War With Arrows
11:04pm - 14 February 2007 - 639 views -Posted in: Food, For Geeks Only
Okay. This is going to be a ridiculous post, but due to my insane obsession true love for nga ku chips, I have to make certain things clear. I was wandering the net searching for more stories on nga ku (yes, i’m that crazy) and very soon realised that there was a confusion going on. Some people call it arrowroot. Some people call it arrowhead. I used to call it arrowhead. Then I started calling it arrowroot. Now I’m in doubt myself. So what is nga ku’s real name??? Preliminary research (wahseh, sounds pro) has returned only contradicting results. Looks like there’s no easy way to find out. I’ll have to do it the hard way.
Well, to start things off, we have to start using proper, scientific names for our candidates. I’ve narrowed down the potential names to Sagittaria trifolia and Sagittaria graminea. See, I’m even colour-coding them for readibility purpose 
Let’s start off with Sagittaria trifolia. A quick search on Google with this name will most likely point you to a rather professional site with quite a large and believable database on plants - Plants for A Future. This site lists information on plants very concisely, and it clearly shows that Sagittaria trifolia’s common name is Chinese Arrowroot.
 
Says its highly edible. Sounds correct.
Sounds yummy. Like nga ku
BUT, I start to find contradicting information regarding the common name of Sagittaria trifolia. The Global Compendium of Weeds states that Sagittaria trifolia is called arrowhead instead.
The Multilingual Multiscript Plant Name Database also calls it arrowhead.
Another rather convincing info I found is from persimmon’s blog. It’s quite obvious that nga ku’s are called Arrowheads. Unless the packaging is wrong, which is something still possible.
 
Almost irrefutable proof. Almost. (Pic taken from persimmon’s blog)
Okay. What we have established here is that Sagittaria trifolia  is more likely called Arrowhead than Arrowroot. Then again, we cannot confirm that nga ku is called Arrowheads from this picture alone. So we shall move on the the other candidate in question - Sagittaria graminea. The confusing here is started by the Plants for A Future (mentioned above) site. It states that Sagittaria graminea is called Arrowhead instead.
Confusing, hor? But doesn’t sound very yummy lar.
 An easier way to find out what Sagittaria graminea really is, is by looking for its pictures. So I took the liberty to go hunting for some .
Wet Web Media says that it looks like this:
 
Natural Resource Conservation Service says it looks like this:
Not at all.
 The Burke Museum of National History and Culture:
Definitely not. No no.
Now we’re pretty sure that Sagittaria graminea looks nothing like nga ku. Can we now safely assume that nga ku is indeed called Arrowhead?
I really hope so.
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Haha, nice research leh Tze Lun. Shall give you an A. LOL. I didn’t know they are called arrowroot, arrowhead, duck potato? What the…sounds so funny one?
P/S: You’ve been tagged by me.
Comment by cookies_cream — 9:26 pm, February 15, 2007 #
Haha.. since I like it so much I have to find out its real name otherwise it’d be an embarrassment to call it wrongly all the time
Er… so what happens when I get tagged?
Comment by Tze Lun — 11:24 pm, February 15, 2007 #
i like to advise u tl… “GeT a LiFe!!” hahaha…. but anyway thanks to u now we know it’s call arrowhead.
At first i tot you were posting about my constellation tim… hahhaa….
Comment by blurblur — 12:38 pm, February 16, 2007 #
Okay, i know this has absolutely no connection with your post topic (and gee! Look at what adsense is putting up next to the comments!), but i just found a WP easter egg in the WP support forums …
Go to write, load up the visual editor, and hit alt shift V (firefox).
These programmers - weird sense of humour. =_=
Comment by Eli James — 2:43 pm, February 16, 2007 #
Nice one
Maybe it was meant to reduce the clutter on the visual editor toolbar?
Comment by Tze Lun — 11:19 pm, February 16, 2007 #
Hrmm … Did you see the other easter egg at wordpress.com? In the middle of the long TOS page, they stuck a setence saying:
Are you even reading this? If so, heres a gift.
And the gift links to a picture of a turkey and the message that it’s on the Wordpress.com crew.
>.
Comment by Eli James — 11:39 pm, February 17, 2007 #
Haha.. as they’d already expected, I didn’t read the TOS.
Smart way to hide an easter egg
Comment by Tze Lun — 5:56 pm, February 19, 2007 #
i had troubled with the arrow wars too, but thumbs up for the extensive research
nevertheless yummy ehh 
Comment by rokh — 5:05 pm, February 17, 2008 #
It was necessary, I can’t be calling my favourite snack wrongly
Definitely yummy!
Comment by Tze Lun — 7:19 am, February 18, 2008 #
You are not going to believe this, but I found your comment looking for the exact same thing–whether to call this plant arrowroot or arrowhead. I was looking for the translation of the Japanese plant omodaka ??,the Latin name for which seems to be Sagittaria trifolia. This is a motif that is frequently seen in Japanese art and in some Japanese family crests. I didn’t know that they had anything to do with the little potato/waterchestnut things that Japanese eat at New Year, called kuwai, which are shown packaged above. (And I have never had nga ku chips!) Not feeling up to doing any deeper research at this time, I am going to go with “arrowhead” for my Japanese art translation, as you suggest. Glad someone out there has done exhaustive research on this important problem!
Comment by MR — 7:52 am, March 5, 2008 #
I thought I was the odd one. But it doesn’t seem so odd anymore! Glad that you found it useful
Comment by Tze Lun — 8:04 am, March 5, 2008 #