water chestnut

noun

• 1 (also Chinese water chestnut) the crisp, white-fleshed tuber of a tropical sedge, used in oriental cookery.

• 2the sedge which yields the water chestnut, which is cultivated in flooded fields in SE Asia.

  • Eleocharis tuberosa, family Cyperaceae

• 3 (also water caltrop) an aquatic plant with small white flowers, producing an edible rounded seed with two large projecting horns.

  • Trapa natans, family Trapaceae