the 17th century.
Another name for horseshoe
Water chestnuts are commonly known as horseshoes. This is the common name for water chestnuts in Guangzhou dialect, and this name is the "heritage" of ancient Fujian and Cantonese dialects. In the Fujian and Cantonese dialects, fruits and other things are collectively called "horse" (sound); when referring to a specific fruit, it is customary to put "horse" before the name of the fruit. Peach is pronounced as "horse peach", which means the fruit of the peach tree. The "hoof" (sound) in "horse hoof" means underground. According to the characteristic of Fujian and Cantonese dialects that modifying and restricting elements are often placed at the rear, "horse hoof" means "underground fruit".