Popcorn! (Zea mays everta)

Contrary to folklore, the Native Americans of the East Coast did not share popcorn with the Puritans at “the first Thanksgiving” (they didn’t even know of its existence at the time) - but it’s still an ancient snack, much more so than any Mayflower or starving Europeans at Plymouth Rock!

Maize (Zea mays) is a domesticated species of the wild teosinte (Zea spp.) plant, native to Mesoamerica and parts of South America, cultivated at least 8000 years ago. Selective breeding resulted in denser kernel formation and much larger cobs, but from the beginning, the way that the kernels are formed (hard outer shell and moist inner kernel) meant that they could (and from archeological evidence, probably were) be popped! The specific “popcorn” species that we know today is specially bred for its very hard shell and optimally moist kernel is so specialized that it is its own subspecies - Zea mays everta.

While the East Coast natives may not have known of this crop, it was widespread in Mexico and Peru by the time the first Europeans arrived. When Cortes encroached upon the Aztec in 1519, his soldiers and priests wrote of popped corn being an important food, and depictions of the god of rain and fertility, Tlaloc, were adorned with popcorn. It’s unknown if there was a true religious significance to popcorn, but it was a significant food crop in the area.

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For European and European-American society, popcorn didn’t become a significant food until around the 1820s, and wasn’t popular until the 1890s. The heyday of “medicine shows”, expositions, and the advent of the motion picture, as well as the invention of the automatic popping machine led to ever-increasing popularity between 1885 and the Great Depression.

During the Depression, however, is when popcorn got one of its biggest boosts - at just 5 or 10 cents a bag (cheaper than candy or a meal), a movie and popcorn was one of the most popular forms of entertainment for all but the poorest Americans.

During the late 1930s, there was a slight decrease in consumption, but with the advent of rationing for WWII (sugar was sent overseas to soldiers so candy was scarce), popcorn consumption nearly tripled, and in some states quadrupled!

When the home television came out in the 1950s, movie attendance declined dramatically, and consumption dipped to its lowest levels since the early 1890s, but when home microwaves became commonplace in the 1980s and “premium cable” became more widespread by the early 1990s, home popping of popcorn became as popular as movie popcorn, and today we consume more popcorn than ever. Per capita, we’re not at the same levels as WWII, but overall consumption is continuing to rise throughout the world.

Read more:

PBS: History of Popcorn

USDA - Popcorn: Ingrained in American History

Cretors Popcorn Makers - History

Images: Library of Congress Digital Archives

Catalog of Products. Cretors & Co, 1925.

Cyanotypes by Anna Atkins

You may have noticed today’s Google Doodle being someone rarely recognized outside of photography history classes: Anna Atkins, one of the first (if not the first) female photographers, and the first person to create a compilation book of photographs. Today is the 216th anniversary of her birth.

Atkins used a method of photography called cyanotype, which captures a silhouette on a piece of paper exposed to sunlight.  The silhouette can be a traditional photography negative, a set of notes or blueprints, or it can be used directly, as Atkins did, by placing an object on the treated paper and exposing it.

Images:

Anna Atkins on Wikimedia Commons

Poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima)

The “Christmas Star" or poinsettia was named after Joel Roberts Poinsett, the US Minister to Mexico who first introduced the Central American native to the United States.

The red “petals” are not flowers, but bracts - that is, they’re simply leaves, but of a different color. Poinsettias are also not poisonous. While many of their close relatives (such as spurges) have poisonous leaves, a child would have to eat close to 500 bracts to be affected by poinsettias - and by that point you have a completely different problem altogether!

The “poisonous poinsettia” myth comes from a mis-attributed poisoning of a two-year-old in 1919, and even though we’ve known that the “poison” of a poinsettia isn’t anywhere near as dangerous as its relatives since the 1930s, the myth has persisted.

For most of the year, poinsettias are plain green. Their red bracts do not appear until they receive at least 12 hours of darkness a night, combined with very bright daylight “sun” (these days, greenhouse lamps), for more than five consecutive days. The brightly colored bracts guide pollinators towards their small, unassuming flowers - the little yellow buds in the center of the bracts.

Fleurs, fruits et feuillages choisis de l’ille de Java. Berthe Hoola van Nooten, 1880.

Carolus Linnaeus in Laponian costume

Carolus (also translated as "Carl") Linnaeus' favorite plant was the Twinflower (Linnaea borealis). It was not named after him by himself, but by his teacher, Grovonius.

When Linnaeus was elevated to nobility, he adopted the twinflower as his personal symbol.

Painting by Hendrik Hollander, 1853. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Twinflower - Linnaea borealis

The twinflower is a relative of honeysuckle. It grows in ancient forests and subarctic regions. and is a rare example of a self-incompatable clonal organism.

