Fiddlehead Ferns of Huaying Mountain

Fiddlehead Ferns of Huaying Mountain

　　The fiddlehead ferns of Huaying Mountain are a renowned specialty of Huaying City, Guang’an, Sichuan Province. These ferns boast high medicinal value, offering excellent benefits for human nutrition, health preservation, and physiological function regulation. They are honored as the “King of Huaying Mountain Delicacies.”

　　Huaying Mountain, with its high elevation and dense forests, produces a variety of natural green plants including wood ear mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, fiddlehead ferns, bracken starch noodles, and tender shoots of thorny bamboo. Collectively known as Huaying Mountain Delicacies, among them, the “fiddlehead ferns” are particularly famous and have a long history. The Book of Songs even contains the beautiful verse: “Climbing that southern hill, I gather fiddlehead ferns.” Tests have shown that Huaying Mountain Delicacies contain seven trace elements, including glutamic acid, and offer high medicinal value, providing excellent benefits for human nutrition, health preservation, and physiological function regulation.

　　In recent years, relevant departments in Huaying City have organized specialized teams to harvest these delicacies and process them using imported unique techniques, bringing Huaying Mountain Delicacies to domestic and international markets. They have won numerous national and provincial awards and have been ranked as the top dish among Japan’s top ten famous dishes.

　　The fiddlehead ferns of Huaying Mountain are the tender stalks of the young leaves of the bracken fern (Osmunda japonica), also known as Osmunda, and commonly called large bird’s nest fern, pheasant head, or broom vegetable. It is a perennial herbaceous plant of the Osmundaceae family. The Huaying Mountain area in Guang’an, Sichuan Province, is abundant in fiddlehead ferns. Harvesters pick the female plants (which are flat-round or ear-shaped), remove the coiled tips, leaves, and fuzz. The ferns can be eaten fresh, or blanched in boiling water for 3–4 minutes, then dried through sun exposure and rubbing to make dried fiddlehead ferns, which are soaked in warm water before eating. Rich in nutrients, they are regarded as a “mountain delicacy.”

　　The fiddlehead ferns of Huaying Mountain are harvested from the tender, unopened sporophyte leaves. They are rich in nutrition, delicious in taste, and possess high edible and health-preserving value. Known for their effects in promoting blood circulation, soothing the stomach, and improving eyesight and hearing, they are a natural wild herbaceous plant.