Amaranth: Stacking Functions Left and Right.

You may have read an earlier short post I published on the wonder grain amaranth. But I thought I would post again, as I've discovered an absolutely wonderful use of the grain... in sushi:

Homemade sushi: amaranth, cucumber, carrots, fresh ginger, tempeh and shitaake.

You can prepare the amaranth by simply boiling 1 part amaranth to 1.5 parts water. I let the grain boil for about 10 minutes, then I keep stirring until finished to acheive a creamy texture. For the sushi "rice," I added a bit of rice wine vineger and a touch of demerara sugar to the cooked grain for a bit of added flavor. Rolling your own sushi is incredibly easy. It was my first attempt, and I am now a complete convert. Never again a sushi out at a restaurant! I always have either cooked rice in the fridge or amaranth in the pantry. We stock carrots because we love making fresh carrot juice in the juicer. And just about any vegetables work for the filling. And one packet of Nori (seaweed sheets) has about 10 sheets, so the packet I purchased yesterday should last for a while.

Amaranth growing prolifically in the UCBG Crops of the World Garden

Amaranth (Amaranthus sp. ) is truly a wonder plant. It has been grown and used as a food source for some 7,000 years! The seeds have been used all around the world as a grain that serves as a complete protein, a source of fiber and minerals. When we were in India it was available and we used the grains to replace rice, to make chapattis and to make more wholesome dosas and idlies. The grains are gluten-free. They were a staple food of the Incas, who called it "kiwicha" and who also popped the small grains and mixed them with honey to make a sweet candy called "Alegria," which by the way means "joy" in Spanish. Amaranth was also eaten by the Aztecs who called it "huautli"

The plant itself is easy to grow, provides thousands of seeds/grains per plant, and the seeds themselves are easy to cook requiring little water, and not much fuel to do so.

The leaves are also highly nutritious and are consumed across many cultures in Africa and Southeast Asia.

In North America, amaranth was used by the Hopi as a natural dye as a brilliant source of deep red. This particular species of amaranth now carries that name, 'Hopi Red Dye' (Amaranthus cruentus or Amaranthus cruentus x A. powellii)

Amaranth is easily grown in our Bay Area climate. The grains are also available at most grocery stores or natural food stores. For my friends across the country and in between, Whole Foods is a reliable source of Amaranth grains. I encourage you all to try it out! And if you already have, try it in a new way, replacing rice, adding loosely cooked grains to salads, making Alegria, or....

coco de mer, double coconut, beautiful rump

a seedling growing

i was horribly afraid one of those 20 kg seeds would fall on my head

these strange coconut palms, native to the seychelle islands, were quite the sight at the royal botanic gardens in peradineya, sri lanka. the seeds are the largest and the heaviest in the world taking 5 years to mature and weighing upwards of 30 kgs!! it is a true case of island gigantism having also the largest female flowers of any palm and the longest leaves!

there's a story that when sailors came across these floating seeds in the ocean (where they get the name 'coco de mer'), they imagined them to be the beautiful buttocks of island ladies. this mythology corresponds with the archaic botanical name Lodoicea callipyge, where 'callipyge' is from greek words meaning "beautiful rump!" This later contributed to the legend that the nuts were aphrodisiacs.

With the seeds being highly valuable and prized, the plant is now threatened in its native environment with only two wild populations remaining, but can be seen in botanical gardens throughout the world.

Its true botanical name is Lodoicea maldivica and it is the sole member of the genus Lodoicea.

the nuts are apparently used in ayurveda and chinese traditional medicine.

A truly strange and intriguing plant!

while in coimbature, i had lots of time to take walks and simply admire the nature around us. there were so many lovely flowers and i appreciated nature's beauty. each flower, so different, in color, size, shape and form, each complicated, yet meant to perform the same simple function. each with a beautiful fragrance and ephemeral glow. i reflected on our own ability and blessing to blossom, each day, over time.

i was especially amazed by the bouganvilla- a common plant, whose colorful brachts (the pink parts are not flowers, but modified leaves that attract pollinators to the tiny white flowers within) are abundant and even adorned our little cottage back in berkeley, but this variety was cauliflorous - it's flowers emerging right from the stem.

the beautiful yellow queen (Pachystachys lutea) and the white spider lily (Hymenocallis narcissiflora) were taken at the new botanical park in chennai.

everywhere around us is beauty, in nature and each other. take a moment to enjoy and appreciate.