It blooms for only a short time each year, and creeps along the forest floor, making it easy to miss when not in bloom. Plantarium indigenarum et exoticarum icones ad vivum coloratae. Jargh. 3. 1788.

Banana Fruit and Plant - Musa acuminata

Did you know that bananas don't grow on trees? Rather, their tall, tree-like stalks are actually giant pseudostems ("false stem"), more similar to herbs than fruit trees. Wild bananas are starchy and seed-filled, and cultivars that maintain that starchiness are often referred to as plantains.

Botanically, bananas are "leathery berries", with a thick outer skin, and numerous strings between the flesh and the skin, formed from the phoelem. They're native to South-East Asia and have been cultivated since at least 5000 years ago (possibly as long as 10,000 years ago), making them one of the earliest domesticated plants.

Bananas found in the supermarket today are a world away from their wild cousins, and even from the bananas of the 1950s. Originally developed in the 1800s, the Gros Michel was, for many decades, the only banana cultivar sold commercially in the United States. After WWII and into the 1950s, however, a blight called Panama disease overtook all of the large banana plantations, bankrupting fruit companies reliant solely on bananas.

After the Gros Michel was deemed commercially unviable, the Cavendish and Grand Nain ("Chiquita") cultivars, which are resistant to Panama disease, became the bananas distributed within the US. However, there are several other banana blights that, if not contained or defended against, could easily wipe out the entire supply of cheap bananas. It doesn't help that since the seeds of modern commercial bananas are so reduced as to be useless (they're those little black dots in the banana), all commercial bananas are clones of just a few original plants.

Flore médicale. F. P. Chaumeton, 1833.

Some names are better than others...

The Broom rapes are members of the Orobanche genus, which is Greek for "Strangling bitter vetch", which may or may not be better than the common name. The common name derives from the fact that the plant was originally described as a destructive parasite upon Broom plants (Cytisus spp.) in Southern England.

Broom rape is a holoparasitic angiosperm (flowering plants that are wholly - "holo" - parasitic upon their host) which has no chlorophyll, and no ability to make its own nutrients. Its leaves are often no more than minute scales, as they serve no purpose in a non-phtosynthesizing plant.

Since these species do not have chlorophyll, they usually have brownish or straw-colored stalks, with brown, yellow, or purple flowers. The way that these plants get their nutrients is by directly tapping into the roots of their hosts by way of haustoria - a "root" tip that can dig into a host plant and siphon off the products of photosynthesis that the host tries to send down into its root system.

There are Orobanche species that parasitize almost every non-woody angiosperm native to Europe and the Near East, but they are currently found throughout the world. One of the most threatening species is Orobanche ramosa, branched broomrape, which parasitizes the Solinaceae family (including tomatoes, tobacco, potatoes, and eggplants) throughout Southwestern Europe.

Broom rape! Not a nice name for not a nice genus.

Images:

Flora Batava Vol. 12. Jan Kops, 1865.

Wild Greater Broomrape and Lesser Broomrape by Donkey Shot

Netted Iris - Iris reticulata

Though most irises flower through the late spring to mid-Autumn, the netted iris (more commonly known as Iris reticulata) is an early spring bloomer. It is smaller than most irises, reaching less than 6 inches (15 cm) at the tip of its leaves, but it is very hardy, assuming it's not inundated with water during the summer.

These flowers are native to the Caucasus Mountains and Russia, and in addition to blooming earlier than other irises, are also native to a much wider range of elevations than other crocuses. On the mountainsides, above the range of the crocus or daffodil, Iris reticulata is often the first sign of spring.

Curtis's Botanical Magazine Vol XXII, Third Series. Joseph Dalton Hooker, 1866.

Hasselet's Dendrobium - Dendrobium hasseletii

This orchid lives high in the hills and mossy, montane forests of the Malaysian peninsula, as well as in Sumatra and Java. It has sparse, thin leaves, on a sturdy bamboo-like stalk. The flowers bloom from leafless parts of the stalk, in late summer and early fall. Despite its elegance, this orchid is one of the more difficult keepers, and as such is not widespread in the gardening and botanical circles.

Collection d'orchidées: aquarelles originales. Unknown German author/artist, late 1800s.

"Star of India" Clematis

The clematis flowers are members of the Ranunculaceae family, which also includes the buttercups and the Acontium (wolfsbane or monk's bane) genus. There are hundreds of species, and over a thousand cultivars of Clematus spp.

Found in European gardens (by way of the Japanese) by the 18th century, and in the United States since the mid-19th century, clematis flowers are hardy and perennial, but solely ornamental. Despite having a "pepper-like" taste, the seeds, sap, and everything else from the plant, is highly toxic, causing intense abdominal pain and intestinal bleeding when consumed.

