FLOWERS AS FOOD.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13485, 3 June 1914, Page 3

FLOWERS AS FOOD.

The natives of many parts of "India depend for food upon the blossoms of the basia tree. They do not need even to cook tho flowers, but make a good meal of them raw. These blossoms are described a® sweet and sickly in odour and taste. They are sometimes dried in the sun, when they are kept and sold in bazaars as a regular article of diet. The trees are so highly esteem-1 ed that the threat of cutting down: their bassia trees will generally bring an unruly tribe to terms. This is perhaps not to be wondered at when it is considered that a single tree will yield two to four hundred pounds of flowers. The Parsees cook tho flowers, and also make sweetmeats of them. -When we give to the clove its well earned place among flavourings, we are making use of a smolfed flower bud. The buds grow on a small evergreen, and are plucked from the ends of the branches before they expand. Then they are dried in the sun, and smoked over a wood fire, to give them the brown colour.