Sesbania grandiflora


Sesbania grandiflora, commonly known as vegetable hummingbird, agati in Tamil and Agase in Kannada and Avisa in Telugu or hummingbird tree, is a small tree in the genus Sesbania.

Description

It 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 tall. Leaves are long, with leaflets in 10–20 pairs or more and an odd one. Flowers are oblong, long in lax, with two to four flower racemes. The calyx is campanulate and shallowly two-lipped. Pods are slender, falcate or straight, and long, with a thick suture and approximately 30 seeds in size.

Origin and distribution

It is indigenous from South East Asia to Northern Australia, and is cultivated in many parts of India and Sri Lanka. It has many traditional uses.
It grows where there is good soil and a hot, humid climate.

Medicinal uses

The leaf extract may inhibit the formation of advanced glycation end-products. The leaf extract contains linolenic acid and aspartic acid, which were found to be the major compounds responsible for the anti-glycation potential of the leaf extract.

Culinary uses

The flowers of S. grandiflora are eaten as a vegetable in South Asia and Southeast Asia, including Laos, Thailand, Java and Lombok in Indonesia, Vietnam, Maldives, Sri Lanka, and the Ilocos Region of the Philippines.
In Khmer language, the flowers are called ផ្កាអង្គាដី ' and young leaves and flowers are used in the cuisine both cooked in curries, such as Samlor mchou angkea dei and salad sauce bok amproek or toek kroeung.
In the Thai language, the flowers are called ดอกแค ' and are used in the cuisine both cooked in curries, such as kaeng som and kaeng khae, and raw or blanched with nam phrik.
The young pods are also eaten. In Sri Lanka, agati leaves, known as Katuru murunga in Sinhala language, are sometimes added to sudhu hodhi or white curry, a widely eaten, thin coconut gravy. In India, this plant is known as agati, agastya, అవిసె, and both the leaves and the flowers have culinary uses. It is known as Bok phool in West Bengal, India, and is eaten after being fried with gram paste.