Plant Story--Artichoke, Cynara cardunculus, Edible Thistle

You do know that the artichoke is the immature flower head of a thistle, don't you? It is a strange vegetable, with layers of leaves you tear off to eat a bit of "meat" at the base, but that doesn't make most people think of thistles. Nevertheless, the artichoke, Cynara cardunculus, sunflower family Asteraceae, is the cultivated version of a big thistle from around the Mediterranean, the wild ones called cardoons or artichoke thistles.

artichoke (Cynara cardunculus) in grocery store

Plant Story - Lettuce, Lactuca sativa

Let us talk about lettuce.

garden lettuce, Lactuca sativa, in a garden

Lettuce is easily overlooked and yet it is one of the top ten vegetables, traded, grown, or eaten. Americans ate an average of 12.7 pounds of lettuce each in 2021 and 25.8 pounds per person in 2015. It is the world's most important salad crop. 

Plant Story: Scarlet Runner Bean, So Handsome

My husband won't eat green beans. It is the one vegetable he totally rejects. But last summer I grew runner beans. Not as food, but because I think they're beautiful.

scarlet runner bean, Phaseolus coccineus

Runner beans, often called scarlet runner beans (Phaseolus coccineus), are closely related to common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris). Both are native to the Americas, but scarlet runner beans are from mountainous areas in Central America, and were domesticated about 2,000 years ago. They reached Europe in the 1500s and became both an important vegetable and an ornamental. They are much less often grown in the United States. I recommend them!

Plant Story--Little Red Radishes, Raphanus sativus

The radish is an ancient vegetable that has been mainly reduced to a garnish. 

radishes, Raphanus sativus

Calling the radish just a condiment is a little excessive, since in Asia radishes are important foods, but in my life, mostly little radishes are sliced into a salad for a little color. Yet they have been grown by Europeans for 5,000 years, and in Asia for at least 2,000. They were an important vegetable in Egypt 4,000 years ago. Greeks and Romans ate radishes, cooked and raw. The Romans spread them all over Europe But we don't seriously consider eating a dish of radishes...

The Contradictory Plant Known as Beefsteak Plant, Shiso, and Perilla Mint, Perilla frutescens

Thirty years ago in San Francisco, influenced by Asian cuisine, my husband and I frequently sprinkled powdered shiso on our food as a spice. In Nebraska, I had a period of trying to grow everything I ate--to see what its plant looked like--so we grew a few plants in the garden. I hadn't given it much thought since, until seeing it in botanical gardens and as an ornamental in Ohio.

beefsteak plant, Perilla frutescens, also called shiso

Plant Story--Ancient Asparagus, Asparagus officinalis

Asparagus is an odd vegetable. We eat just the new shoots. Not leaves, not roots, not fruit.
It is also an old vegetable, eaten in the European tradition since at least Roman times.

Plant Story--Rhubarb, A Curious Food

This post has been migrated to MotherEarthLiving's website in two parts:

https://herbs.motherearthliving.com/rhubarb-rheum-part-1/

 https://herbs.motherearthliving.com/rhubarb-rheum-part-2/    

K. Keeler 9/26/19

Plant Stories--The Rise of the Tomato

Tomatoes are everyday foods in the United States. In fact, we often count on them to complete a salad. Years ago, on a business flight, I sat next to a vegetable-broker who told me had made a tidy profit on tomatoes one year when the supplies were limited. He explained that "a salad has to have tomato." Since Americans feel a salad must have a slice of tomato, restaurants will pay whatever it costs for tomatoes. With most vegetables, when the price gets high, they substitute or do without. Knowing that, he was careful to buy tomatoes when a shortage was predicted and happily rode the bidding war that followed.

I do not think it is quite that simple today. Restaurants have created salad options that let them omit  tomatoes if they aren't affordable, but it emphasizes the stature of tomatoes in the American diet.

Thus, it seems puzzling that loving tomatoes hasn't been universal.

Orange, oranges and carrots

Do you remember the James Burke tv series Connections showing surprising relationships between unrelated things? There are plant stories like that, for example, of orange, carrots and politics.

Wild carrots, Daucus carota, known as Queen Ann's lace in the U.S. (parsley family, Apiaceae) are native all across Europe and the Middle East. Humans have used carrots medicinally for a very long time (see for example Culpeper, 1814 edition of 1633 book; Mrs. Grieve 1932).) Carrots were first domesticated in Afghanistan, producing a readily-grown carrot that was, however, stringy and bitter. These carrots, distributed out from Afghanistan were multicolored: purple, red, orange, yellow and off-white, but especially purple and whitish. People all over Eurasia grew them for medicine, but also as a food flavoring. Like bay leaves or garlic cloves, they were added for flavor but not necessarily eaten.

About 1600, plant breeders in Holland bred a truly edible carrot. Everyone agrees that all our modern carrot varieties, even the heritage carrots, are derived from the carrot variety Long created in Holland at the beginning of the 17th century.

The Long carrot was orange.

Nobody can prove that the Dutch growers had a political agenda creating an orange carrot, but, whether or not they did, soon after that the orange carrot became very political.

Plant Story - American Squashes

zucchini and yellow summer squash

Sorting out the squashes is a job for experts, which I am not. They are wonderfully confused.

“True squashes” are plants in the genus Cucurbita (Cucurbitaceae, cucumber family). About 15 species make up Cucurbita, all of them native to the Americas. 

Melons, such as cantalope genus Cucumis, watermelon, genus Citrullus (blog about watermelon) and others--all the melons--are from Asia, Africa or Europe. 

Curious Plant Story--Cabbage Walking Canes

Walking sticks from cabbage!  What you see in the video is a stick made from Brussels sprouts.  This post is about that project and the reason for it.

I’m making a short video about the fact that the vegetables cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and kale are all botanically the same, Brassica oleracea (cabbage family, Brassicaceae). The oddest fact I plan to include is that in the 18th and 19th centuries, on the islands of Jersey and Guernsey in the English channel, the cabbages grew to 20' tall and their stalks were dried, varnished and used as walking sticks. LINK

People on the Channel Islands raised cattle as well as cabbages and broke off the big lower leaves to feed their cows. In the cool, moist climate--perfect for cabbage plants--the plants grew taller and taller, while people picked off more lower leaves. Since the growing season is long and the frosts light, the cabbage plants sometimes reached twenty feet tall, with big cabbage leaves at the top. They looked from a distance like palm trees. 

The stems were pretty tough, so when the plant died, the resourceful islanders found a variety of uses for them. One was to dry, smooth, and varnish the cabbage stems and use them for canes or walking sticks.  

Time and change has mostly eliminated both the giant cabbages and the walking stick industry, but they still make a few (Note: 2/1/21: having gained attention, Jersey residents are making more walking sticks. link)

Brussels sprouts

I wanted to show a picture of the canes in the video but I wasn't sure about copyright issues on the pictures I found.