This Is What Vegetables Looked Like Before Humans Intervened

Vegetables. They're good for you, filled with antioxidants, fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Some grow underground, including root vegetables like potatoes, yams, carrots, turnips and beetroot as well as bulbs like onion and garlic. Green vegetables include leaf vegetables like spinach and cabbage as well as certain legumes like peas and string beans. Many vegetables have seeds inside, and the best-known of these include pumpkin, squash, eggplant and the many kinds of pepper like the green pepper, chilli pepper and the bell pepper or capsicum. Salad vegetables such as lettuce and cucumber are eaten raw while other vegetables, including cauliflower, mushrooms and stem vegetables like asparagus and celery, can be eaten either raw or cooked.
 
But they don't look and/or taste like they used to. In some cases, that's probably good.

This week, what some vegetables looked like before humans intervened.

TTFN, Fred.

Quote of the week: "Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed." - Alexander Pope (English poet and satirist, 1688 - 1744)

   This is What Vegetables Looked Like Before Humans Intervened by fredwine on Scribd

Inside the quest to save the banana from extinction – Part 2: Science!

In the 15th and 16th centuries, Portuguese colonists started banana plantations in the Atlantic Islands, Brazil, and western Africa. North Americans began consuming bananas on a small scale at very high prices shortly after the Civil War, though it was only in the 1880s that the food became more widespread.  As late as the Victorian Era, bananas were not widely known in Europe, although they were available.

And then, the Sixth Duke of Devonshire, William Cavendish, had a banana. And it was good.

This week, the rest of the story on the quest to save the banana from extinction and how Science! could be the answer.

TTFN, Fred.

Quote of the week: "Either I've been missing something or nothing has been going on." - Karen Elizabeth Gordon (American author, 1947 - )

   Inside the Quest to Save the Banana From Extinction 2 by fredwine on Scribd

Inside the quest to save the banana from extinction – Part 1: History

A banana is an edible fruit, and no surprise to anyone who reads this blog, botanically a berry. While the plant it referred to as a "tree," it is actually the largest herbaceous flowering plant on the planet. Recent archaeological and palaeoenvironmental evidence in Papua New Guinea suggests that banana cultivation there goes back to at least 5000 BCE, and possibly to 8000 BCE.

And now they are threatened by extinction by disease. How and why, you ask?

This week, we go inside the quest to save the banana from extinction, and start where we should, with some history.

TTFN, Fred.

Quote of the week: "The summit of happiness is reached when a person is ready to be what he is." - Desiderius Erasmus (Dutch author, philosopher and scholar, 1466 - 1536) 

   Inside the Quest to Save the Banana From Extinction 1 by fredwine on Scribd