Mother's Herb Garden: Chufa

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Lately, more and more people have begun to understand just how limited—in both variety and nutritional value—our "modern" diets hove become. This realization has sparked a new and widespread interest in the culinary and therapeutic uses of herbs . . . those plants which—although not well-known today—were, just one short generation ago, honored "guests" on the dinner tables and in the medicine chests of our grandparents' homes. In this regular feature, MOTHER examines the availability, cultivation, and benefits of our "forgotten" vege table foods and rem edies . . . and—we hope—helps pre vent the loss of still another bit of an cestral lore.

There's a grasslike plant that abounds in moist soils from coast to coast—and from Mexico to Alaska—whose sweet, nutty little tubers can provide an instant, nutritious meal (the "potatoes" contain protein, fat, calcium, iron, thiamine, and lots of phosphorus). One of the few edible sedges, Cyperus esculentus is also called yellow nut grass, earth-almond, edible galingale, rush-nut, and—in the southern states, where it's sometimes cultivated—"Florida almond". However, it's from Spain, where the plant is used to produce a delicious beverage, that we get its best-known label: chufa.

Search for the herb along the banks of streams and rivers . . . the edges of ponds, lakes, and marshes . . . and right in your own well-watered garden, where you may have cursed it as a prolific weed. A perennial, chufa grows from 12 to 18 inches tall and has light green grasslike leaves springing from ground level to the approximate height of its stout, triangular stalk. The plant's central stem bears numerous yellowish spikelet flowers with saw-toothed edges that form an upsidedown umbrella shape.

When—generally from June to October—the chufa is in seed, you will know there are tasty tubers waiting underneath the soil. But—as is the case with potatoes—the harder the ground is, the smaller and more scattered the rhizomes will be. In loose earth, the 1/4- to 1/2-inch eatables are usually near the surface . . . but in heavy clay, for example, the thin, easily broken roots may be long and the tubers only the size of pinheads.