2, water chestnut (scientific name: Eleocharisdulcis (Burm. f.) Trin.) is the Salicaceae, water chestnut plants. The creeping rhizomes are long and thin. Culms numerous, tufted, straight, slender, terete, 40-100+ cm tall, 2-3 mm in diameter, gray-green, smooth, glabrous, transverse membranous, surfaces of culms with existing nodes when dry, with numerous longitudinal stripes. Leaves absent, only 2-3 leaf sheaths at base of culm; sheaths light brown, smooth, glabrous, membranous, clasping, sheath mouths oblique, tips acute, 7-15 cm long. Spikelets terete, 2-4 cm long, ca. 3 mm in diameter, pale greenish. Nutlets obovate, compressed biconvex, 2 mm long, 1.2 mm wide, smooth, not constricted at the tip, yellow, with four to hexagonal surface cells; stylopodium compressed, narrowly triangular, not spongy, with an inconspicuous ring at the base, which is of the same texture as the nutlets, only paler in color. Flowering and fruiting period May-October.
3. It occurs in China, Japan, the Ryukyu Islands, the South Seas Islands (Luzon Island is the first place where this species was found), and India. In China it occurs in Taiwan, Jiangsu, Guangdong, and Hainan. It grows on flat land with water.
4, water chestnut is one of China's characteristic vegetables, usually underground expanded bulb for food, can be eaten raw, cooked or cooked, especially suitable for the production of canned food, known as the "water horseshoe, is one of the main ingredients of the restaurant; and can be extracted from the starch, with the lotus root and the diamond powder known as the starch three Kui, cold and slippery, sweet and cool flavor, can benefit the qi Anzhong. At the same time, the tubular leafy stems on the ground have the effect of quenching thirst and quenching fever.