Many Yucatecan families eat it cooked or fried or stirred with pumpkin seed powder, however today it has been found a thousand applications in the cuisine of the southeast, including chaya water, which is used for detoxifying purposes.
Plant of the euphorbiaceae family. Smooth shrub, two to three meters high. It has thin twigs of a centimeter in diameter; thick bark, almost white, with some slightly stinging hairs; leaves with long petioles. Oblong, with three lobes from the middle part upwards; inflorescence with three branches; and very small, almost invisible bracts. It is a plant highly appreciated for its edible leaves, used since the time of the ancient Mayans, according to the Relationship of Things in Yucatán by Fray Diego de Landa.
Many Yucatecan families eat it cooked or fried or stirred with pumpkin seed powder, however today it has been found a thousand applications in the cuisine of the southeast, including chaya water, which is used for detoxifying purposes.
Folk medicine says that chaya is taken against constipation and diuretic ills.
It contains phosphorus, calcium, vitamins A and B and is only found in the Yucatan peninsula.
It is also known by the vernacular names dechaya mansa, chay, chaya colykeki-chay.
