You find yourself fantasizing about large-leaved vegetables like chard. How easy they are to prepare! You just grab the leaves, chop them up, and cook away.
Imagine a Moringa as easy to prepare as chard- wouldn't that be nice? Meet Moringa ruspoliana, a poorly-studied species found mostly in the former Somalia (now Somaliland, Puntland, and Somalia proper) and southeastern Ethiopia. Moringa ruspoliana has big leaves that usually have just 5 big leaflets, sometimes 7 and sometimes 3. See the photo- the leaflets are the size of my hand. With the lowest protein content in the family according to our recent study, M. ruspoliana isn’t the nutritional resource of choice. But with a none-too-shabby 15% dry mass protein content, maybe its ease of preparation would tip the scales in its favor. Don’t look for M. ruspoliana in the supermarket yet- no one knows if M. ruspoliana leaves are edible by humans, and I am not even sure how one goes about finding this out. But it’s surely on the list of Moringa questions, and it is nice to think about while cleaning moringa leaves for the pot.