The Floral World and Garden Guide. Edited by Shirley Hibbard, Esq., 1871.

When is a pepper not a pepper?

Have you ever wondered what the relation between the ground black peppercorns in a pepper shaker is to the chili peppers and bell peppers on the plate? Turns out, they're pretty much unrelated, aside from both being plants and from planet Earth.

Black (and white or green, for that matter) peppercorns (Piper nigrum) are a member of the Piper genus, and are native to South and South-East Asia. Peppercorns were one of the many luxury spices that came across the Eurasian continent on caravans, at least as far back as the Greek empire.

Like the other spices, they were relegated solely to the rich, and were used for medicinal purposes as well as in cooking. Black and long pepper (Piper longum) were used in treatments for diarrhea, cholera, constipation, hoarseness, gangrene, hernia, heart disease, insomnia, joint pain, sunburn, and tooth abscesses.

The active piquant compound in black pepper is called piperine, and while it is structurally and evolutionarily unique from the piquant compound in chili peppers (capsaicin), it interacts with the tastebuds in a way that triggers the same chemical pathways to the brain.

This similarity, in fact, is why chilies (Capsicum) are known as "chili peppers" - when Christopher Columbus brought the first chilies back to Europe in 1493, the warming, spicy taste that chilies imparted led to them being classified in the same group as black pepper. We now know that the "peppers" found in the New World belong to the family Solanaceae, and are related to deadly nightshade, potatoes, tomatoes, and tobacco, among many other economically and pharmacologically important plants. Black pepper, meanwhile, is distantly related to magnolias, but otherwise in a group of relative-unknowns.

The sweet peppers or bell peppers are a close relative to the chili peppers, but are unique in the Capsicum genus in that they do not produce capsaicin, and as such are not "hot" like the others. By the way, what's the difference between red and green bell peppers? Nothing but age! They're the same species - a cultivar of Capsicum annum, which happens to be naturally somewhat hot. You won't find a bell pepper in the wild, as they were developed by humans!

Images: Top: Spices, Their Nature and Growth. McCormick and Co., 1915. Depicting Capsicum, chilies, and peppercorn varieties. Bottom Left: Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen in naturgetreuen Abbildungen mit kurz erläuterndem. 1885. Capsicum annum. Bottom Right: Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen in naturgetreuen Abbildungen mit kurz erläuterndem. 1885. Piper nigrum.

Ways to Die: Poisonous Plants

Humans have been out to get each other since before we were even Homo sapiens sapiens. For the strong and the brash, there was always outright physical violence; a club to the head or a knife to the throat was a simple way to destroy an unsuspecting rival.

But humanity had more than just violence at its disposal. Those inclined to plan and use their brains over their brawn found that there was an easier way to kill, one that would not risk their own body in an attack, or let others know who killed their rival, or even if the rival was killed by another person in the first place.

Enter: POISONS. Historically largely derived from plants, humans have murdered each other, and at times themselves, using various species of plants. There is an expansive list of plants that can potentially kill a human, but a few have gained reputations over the millenia as premier agents of death...

Sources:

Wicked Plants by Amy Stewart

A Modern Herbal. Mrs. M. Grieve, 1931.

Plants and Civilization. Maintained by Prof. Arthur C. Gibson, from 1985 textbook.

Five Important Plants in Pharmaceuticals (in no particular order):

1. Papaver somniferum, the Opium Poppy: Gives us opiates such as morphine, thebaine, codeine, and heroin. All opiates are powerful analgesics and most derivatives of the poppy also have a strong sedative effect. The smooth muscle in the body is also relaxed by these substances.

2. Digitalis purpurea, Purple Foxglove: Gives us digoxin, one of the most important cardiac glycocides that exist. Causes the heart to beat more slowly and effectively at the correct dosages.

3. Filipendula ulmaria, Meadowsweet: Gives us salicin, and salicylic acid. While salicylic acid in the form of white willow bark powder had been used for centuries as an analgesic, the salacin of meadowsweet caused much less gastric upset, and was mixed with acetyl chloride to create aspirin - the antipyretic, analgesic, and anti-inflammatory that is still the most common pain relief medication in the majority of the world.

4. Atropa belladonna, Deadly Nightshade: Gives us atropine, a powerful smooth-muscle antispasmodic and pupil dilator. In fact, the name itself (belladonna) comes from the fact that women used to use the plant to increase their pupil size at several points in history, as was considered attractive. Atropine was also used as an anesthetic during surgery in the Middle Ages.

