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Nardoo
Smooth Nardoo - Marsilea
drummondii
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Nn
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Nardoo looks like a four-leaf clover but is in fact a small fern that grows in wet places. It has become famous in Australian folklore because the early explorers Burke and Wills starved to death while attempting to live on a diet of Nardoo spores. The reason the explorers tried to do something as odd as this was because they knew that the Aborigines ate the spores and survived quite well in an otherwise difficult environment. The problem
was Burke and Wills didn't know what the Aborigines did to make the spores edible.
Preparation of Nardoo began with harvesting the plants after the shallow waters in which they grew dried out. At this point the mature spore cases were scraped off narrow fronds
(fern leaves) and roasted. Afterwards the inedible spore-cases were separated from the nutritious spores by grinding and blowing way the lighter 'husks'.
Next, the ground-up spores were placed in water, where they would swell.
Finally, they were made into rolls or cakes which were again cooked.
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