A Wandering Botanist

Turmeric ( Curcuma longa , ginger family Zingiberaceae) is a Southeast Asian ginger that has been a major spice and dye since antiquity. ...

In December, my husband and I visited Hawaii, staying in Honolulu for a week. Today (May 2020) there's a two week in-your-hotel-room qua...

Spring is the blooming time of many plants of the mustard family, Brassicaceae, from shepherd's purse to black mustard to clasping peppe...

In February I visited south Florida. Lots of it looks like this: Which is very different from the look of the native vegetation:

In ecology classes, some student always complained about the difficulty of learning the scientific names of plants, and I long ago came up w...

Cinnamon is a spice that has been valued for millennia. It is made from the inner bark of trees in the genus Cinnamomum (sound it out, it is...

Last month, researching cucumbers ( Cucumis sativa ), I discovered that recent studies show that they were unknown in Europe before the 1...