Tourists and locals flock to see once a year bloom in Ubon


Image: Thairath

UBON RATCHATHANI: - People have been flocking to a rice field in Ubon after beautiful purple flowers burst into bloom.

Pictures of the "Nilabol" flower had appeared on the Facebook page of Attaphon Phaiwan and after many shares reporters and TV crews went to the field in the Ban Na Muang area of Rai Noi sub district 300 meters from the temple of Wat Ban Tam Yae, reported Thairath.

Reporters at the scene found a continual stream of tourists and locals taking pictures in the three rai area of flowers that are also called "Eheen" in local dialect. They are thought to be related to the lotus.

A village elder Worasit Khonsap, 55, said that the plant was a kind of vegetable that was not easy to find these days and it flowers only once a year during the July to September period. He said that locals eat it with "lap" (a spicy raw meat dish).

Source: Thairath

-- 2016-07-13

Endless photos of themselves that no one will really looks at later.

I remember the last time this happened. The people trampled the entire field down to the ground.

I'm not surprised the locals eat it. Is there anything that moves, swims,grows or flies that the locals won't eat?

I guess the "lap" they are referring to in the op is laarb (or however you want to transliterate it), which, as all Isaanites will know, is Lao for 'salad' which can be of almost any organic edible substance - as often as not raw (but also cooked) fish as well as meat (frogs, snails, insects, god only knows what else ).

Delicious with good meat/fish but best to eat laarb in its post-cooked form - served wither hot, cool or cold. Some of the uncooked stuff can give you 'opisthorchiasis viverrini' (potentially carcinogenic). I should know having been infected with that parasite* early on in my life in Isaan. Have been several threads along the years about it on ThaiV.

Sorry for the digression. The field looks lovely - rather similar in impact to a woodland field of Spring-time bluebells in the UK (and no doubt elsewhere in, at least, northern Europe)

*Can be caught from either uncooked laarb or uncooked palaar (rotten fish used to flavour dishes like somtam) or inadequately cleansed water-meadow salad leaves/herbs - not pleasant.

I'm not surprised the locals eat it. Is there anything that moves, swims,grows or flies that the locals won't eat?

"...that the locals won't eat?"

Spotted dick, toad in the hole, bangers & mash, Bedfordshire clanger, Cullen skink, bubble & squeak, haggis, sauerkraut, stargazy pie, Sussex pond pudding, Stilton or Limburger, black pudding, Scottish eggs, Welsh rarebit ...

Back to the OP. Looks alot like the bluebonnets in Texas in the springtime.

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Thai Blue Bells. Looks lovely.

better the little blue flower plants,

than one of those big smelly once-in-a-number-of -years monster plants that one hears about

Isaan might love the smell though!!

My wife has planted several of these beautiful purple flowered plants in our yard and they just bloomed! woo hoo! Our entire yard is edible ----for her.

I spotted several edible Thai delicacies in the photo...some may even need to be de-flowered...