J'adore Amaranth

A Rose and an Amaranth blossomed side by side in a garden,
and the Amaranth said to her neighbour,
"How I envy you your beauty and your sweet scent!
No wonder you are such a universal favourite."
But the Rose replied with a shade of sadness in her voice,
"Ah, my dear friend, I bloom but for a time:
my petals soon wither and fall, and then I die.
But your flowers never fade, even if they are cut;
for they are everlasting." ---- From Aesop's Fables


I think amaranth is one of my favorite plants. In permaculture we talk alot about stacking functions and the amaranth is truly a multi-functional plant indeed. You can use the flowers to make a gorgeous dye. You can grind up the seeds make plant based paints. You can eat the highly nutritious grains. You can eat the highly nutritious leaves. The plant is so gorgeous it makes your eyes hurt. It can be a cut flower. Time go to plant some amaranth in my garden.

amorphophallus diversion

fibers & dyes

look at these gorgeous colors from nature! they were made by students of Sasha Duerr Fossel's Soil to Studio Class, Garden volunteer Cynthia Dakopolos and yours truly. I am so inspired by the depth and range of each one. The photos don't do justice, so please come visit the fiber & dye exhibit at the UC Botanical Garden.

http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu/root_images/programs/winter_10/fiber_dye.html

a tree grows in richmond

flowers & fruits
the garden

I am really proud to be a part of an amazing project at Verde school in Richmond. The docents of the UC Botanical Garden have been working with this school, to give our tours & programs in their amazingly diverse and thriving school garden. The school, has little money for field trips, but they are a culturally rich school and with parent and grandparent volunteers in the garden they have a wonderful array of edibles, medicinals and native plants. I was fortunate enough to come along with the docents to watch them present our "grocery store botany" program to the 1st graders at Verde. Here are a few images from their garden.

hapazome = brilliant

i recently learned about something called "hapazome" or flower pounding. a couple of weekends ago, the ecological artist rebecca burgess came to the uc botanical garden to teach a wonderful day long workshop on native plant dyes. little did we know that we'd leave knowing all that and more! i was enchanted with hapazote. the amazing textile artist india flint apparently coined the term. it is a way of using fresh flowers and immediately extracting the pigments and sealing them into our clothes or other fabrics. it was so easy, so gratifying and so beautiful.

you begin by laying down your piece of fabric. we used t-shirt scraps. then you lay fresh flower petals on the cloth as you'd like. we used a few such as nasturtium, pansy, cosmos.

then you lay another piece of cloth over the flowers-- if your using a t-shirt or big piece of fabric you can simply fold over the cloth. we then sprayed the fabric with water and soda ash or wood ash mixed in a spray bottle. when the cloth is saturated you can begin pounding:

my favorite thing about it is this: the flowers fade, but then, once they do you can keep pounding new flowers into your cloths or sheets or any fabrics to create these beautiful collages of your history and the flowers you've come across. the fabrics become histories of our lives and beautiful stories of our natural world. i LOVE it! thank you rebecca for teaching me this beautiful art and to your wonderful brother michael who took this great photos.

go native!

ok, i know i haven't blogged in a while, it's all because my camera was kidnapped to halifax and without a camera i feel lost. words?! i'm not a good writer! my blog is about plants plants don't talk and i don't have to talk to them to enjoy them.

nonetheless. now that i am without a camera i will attempt to catch you up on some happenings... and borrow a photo from the botanical garden.

just yesterday i was at the botanical garden learning all about butterfly friendly plants. yes, it's true, many of the host plants for butterflies tend to be on the weedy and even invasive side. a perfect example is fennel. fennel came to california from asia and spread to become one of the more weedy of the weedy. fennel is now the favorite host plant of the anise swallowtail butterfly. well interestingly enough there is a california native host plant and it is called Yampah (Perideridia kellogii). Not only is Yampah an important food source for the anise swallowtail, but it was also an important food source for California Native Peoples.

And to make matters best, we do sell Perideridia sp. at the Botanical Garden-- it's a plant rarely found in nurseries.

more from the green gala- these ones by david gilbert

OCELOT: hand dyed using itajime shibori technique in San Francisco

Jonathan David Baker's multi-directionally pleated dress made with seaweed and organic cotton, tux jacket made with recycled nylon and recycled tire rubber

TINC: designed by Savannah Knoop made with sea weed and wood pulp, peace silk, and organic cotton canvas

ashley helvey's d felted organic wool dress from a predator friendly farm

the moon: lace pillow lava dress: vintage slip, lace bits, silk and cotton handkerchiefs, napkins and doilies. annatto dyed silk shirts over dyed with black walnut hull

mr. larkin at the botanical garden's green gala

fashion show in the redwoods: sasha duerr & ashley helvey : photography by cara mia

unbelievable combination of colors

beautiful succulent wreath!