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Tropical Chickweed Drymaria Cordata Seeds
Packet of 100+ home grown seeds!
Tasty little annual weed that comes and goes with the rains here.
The leaves and shoots are edible and it grows really well in a shady corner of the greenhouse.
In New Guinea it is famed as a virility tonic sort of thing, while in the rest of the tropics it is normally just used as a pot herb or salad vegetable.
A small handful chucked into a pasta dish or sliced finely in a salad adds a little color and vitamins, without disturbing the basic flavours. It can be eaten raw or cooked.
It doesn’t taste of much, just mild and green, a lot like bean shoots or young green peas still in the pod.
Maybe a little sweetness to it?
Most often called West Indian Chickweed and regionally known as abhiijaalo, chischina, drimaria, drymaria, golondrina, heartleaf drymary, he lian dou cao, mourron blanc, nervillo, pajarera, palitaria, pega-pinto, petit mourron, pilipili, pipili, tropical chickweed, yerba de estrella, drymaria, whitesnow, or just tropical chickweed which is what I call it.
It has fine skeleton like flowers and sticky seed pods and let me tell you now, harvesting and sorting the seeds is a bit of a hassle.
For the home gardener it isn’t an issue as you can divide the main plants very easily, or just pull the flowers off and throw them where you want them to come up in the garden.
I reckon them being super hard to sort and package the seeds is a major reason why they aren’t as common as the other Chickweed~Stellaria media, which is a smaller relative of this fella.
In China and Taiwan the pounded leaves are used as a poultice for treatment of snakebite, and in Indonesia a tea made from the leaves is used to reduce fever.
Like I say, it comes and goes with the rains here, and it’s more of a reliable forage than a farmed crop if you know what I mean.
Makes a great addition to the diet but like anything moderation and variety is key.
I have seen a couple reports of it being used as a stimulant and having a laxative effect though its never had that effect on me.
I also never eat more than a handful in a big bowl of salad or pot of whatever we are cooking up at the time.
Everyone’s different and you may react differently to me and the Mrs, keep that in mind.
Grown by me and the Mrs organically, no chems, no nasties, no problems!!!
