A tour of the Zurich Botanical Garden with botanist Melanie Kleineberg on 5 October 2023
Melanie Kleineberg
No, the red balls in this spice mixture that Mrs Kleineberg showed us at the beginning of the tour are not pepper! She explained that to us.
And two days later, food scout Samuel Herzog wrote about the same topic in his Saturday column in the NZZ. And Susanne Vögeli provided a recipe. Rose pepper does not come from the pepper family (Piperaceae), but from a completely different plant family, namely the sumac family. And white pepper is nothing other than peeled black pepper and black pepper is nothing other than dried green pepper.
Rosen-«pfeffer». NZZ vom 7.10.2023
We were greeted in the Botanical Garden by Mrs Kleineberg with a magic potion based on the blue butterfly pea (Clitoria ternatea). The flower and other components of this plant are mainly used in Ayurvedic and folk medicine in South East Asia. I was able to take a photo of the last flower, but unfortunately it was already a little bit gone, so the picture no longer perfectly reflects the name.
Clitoria ternatea
The citrus family was the next topic: mandarins, grapefruits, bitter oranges, pomelos, lemons, clementines, kumquats, finger citrus..., complex relationships, breeding, forward and backward crosses. One is confused: what was at the beginning and what became of it all?
Citrus reticulata (Mandarine)
Fingercitrus - Buddhas Hand – Fo Shou - Citrus medica L. var. Sarcodactylis
The lotus was already in the process of retreating for the winter, but the dry seed heads were still visible and the leaves were used to demonstrate how water runs off thanks to the surface structure. Seven parts of the plant are consumed as food or medicine: Leaves, stem, rhizome, internodes of the rhizomes, fruits, seed heads, seedling.
The plates of another water lily were impressively beautiful: Victoria amazonica, which, as the name suggests, comes from South America.
Victoria amazonica
In the background at the top left of the above picture we see water spinach (Ipomea aquatica), a plant from the bindweed family. You can get it in any Asian shop. The stalks are hollow and in Cantonese the vegetable is called tung choi = perforated vegetable. There are two varieties, one actually grows in water and the other on land
Wasserspinat = Ipomea aquatica («Lochgemüse»)
We also found wasabi (Eutrema japonicum) in the water. The snails in my garden ate it. They were completely wild about this herb. But this spring I found a wasabi on the gravel path in my garden, at least I thought I had found one. The leaves looked exactly like this to me. I could hardly believe it, plucked it out and gnawed on the root. It really was as spicy as horseradish or wasabi. I realised my mistake later when more and more of the same plants sprouted up in the vicinity of where I had found it: it was garlic horseradish/garlic rocket. It's interesting what surprises nature always has in store. The pungency of the root is hardly present in the leaves, but it is in the seeds
Wasabi (Eutrema japonicum)
Our gaze kept wandering from the typical TCM plants to other beautiful flowers, such as this type of bromeliad: watch out! The purple parts are not the flower, but only the false flower or bracts. The actual flowers are the bluish shimmering parts. The structure was about 70 cm long.
Eine Bromelie
Some TCM plants were gathered in a bed:
Gynostemma (Jiao Gu Lan), Curcuma and other ginger plants, liquorice (Gan Cao), Artemisia annua (Qing Hao), Schisandra (Wu Wei Zi) and a few more.
Gynostemma – Jiao Gu Lan
Gynostemma, more recently known as women's ginseng, is currently experiencing a hype. Every nursery sells it. It is also known as the immortality herb. As the plant retracts over the winter, we were allowed to pluck the leaves and taste them. Sweet like stevia and also a little ginseng-like, although from the pumpkin family. Frost down to minus 10-15° doesn't bother it, and in spring it starts to grow again like crazy.
Curcuma longa – Jiang Huang. Die Blüten im Bild leider auch schon ziemlich herbstlich vorbei.
Glyzyrrhiza – Gan Cao – Süssholz
Liquorice is in almost every second TCM remedy recipe. The fact that excessive consumption can cause health problems is based on an electrolyte problem of the adrenal gland with the tongue-twister name pseudohyperaldosteronism, which can cause a hypertensive crisis (what now?: the mechanism or the tongue-twister name?).
My liquorice almost died, but now it is sprouting tentatively again. I bought it from Botti's herb nursery in Stetten, where you can buy hundreds of exotic seedlings, including many TCM plants.
Artemisia annua – Qing Hao
The Chinese scientist Tu Youyou was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2015 for her research on Artemisia annua for the treatment of malaria.
ein Lieferant von Indigo (Qing Dai): Indigofera tinctoria
Qing Dai - Indigo is obtained from various plants, the Chinese Pharmacopoeia allows Baphicacanthus cusia, Polygonum tinctorium and Isatis indigotica as sources, Bensky also mentions Indigofera tinctoria.
Luffa cylindrica – Si Gua Lou
It is not only used as a bath sponge, but also as a heat-clearing medicine in TCM.
Lithospermum – Zi Cao
A very useful herb in TCM dermatology, but unfortunately hardly usable here due to its pyrrolizidine alkaloid (PA) content, as the limit values cannot be adhered to. Renowned scientists doubt the current classification of the various PAs with regard to their toxicity and are working on rehabilitating these and other PA-containing herbs, but what has once become established in official regulations is difficult to reverse. I will report on this when the opportunity arises.
Chinesische Datteln – Jujuben – Giuggiole – Da Zao
Ziziphus jujubae - I didn't take a photo of the bush with the Chinese dates because the fruits were tiny and not very representative. But the next day I received the fruits shown above from a Chinese man who had grown a bush in his garden behind his Chinese restaurant in Tübach on Lake Constance.
He also has huge wax gourds = winter melons (Dong Gua), of which TCM uses the seeds Dong Gua Zi (Benincasae Semen) and the skin Dong Gua Pi (Benincasae Exocarpium).
He also successfully grows bitter melons = bitter cucumbers (Ku Gua). But so does the husband of one of our botanists at Phytax, from whom I receive seedlings every spring. Is it even possible to eat these extremely bitter cucumbers? Cooking - they are a delicacy when you know how. We had the last one of the year for dinner yesterday (16 October 2023). Now it will be almost another year before there are any more, unless you buy them in the Asian shop.
In the desert house we found frankincense (Ru Xiang, Boswellia/Olibanum), which Phytax www.phytax.ch recently analysed and found that many commercially available products did not correspond botanically to what was advertised. More on this later in a separate newsletter.
We'll be going again, perhaps at a different time of year. Why don't you come along?
Autumn greetings!
Severin Bühlmann
Autumn 2023
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