5. Physostigma venenosum, the Calabar Bean: A very toxic plant with a rich history of poisonings and trial-by-fire incidents, the calabar bean also provides us with physostigmine. Physostigmine is a powerful cholinergic agent, and can be used to counteract poisonings by anticholinergics (such as deadly nightshade, mandrake, henbane, and datura plants). Conversely, those plants provide the anticholinergic agent used to treat calabar bean poisoning.

Every single one of these plants is easily fatal in the incorrect dosages, but by discovering the ethnobotanic history of plants (traditional cures), and isolating the active ingredients in plants identified, effective and relatively safe medications can be produced. Over 85% of our modern medications have been derived from plant compounds to some degree, and ethnobotanists have played a huge role in that.

Image: Atropa belladonna, Deadly Nightshade - Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz. Dr. Otto Willhelm Thome, 1885.

Lathyrus grandiflorus -The Two-Flowered Everlasting Pea

The everlasting pea is a species of the genus Lathyrus (pea plants) that's indigenous to Great Britain. It doesn't set down seed well, and is not considered healthy to eat, when it does (much like the sweet pea).

However, despite its difficulty of cultivation in a home garden, everlasting peas are still popular ornamentals, and the seedlings are available at most greenhouses and nurseries throughout Europe. The tendrils that you see at the end of each stem will climb trellises and other plants easily, so it's inadvisable to plant everlasting peas near any other herbaceous growths.

Flora Conspicua; A Selection of the Most Ornamental Flowering, Hardy, Exotic and Indigenous Trees, Shrubs, and Herbaceous Plants, For Embellishing Flower-Gardens and Pleasure-Grounds. Richard Morris, 1826.

Rafflesia arnoldii - Rafflesia or Corpse Flower (colloquially "stink plant" or "meat plant")

So, like a lot of people, I already knew the Rafflesia (specifically Rafflesia arnoldii) for its record of being the largest single flower in the world, and because it's one of the "carrion flowers" that apparently attracts seed-spreaders by its terrible stench. But this thing is way more than just big and smelly - it's managed to make me actually find it repulsive, and I'm someone who loves "gross" things!

To start, this plant is an obligate parasite, also known as a holoparasite - it has no way to create "real" roots of its own, and grows by sucking the nutrients directly from its host plant. This can be any vine from the Vitaceae family, which are abundant in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the surrounding area, where the Rafflesia live. Coincidentally, some members of the Vitaceae family are opportunistic parasites, themselves.

When a seed from the Rafflesia is deposited near or upon a suitable vine by a tree shrew or other animal (not much is known about seed dispersal yet), it doesn't grow a taproot upon germination, like most plants. No, this fun flower grows what are known as haustoria - fungus-like probing appendages, that penetrate the host plant, and dig into the thick xylem and phloem of the vine.

The tip of each haustorium narrows as it grows between cells, and widens once it's entrenched in an area. The parts of the haustoria not working on expanding and lengthening absorb the water and nutrients that are sucked up by the roots of the host vine. This creates an effective river of nutrients flowing up to the Rafflesia flower, which is the only part of the plant that we see. Have you ever noticed that Rafflesia don't have any leaves? That's because the organic compounds created by photosynthesis are sucked up through the vine, so the plant doesn't need any!

I think I would be more settled with this plant if it didn't effectively create a "zombie vine". Some botanists have reported coming across old Rafflesia flowers that had so thoroughly entrenched themselves into the host plant, that the host plant didn't even have any living tissue beyond the entrance point of the haustoria. Vines that once scaled huge trees were killed off, down to about 2-3 feet up the tree, and the haustoria of the Rafflesia had even penetrated the roots of the host. One Filipino naturalist even described it as "effectively killing [the host], but keeping [the host plant] alive enough to parasitise nutrients from ... 'piloting' the plant from the inside."

Choix de Plants Rares ou Nouvelles dans le Jardin Botanique de Buitenzorg. F.A.W. Miquel, 1864. (via Scientific Illustration, from venusmilk)

Cirsium lanceolatum [now Cirsium vulgare] - Common Thistle

The common thistle is native to most of Europe, Western Asia, and Northern Africa. It's considered an invasive weed in the United States and Australia, and a "noxious weed" in 9 of the states, meaning there are penalties for intentionally planting it, and active programs to remove what plants they can.

Since the thistle can easily grow in overgrazed fields and bare disturbed ground (such as recently-tilled fields), and is unpalatable to animals, its presence in an area is a bane to local farmers. However, thistle flowers are a favorite of honeybees, and the honey produced is of high quality, even if it's not the same level as white clover flowers. They're also a food source for butterflies, goldfinches, linnets, and greenfinches, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Field Book of American Wild Flowers. F. Schuyler Mathews, 1905.