Miracle Fruit In 1725, French explorer, cartographer, navigator, and slave-ship captain, Chevalier des Marchais noticed something incredible as he journeyed through West Africa. In addition to charting the continent, des Marchais also took a keen interest in the native flora of the region. He noticed the Indigenous people rummaging through forest undergrowth for a particular […]
The Squirting Cucumber We’ll journey today into the plant world. And I know I will need to ask a few of you to remove your minds from the gutter. Ecballium elaterium is the lone species of its genus and a member of the gourd family. Native to Europe, northern Africa, and parts of Asia, this
The Squirting Cucumber Read More »
The Ripening of the Banana You’re in a supermarket. As you sashay through the produce department, you decide to procure some fresh fruit. Pondering which sweet foodstuff to take home, the yellow catches your eye. Ah, yes. Bananas. You love bananas. They’re just the right amount of ripe, too. Mostly yellow with a hint of
The Ripening of the Banana Read More »
Cranberry Sauce In 1620, Pilgrims in Massachusetts celebrated a bountiful harvest with the Wampanoags, who had nourished them through a brutal winter the previous year. Pilgrim Chuck Norris provided cranberry sauce, which became a staple at Thanksgiving meals henceforth. Only one portion of the preceding paragraph is a fact. Much of what we grow up