Usually eat lotus root cut will have a lot of silk adhesion, that idiom said lotus root broken silk is really like this? Let's have a look
"Lotus root broken and thread connected" is almost a well-known idiom, which means that although the relationship is broken on the surface, there are still countless ties of concern. This idiom comes from a well-known natural phenomenon, that is, after the fresh lotus root is broken, although the main body has been completely separated, there are still many filaments connected together at the broken place. Why are these filaments so malleable?
If we put the filament under the microscope, we can discover the mystery. It turns out that every lotus root silk that we can see with our naked eyes is not cylindrical, but flat and flat. It is composed of 3-8 thinner filaments. Interestingly, each thinner wire is coiled like a spring, with great flexibility. If we can make our hands small enough, as long as we hold the two ends of the filaments, we can stretch them hard, and we can shorten them when we let them go.
So, what is the structure of tenacious filaments? Botanists tell us that it is a transport system called a catheter, which is specially used to transport water and inorganic salts dissolved in water. Sometimes, the inner wall of the vessel in some parts of the plant will be particularly thickened, showing various textures, such as circular trapezoid, and some are net shaped.
However, the vessel wall of lotus root is very special. The thickened part is continuously spiral, which is the spiral vessel in botanical terminology. Once the lotus root is broken, the thickened spiral part of the inner wall of the vessel will break away and form a spiral filament with a diameter of only a few microns. Under the action of external force, these filaments will become elongated 'micro springs', which will not be broken within a certain elastic limit, and the limit length can reach about 10 cm. In fact, not only is there silk in lotus root, but also there are filaments in other parts of lotus, such as leaves, petioles, pedicels, petals, and lotus pods broken, but some of them are extremely small and cannot be compared with lotus root silk.
The phenomenon of broken lotus roots can not help but remind people of a valuable medicinal plant Eucommia ulmoides. Many people have tried to break the bark and even the leaves of Eucommia ulmoides Oliv., and there will be countless strong white silk, showing the state of "skin broken silk" or "leaf broken silk connected". Although it has similar forms with lotus root, the internal reasons are completely different.
The filaments of Eucommia ulmoides are not vessel tissue, but milk inside. The bark of Eucommia ulmoides has a lot of laticifer, which can secrete white cell fluid. Because this cell liquid contains more rubber components, it is called Eucommia gum. After the bark of Eucommia ulmoides was broken, the rubber wire was connected between the two sections. We know that the rubber wire is full of toughness, which is a bit like the rubber band we usually use. So even if the bark is broken, the rubber wire inside will have to be pulled hard to break.