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Herb : Arrowroot

(Botanical name: Maranta arundinacea)

Classification

Arrowroot or obedience plant is also known as Maranta Indica, Maranta ramosissima, Maranta Starch or Arrowroot, East or West Indian Arrowroot, Araruta, Bermuda Arrowroot.

History

Arrowroot is indigenous to the West Indies, where native people, the Arawaks, used the powder. It is supposed to be a native of South America also. Purple arrowroot (Canna edulis) has been grown in Queensland. The arrowroot is just one of many plants that the European settlers and explorers discovered in the New World. It was introduced into England about 1732 though it will only grow as a stove plant, with tanners' bark.

It is grown in Bengal, Tava. Philippines, Mauritius. Natal, West Africa. The plant is naturalized in Florida, but it is chiefly cultivated in the West Indies (Jamaica and St. Vincent), Australia, Southeast Asia, and South Africa

The Arawaks used the substance to draw out toxins from people wounded by poison arrows. Its name is thought to be derived from that practice. The name may come from the native Caribbean Arawak people's aru-aru (meal of meals), for which the plant is a staple. Arrowroot is also the name for the easy-to-digest starch from the rhizomes (rootstock) of West Indian arrowroot.

Plant Description

The plant is an herbaceous perennial, with a creeping rhizome with upward-curving. Fleshy, cylindrical tubers covered with large, thin scales that leave rings of scars. Many of the plants in the arrowroot group are somewhat similar in appearance.

The flowering stem reaches a height of 6 feet, and bears creamy flowers at the ends of the slender branches that terminate the long peduncles. They grow in pairs.

The numerous flat, long, pointed, ovate, glabrous leaves are from 2 to 10 inches in length, with long sheaths often enveloping the stem and attached in a sheath-like fashion up and down the upright stems in typical canna or ginger-like fashion.

Cultivation

It is propagated by tubers or suckers planted 6 inches deep and spaced 15 inches apart in furrows 30 inches apart. Arrowroot should be planted at a time when it will have 10-11 months of hot moist weather to mature. The starch is extracted from rhizomes not more than a year old.

The roots are dug when they are about a year old. They contain about 23% starch when cultivated in good condition. They are first washed, then cleaned and reduced to a pulp. The milky liquid thus obtained is the pure low-protein mucilaginous starch which is allowed to settle at the bottom as an insoluble powder. This powder, dried in the sun or in drying houses, is the "arrowroot" of commerce.

The powder is odorless when dry, but emitting a faint, peculiar odor when mixed with boiling water, and swelling on cooking into perfect jelly, very smooth in consistency.

Parts Used

The fecula or starch of the rhizome.

Main Constituents

The root contains starch 27.17 per cent, fiber, fat, albumen, sugar, gum, ash, and 62.96 per cent water.

Uses

Other species

Other Name

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