Hello, I've been searching for Yellow Nutsedge which literally grows everywhere in the world and is one of the oldest recorded cultivated plants in history as they were farmed for their "Tiger Nuts" or Chufa Nuts which are tubers that grow on the roots. Dried Tiger Nuts were found still in jars in Egyptian tombs and there were even written hieroglyphic records of Tiger Nut recipes. Tiger Nuts are also used as the main ingredient in traditional Spanish Horchata which is still made today but now more often with rice milk instead of Chufa milk (which is sad imo).
First of all, i know it grows in my region as it literally grows EVERYWHERE.
And second, I have found what I believe is Yellow Nutsedge however what Appears to be the tubers of the plant or "nuts" are very small: not nearly the size that they are in all the images I've seen online (which could be due to the fact that it was growing in clay). So I am
not 100% sure that it is in fact yellow nutsedge. It looks like this:
(image in reply)
Now i went out to find more of these plants in hopes to find bigger tubers and i came across some very similar look alikes to the plant I found earlier. It is indeed a sedge and it has very similar seed heads to the Yellow Nutsedge and in fact sources online often post images of this plant as "yellow Nutsedge". however when i dug them up, there was not a single tuber in the roots and i was very careful pulling them out with a spade and I even double checked the dirt around the hole after extraction. Here is images of what they look like(Notice they are almost identical to yellow nutsedge at first glance but the seed heads are a bit more "bushy" and more "full"):
(image in reply)
This makes me wonder if most sources identifying and classifying Yellow Nutsedge just considers all Sedge plants as "weeds" for the sake of lawn control and thus just calls all of them "yellow Nutsedge" like idiots. OR if this plant is in fact Yellow Nutsedge and I'm the idiot. If so, why am I unable to find any tubers? What am I doing wrong? Also, if the first plant i found was yellow Nutsedge, why are the tubers so few and small? Is there an ideal season to pick them when the tubers are full grown or is it just a "bad specimen" i harvested?
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