The Japanese Pagoda Tree (Styphnolobium japonicum) is grown as an ornamental in the United Kingdom.
Most people grow this tree for its flowers. White cascades in summer. Pretty.
But in China and Korea, where it comes from, people eat it.
Not the flowers. Well, the flowers too. But mostly the young leaves. The tender shoots. Even the twigs.
They cook them with rice. Simple. Nutritious. They’ve been doing this for centuries.
Some regions take it further. They sun dry the shoots first. Then boil them multiple times to get the bitterness out. Takes patience. But it works.
There’s a home remedy too. Boil the twigs. Poach an egg in the liquid. Drink the broth, eat the egg. People believe it stops bleeding. Whether it does or not, they’ve been doing it long enough to keep doing it.
The flowers make tea. In Hong Kong, they’re the main ingredient in Five Flower Tea. It’s what you drink when summer gets too hot. The flowers add flavour. Delicate. Nothing heavy.
You can dry the leaves for tea as well.
Even the seeds get used. The endosperm inside—that’s the bit that feeds the growing seed—gets cooked with sugar in Northern China. Makes a sweet dessert. Popular one, apparently.
And there’s starch in the seeds. Edible. Another way to use them.
So here’s what’s interesting. We plant these trees in Britain. Purely ornamental. Nice to look at.
Meanwhile, the same tree has fed people for generations.
Not saying we should start eating ours. Just saying it’s worth knowing what something can do before we decide what it’s for.
Sometimes a tree is more than decoration.
References
Facciola, S. (1998). Cornucopia II: A source book of edible plants. Kampong Publications.
Hu, S. (2005). Food Plants of China. Chinese University Press.
Kunkel, G. (1984). Plants for Human Consumption: An Annotated Checklist of the Edible Phanerogams and Ferns. Koeltz Scientific Books.
Madden, E., McLachlan, C., Oketch, Rabah, H., & Calderón, A. I. (2022). United States Pharmacopeia comprehensive safety review of Styphnolobium japonicum flower and flower bud. Phytotherapy Research, 36(5), 2061–2071.
Read, B. E. (1946). Famine Foods Listed in the Chiu Huang Pen Ts?ao: Giving Their Identity, Nutritional Values and Notes on Their Preparations. Henry Lester Institute of Medical Research.
Uphof, J. C. T. (1959). Dictionary of Economic Plants. H.R. Engelmann.