Duckweed (Wolffia globosa), known in Laos and Thailand as khai-nam (water eggs) and marketed in its cultivated form as mankai, is one of the smallest flowering plants on earth eaten as a vegetable — a free-floating aquatic green made up of countless minute, rootless, seed-sized spheres that gather into a bright green film across ponds and paddies. Despite the size of each grain, it is unusually rich in protein for a plant, which is why it has long been gathered as a food across the lower Mekong and is now farmed under controlled conditions as a modern plant-protein crop. Fresh, it is mild, clean and faintly grassy with a soft, slightly slippery pop; in Southeast Asian kitchens it is treated like any tender green — dropped into soups and curries, folded into egg dishes and omelettes, or made into the spicy Lao and Isan relishes and fresh salads where its neutral, vegetal taste carries chilli, lime and fish sauce.