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Petasites japonicus
Also called Bog rhubarb, Fuki, Giant butterbur, Creamy Butterbur, Japanese Butterbur, Butterbur, Great Butterbur
Japanese sweet coltsfoot (Petasites japonicus) is a rhizomatous perennial in the daisy family, grown mainly for its edible flower-stalk shoots. It is a damp-loving plant that spreads by rhizomes and does best in moist, shaded ground.
Petasites japonicus, also known as butterbur, giant butterbur, great butterbur, fuki and sweet-coltsfoot, is an herbaceous perennial plant in the family Asteraceae. It is native to China, Japan, Korea and Sakhalin and introduced in Europe and North America. It was introduced to southern British Columbia in Canada by Japanese migrants.
It is dioecious, with male and female flowers produced on separate individuals. Occasionally, morphologically hermaphroditic (but functionally sterile) flowers exist.
Like other Petasites species, fuki contains pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs) which have been associated with cumulative damage to the liver and tumor formation. It also contains the carcinogenic PA petasitenine. The concentration of hepatotoxic PAs can be reduced to a concentration below detection limits with a proper extraction process. Since many alkaloids are bitter, traditional methods of preparation may have evolved to remove them.
The traditional preparation method for this vegetable involves pre-treating with ash or baking soda and soaking in water to remove harshness (astringency), which is a technique known as aku-nuki (灰汁抜き; literally "harshness removal"). The shoot can be chopped and stir fried with miso to make fuki-miso which is eaten as a relish thinly spread over hot rice at meals. The bulb-like shoots are also picked fresh and fried as tempura. In Korea, it is steamed or boiled and then pressed to remove water. Sesame oil or perilla oil is added in order to make namul.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Petasites japonicus by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
