Sesbania grandiflora

Sesbania grandiflora, commonly known as vegetable hummingbird, katurai, agati, or West Indian pea, is a small leguminous tree native to Maritime Southeast Asia and Northern Australia. It has edible flowers and leaves commonly eaten in Southeast Asia and South Asia.

Description
Sesbania grandiflora is a fast-growing tree. The leaves are regular and rounded and the flowers white, red or pink. The fruits look like flat, long, thin green beans. The tree thrives under full exposure to sunshine and is extremely frost sensitive.

It is a small soft wooded tree up to 5-25 m tall. Leaves are 15-30 cm long, with leaflets in 10–20 pairs or more and an odd one. Flowers are oblong, 1.5-10 cm long in lax, with two to four flower racemes. The calyx is campanulate and shallowly two-lipped. Pods are slender, falcate or straight, and 30-45 cm long, with a thick suture and approximately 30 seeds 8 mm in size.

Origin and distribution
It is native to Maritime Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Brunei) to Northern Australia, and is cultivated in many parts of South India and Sri Lanka. It has many traditional uses. It grows where there is good soil and a hot, humid climate.

Fodder
It is used to make highly nutritional fodder for ruminants like cattle, though it can be deadly to chickens.

Culinary
The flowers of S. grandiflora are eaten as a vegetable in Southeast Asia and South Asia, including Java and Lombok in Indonesia, the Ilocos Region of the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand.

In the Thai language, the flowers are called ดอกแค (dok khae) and are used in the cuisine both cooked in curries, such as kaeng som and kaeng khae, and raw or blanched with nam phrik.

Flower nutrition
S. grandiflora flowers are 92% water, 7% carbohydrates, 1% protein, and contain no fat. In a reference amount of 100 g, the flowers supply 27 calories, and are a rich source of vitamin C (88% of the Daily Value, DV) and folate (26% DV).