A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

PLANT NAME: Coix lachryma-jobi L.
COMMON NAMES: Pü'ohe'ohe, kükaekölea [Hawai'i]; job's tears, pearl barley, adlay [USA]; yi yi ren (kernel), yi yi gen (root) [China]; yee yee yun, yi yi yan, san yi mai (kernal), yi yi gan (root) [Canton]; bhirkoulo, jabe [Nepal]; sanasana [Samoa]; lagrimas de san pedro [Colombia, Panama], santa maria, santa juana, capin rosario, lagrimas de job, lagrimas de cristo, capin de nossa, cuenta de la virgen [Spanish]; boukon, bonkori, ewuruwura [Nigeria]; kali bugi [Sierra Leone]; mtasubihi, mtasbihi [Swahili]; gromwell, false gromwell [Shaker]; larmes de job [Martinique]; mullu [Aymara]; kuymi [Quechua].
FAMILY: Poaceae (Grass family).
CAUTIONS AND CONTRAINDICATIONS: Not in pregnancy.
USE AS FOOD: Kernels used as food, bread and cake [Cherokee], coffee [Japan], food for convalescents [Samoa]. I buy my yi yi ren from China, rather than wild crafting them. See Preparation of Medicine above. You should be careful to clean the kernels very well before using as a grain, unless you wish to put your dentist in a higher tax bracket: there are often small stones mixed in with the kernels.
NOTES 'N QUOTES
• Wandering around China town in San Francisco or Honolulu one will often (literally) stumble across a large cardboard box sitting smack dab in the middle of the sidewalk. Sometimes these obstructions are filled with inscrutable little 1950s-style plastic bags, stuffed with extraterrestrial substances and used for God-only-knows-what nefarious purpose. It turns out that the peculiar white breakfast-cereal-like seeds in these bags are Coix lachryma-jobi (job's tears), and the little bundles of delicately wrapped grass are Juncus grass, (another of our Hawaiian herbs). The bags are used as a soup to benefit the digestion and to treat bladder infections.