Aeschynomene paludosa Roxb., Sesbania aculeata (Willd.) Pers. var. paludosa (Roxb.) Baker, Sesbania aculeata var. paludosa Baker, Sesbania cochinensis Kurz, Sesbania cochinchinensis (Lour.) DC., Sesbania paludosa (Roxb.) Prain, Sesbania paludosa (Roxb.) King, Sesbania roxburghii Merr.

Fabaceae also in Papilionaceae

Marsh Sesbania, Yellow Wisteria

The species is found in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia (Java), Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, South China and Taiwan.

It thrives in subtropical to tropical regions, occurring naturally in wet marshy lands or banks of waterways, ditches and rice fields.

The young leaves and flowers are used as a green vegetable in Thailand and Vietnam boiled in soup and curries, fried with meat or added to steamboat dishes. Seed sprouts are used as mung bean sprouts (Tanaka and Nguyen 2007; Loedsaksaesakul 2007; Wetwitayaklung et al. 2008; JIRCAS 2010). In Thailand, the young shoots are cooked and eaten with ‘nam phrik’. The flowers are eaten either raw in salad, blanched, fried with egg or fermented and are served with ‘nam phrik kapi’. As the flowers contain a carotenoid substance, they are used to impart a yellow colour to various desserts such as ‘kanom bua loi’, which are coloured balls of sticky rice flour cooked in sweetened coconut milk.