つくし (Tsukushi) – Horsetail

18th April – 卯月

Spring time in Japan, you can see the funny shaped Horsetails on the field, it is called つくし (Tsukushi) in Japanese and written as 土筆 in Kanji. 土 means soil and 筆 means brush – Japanese thought the shape looked like a brush that is why they picked this Kanji. This brush shape part is actually the stem of horsetail and contains green spores on the top. Each nodes have frill part called 袴 (Hakama) and it increases the number as they grow. The younger Tsukushi has hard top and as it grows, the top part will be opened and spread the spores in order to breed. After Tsukushi, green sharp stems come out to do photosynthesis. Generally speaking, this green stems are called スギナ (Sugina), however Tsukushi is a part of rhizome of Sugina too, so correctly, both are Sugina.

Tsukushi are seen most part of Japan, and the season in western Japan is in March, middle Japan is April and northern Japan in early May.

Tsukushi was named like this because in the old days, Tsukushi and Sugina were considered as different plants and Tsukushi always grow next to Sugina. Sugina’s baby スギナにつく子(Sugina ni tsuku ko), 子 can be pronounced as Shi = Tsukushi.

Sometimes, Sugina is called as 地獄草 (Jugokusou – Hell’s plant) as Sugina put its spems very deep under the ground, which links to Hell. Also Sugina is very hard to exterminate as the stems deep down is too strong, therefore it is called like that. If people want to get rid of them completely, they have to spray herbicide onto the land otherwise Sugina will continue growing and increase the number!

Tsukushi and Sugina grow many places and areas as a weed, but they are actually edible!

The younger ones which has harder top and narrow spaces between Hakama is tasty, therefore finding the younger ones if you want to cook!

Before adding some tastes, take all the Hakama from Tsukushi, and take scams by boiling in the hot water. Boiling too long can make the texture very soft and bad, so it is recommended to boil just a bit to get rid of the bitter tastes.

One of the common Tsukushi dish is 佃煮 (Tsukudani), you can stir fry them in the pan with little oil, rice wine, sweatner, soy sauce. Then cook it until there are no liquid. Other dish can be Tempura.

Sugina part, dry them and you can cook tempura or tea out from it.