Chinese Arrowhead, See Goo, Cultivated Sagittaria

[utopiate]

This is the best I have on classification of the Chinese arrowheads both wild and the domestic.

www.foc.org/china/mss/volume23/Alismatales-AGH_reviewing.htm

They seem to see S. trifolia as synonymous with S. sagittifolia, but using either species name the cultivar is either var. edulis or var. sinensis. USDA plant pages dont seem to recognise trifolia, but rather only S. sagittifolia, which is considered "old world arrowhead". S. latifolia seems mostly accepted as distinct from S. sagittifolia currently.

So that raises questions about how to interpret the map.

[Hristo]

I'm not familiar with that genus, but this may help you:
www.ipni.org/ipni/advPlantNameSearch.do?find_infragenus=&find_isAPNIRecord=true&find_geoUnit=&find_includePublicationAuthors=true&find_addedSince=&find_family=&find_genus=Sagittaria&find_sortByFamily=true&find_isGCIRecord=true&find_infrafamily=&find_rankToReturn=all&find_publicationTitle=&find_authorAbbrev=&find_infraspecies=&find_includeBasionymAuthors=true&find_modifiedSince=&find_isIKRecord=true&find_species=&output_format=normal&chunk_size=100&start_row=300

[utopiate]

:-/Names going back to the mid-seventeen hundreds? Im not sure it helps... it makes my head throb! Thanks though.

[Hristo]

Yes, IPNI is mainly for bibliographic reference, but somethimes helps (at least to me)

[utopiate]

I found some instruction for growing these cultivated Chinese arrowheads at Green Harvest (Australia). For Australians some very interesting and useful plants at this site including arracacha. They don't ship overseas.

www.greenharvest.com.au/Plants/arrowhead_info.html

That page's description as non-flowering does indicate the cultivar form, not the wild S. sagittifolia. The picture on that site shows a leaf-form with thinner rear lobes than this picture of Ci Gu.


By utopiate at 2009-02-04
Not my picture.

This may simply reflect leaf variation, or we may be seeing the the two seperate forms mentioned in a pfaf comment I found:

"I am familiar with 2 varieties. The common one is white flesh and round and ping pong shaped and is found in almost all south Asians markets. A less common varieties is egg shape with yellow flesh. They both taste about the same, but the latter one seems more crunchy. The leaves of the common one is more wide. Both varietes are grown in the Pearl Delta areas of China. The first is commonly called chi gu, and the less common are call pond or sand gui, and I grow the latter because they are rarely found at the markets."

I'd love to acquire this pond or sand gui form also.

The harvest references I find are typically for at 6 or 7 months. Should be interesting to try tub-growing in a greenhouse, or outdoors if one was in the warmer parts of the US.

[alkapuler]

in Cantonese it is nga ku or chi ku