Maranta arundinacea
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Maranta arundinacea , variegated-leaved variety, not the starch-producing form |
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| Maranta arundinacea | ||||||||||||
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The Maranta arundinacea belonging to the genus Maranta is a useful plant . The so-called "arrowroot meal" is obtained from it. Your German name arrowroot is also the German name for the entire botanical genus Maranta . Maranta arundinacea belongs to the arrowroot family (Marantaceae).
description
Maranta arundinacea is a perennial herbaceous plant up to 1.5 meters high. The branched stems are bald to hairy. It forms fleshy rhizomes up to 30 centimeters long.
The eilanzettlichen and sometimes variegated leaves are up to 22 centimeters long and 8 centimeters wide. They are two-lined and have leaf sheaths. The basal leaves are long-stalked, the stem leaves are often not stalked at all. The leaves are sparsely hairy and have entire margins.
The flowers appear in three stalked, usually two- to rarely triplets of long, spathaförmigen bracts (continue reading) are highlighted on long-handled and terminal inflorescences.
The stalked, small, white and threefold flowers with a double flower envelope are hermaphroditic. The calyx with three narrow eilanzettlichen leaves is up to 1.7 centimeters long. The long, bulbous corolla tube is often twisted with three lobes at the end. There are 2–3 petaloid staminodes in the outer circle. In the inner circle there are two staminodes and one (half) stamen . The under constant, unilocular ovary with an ovule is sometimes hairy. There are septal nectaries . The stylus has a snout-shaped stylus head in which the scar lies.
Solitary, rounded and columnar capsule fruits are formed. The triangular seeds have an aril .
distribution
It is a crop of tropical latitudes . The species is native to Mexico , among others , but is originally from the West Indies to tropical Central and South America and is cultivated in Australia , India, Southeast Asia and South Africa . Brazil and Thailand are also important manufacturing countries .
use
The South American Arawak people used the cornstarch from the rhizome of this plant to draw poison from wounds that had got into the wound by poisoned arrows.
The starch product obtained from this plant is sometimes sold under the name Arrow Root and is easier to digest than wheat flour or its starch. Since this starch thickens at a slightly lower temperature (approx. 65 ° C) than flour or corn starch , arrowroot is often used for delicate sauces , puddings and glazes that are not allowed to cook. The arrowroot flour should be mixed in cold liquid before adding it to hot sauces etc.
In contrast to other commercially available starch products such as B. potato starch or corn starch, which make thickened sauces cloudy to milky, arrowroot flour also preserves the original clarity of sauces and z. B. juices (making jellies). Arrowroot meal or arrowroot is absolutely odorless and tasteless. It thickens about twice as much as wheat flour.
Kudzu and the East Indian arrowroot are similar .
literature
- Alfred Byrd Graf: Tropica - Color Cyclopedia of Exotic Plants and Trees. Second Edition, Roehrs Company, New Jersey 1981, ISBN 0-911266-16-X .
- Fritz Encke: cold and warm house plants. 2nd edition, Verlag Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-8001-6191-5 .
- Koehler's medicinal plants . Volume 4, t. 29, online at biodiversitylibrary.org, accessed October 18, 2018.
- Edit. Comm .: Flora of North America. North of Mexico, Volume 22, Oxford University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-19-513729-9 , p. 317.
- Klaus Kubitzki u. a .: The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants. Vol. IV, Springer, 1998, ISBN 978-3-642-08378-5 , pp. 278-293.
Web links
- Maranta arundinacea from Useful Tropical Plants, accessed October 18, 2018.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rafaël Govaerts (Ed.): Maranta - World Checklist of Selected Plant Families of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew . Retrieved August 11, 2018.