This flower that Cantonese people love to eat smells like a dead rat, yet it is absolutely superb when stir-fried with eggs.

Around the Cold Food Festival, a very beautiful flower begins to bloom. It has a great many blossoms, hanging and clinging to other plants in clusters, one string after another, especially endearing, making people stop to admire them. So you may want to ask? There are plenty of other flowers that are beautiful too! What is so special about this flower?

But the flower I am talking about is rather special. It is called Mucuna birdwoodiana, known among the folk as sparrow flower, white flower oil hemp vine, chicken blood vine and so on. It is a Class II protected plant in our country, distributed in relatively large numbers in the southwestern region, and also in some coastal areas.

In my hometown, you can often see it along roadsides, beside rivers and streams, and under road corridors, clinging to other plants, hanging strings of flowers, each string with about 15 to 35 flowers, just like strings of small bananas hanging on the vine, making you want to pick them.

Mucuna birdwoodiana grows best in a mild and humid environment. It is drought-tolerant and can withstand low temperatures (but when the surrounding temperature drops below a certain point, it will stop growing). It grows very quickly and has fairly strong vitality, so it is relatively suitable for cultivation.

Mucuna birdwoodiana needs plenty of sunlight. If you are growing it indoors, you need to place it in a bright, open spot and give it enough sun. Because of its beautiful appearance, it is also very suitable for greening decorations on the tops of trellises and road corridors, and it can be planted in many other places.

However, Mucuna birdwoodiana has 2 particularly notable traits. The first is that its smell is very strange. If you bring its flowers close and sniff them, there is a stench similar to that of a "dead rat."

The second is that it can also be used as an ingredient in cooking. Whether boiled in soup or pan-fried, it tastes very sweet and delicious, crisp and refreshing. It is especially superb when stir-fried with eggs, and it is particularly popular in Guangdong. Many of my Cantonese friends love to eat it.

Besides being edible, the flowers of Mucuna birdwoodiana can also be dried and used as medicinal material. It is a good medicine for clearing heat and reducing internal heat. Especially in the hot summer, stir-frying a dish or brewing a tea with the flowers of Mucuna birdwoodiana makes it feel as if the whole summer cools down along with it!

Dear friends, have you ever seen or eaten "Mucuna birdwoodiana"? You are welcome to leave a message and share!