The gorgon’s leaves are great round disks on the water, with spines on the backs of the leaves and on the stalks—not to be touched. The flowers are purple, hiding between the leaf disk and the spines; the most valuable part is its seed, known as “chicken-head rice.”

A Thorny Disk on the Water

The gorgon’s leaves are great round disks on the water, growing more than a meter across, wrinkled on the surface, with spines on the leaf backs and stalks—not to be touched. The flowers are purple, hiding between the leaf disk and the spines, opening without a sound.

The whole plant is like a thorny plan for the harvest: the leaves guard the water, while the fruit grows underneath. By autumn the fruit swells into the shape of a chicken head, which is why its seeds are called chicken-head rice.

— Botany Notes, self-inscription —

A thorny disk on the water hides jade grains,

peeled snow-white and named the chicken head.

The Craft of Shelling Chicken-Head Rice

In Jiangnan, people eat chicken-head rice after autumn and insist on shelling and boiling it fresh: the outer shell is hard and slippery; inside is a snow-white grain. Simmer it clean with a touch of sugar, and it chews soft, sticky, and faintly springy—the most particular of the “eight water delicacies.”

Shelling it is delicate work; in old times women would sit in a ring opening the grains one by one, and an evening yielded little. The price is not in rarity but in the labor of hands—when a bowl of chicken-head rice syrup is served, what you taste first is time.

A Figure in Medicine

It has entered medicine since antiquity: the materia medica says it tonifies the kidney and secures essence, strengthens the spleen and stops diarrhea, ranking with lotus seeds among the common grain medicines. Medicine and food are one in its case: on the table it is a dessert, in the formula it is a drug.

There is measure to its use too: it is astringent by nature, and should not be used much when damp-heat is heavy or stagnation is not yet cleared. The pharmacy speaks of combinations; the home speaks of the season—both must be read by the person.

• How to know it: Annual large floating-leaved herb; leaves large as disks, prickly on both sides; flowers purple; seeds globose and black, known as chicken-head rice.
• Season: Flowers July to August; seeds gathered August to October; freshly shelled chicken-head rice of late autumn is the finest.
• Caution: Guard against the thorns on leaf stalks and fruit capsules when harvesting and shelling; for medicinal use follow a physician’s guidance.

The Rules of the Pond

The gorgon likes warmth and rich water, and is mostly cultivated in ponds and lakes, often sharing the pond with fish and shrimp; harvesting means poling a boat into the water in thick clothes and gloves, dodging that layer of spines. The leaves serve as feed, and the pond water runs clearer for them.

Growers keep seeds with care: they select plants with large fruits and fewer spines to keep for seed, and plant them again the next year. Water crops look as if they grow with the flow, but every season is sifted by hand.

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Keywords: gorgon fruit · chicken-head rice · eight water delicacies · pond