"Horseshoe", scientific name water chestnut [bí qi].

Water chestnut, with slender creeping rhizomes, bears tubers at the tips of the creeping rhizomes, commonly known as water chestnuts. Culms numerous, tufted, erect, terete, 15-60 cm tall, 1.5-3 mm in diam. with numerous transverse membranes, existing nodes on surface of culm after drying, but inconspicuous, gray-green, smooth and glabrous. Leaves absent, only 2-3 leaf sheaths at base of culm; sheaths submembranous, greenish yellow, purplish red or brown, 2-20 cm tall, sheath mouths oblique, apices acute. Spikelets terminal, terete, 1.5-4 cm long, 6-7 mm in diameter, very pale green, tip obtuse or subacute, numerous-flowered, two scales hollow and flowerless at the base of the spikelet, clasping the base of the spikelet for a week; the rest of the scales all-flowered, loosely compoundly wavy, broadly oblong or ovate-oblong, tip obtusely rounded, 3-5 mm long, 2.5-3.5(-4) mm wide, dorsally grayish-green subleathery, margins yellowish scarious, with pale brown dots all round, with a midvein; hypoglossal setae 7; one-and-a-half times longer than nutlets, barbed; stigmas 3. Nutlets broadly obovate, biconvex, not constricted at the tip, ca. 2.4 mm long, 1.8 mm afterward, brown at maturity, smooth, slightly yellowish-greenish, with four- to six-cornered surface cells; stylopodium narrowing and flattening acutely from the broad base to become Triangular, not spongy, base with collar-like ring, ring as wide as nutlet texture, about 1/2 as wide as nutlet.

It is cultivated all over the country. Korea, Japan, Vietnam, India also see distribution.

The bulb is rich in starch, for raw food, cooked food or extract starch, sweet taste; also for medicinal use, appetizing and detoxification, elimination of food, stomach and intestines.

References

Chinese Flora: