While touring the garden, we saw this lady paddling around in what looked like a wooden bathtub, selling lotus seed pods to the tourists. Of course, I had to get one.
The pod is fist-sized, and you pry the seeds out the spongy, leathery pod. Once extricated, you peel off the pale green skin and eat the white seed inside, avoiding the bitter sprout in the middle. The seed is mostly flavorless and tastes sort of like a chickpea.
This is the lotus plant: leaves, flowers and pods. It's an aquatic plant that grows like wildfire if you let it. For the eagle-eyed, one of the pods is visible in the lower left corner of the photo (click to enlarge). Incidentally, the word for "showerhead" in Chinese comes from the lotus seed pod.
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