Biology
June 9
Tomatoes and Tobacco: A Tale of Two Crops
The following essay was inspired by the news that salmonella-infested raw tomatoes have made many consumers of commercially grown tomatoes sick in recent days. As a tomato-loving and often times tomato-filled human, I feel compelled to point out that this is in no way the fault of the tomatoes. The salmonella comes from infected persons with salmonella on their hands, touching the tomatoes. I was reminded of a cautionary tale from the colonial days of early America.
It seems the early colonists made the mistake of eating some tomato leaves. After all, they saw these plants growing in the native people's fields. When they got sick, tomatoes quickly were labelled poisonous and were not welcomed in any colonist's field or home garden, even though the native people's continued eating the tomato fruit. The fact is, that tomato leaves are mildly toxic, although they won't kill anybody. However, the fruit has turned out to be one of the healthiest foods discovered by humankind. Although I am no expert on tomato chemistry, I gather that they are full of the antioxidant lycopene (from which their scientific name comes), and various vitamins and bioflavanoids, I believe. Basically, a tomato is like a little salad bowl full of cancer-preventing, prostate-trouble preventing, life-extending nutrients. Yet they were assiduously avoided by colonists for over a century, until that innovative radical, Thomas Jefferson began growing them on his farm. (Jefferson was the first non-native person to grow many kinds of plants in America; unfortunately, he did so with the use of slave labor, but he was born to a rich, slave-owning family.) Gradually, thanks to the efforts of Jefferson and others, as people learned how to use tomatoes, they became an accepted food among immigrants. It was not until recent years, however, that their health-giving properties began to be studied.
There was another crop which colonists noticed the native peoples using, one which the colonists quickly adopted -- tobacco. As we are all aware, this crop is not intended to be eaten, but rather smoked, although some people do put it in their mouths (chewing tobacco). Apparently, the colonists were intrigued by the idea of lighting a fire and inhaling the resulting smoke. Since it was used in "peace pipes" while negotiating treaties, apparently the natives thought it had some facilitating, peaceful socializing effect. "Why not?" thought the colonists. They probably quickly noticed that once smoked, it created a desire to repeat the process over and over again. Not only did the colonists praise tobacco's properties as a promoter of harmonious social gatherings, but the soon ascribed healthful properties to the smoke which was inhaled during the process of smoking. Tobacco smoke, its promoters exclaimed, purged the body of toxic materials. Tobacco smoke rid the body of disease causing agents. It was no wonder the native peoples had taken to this miracle product.
Of course, we now know that cigarettes are highly addictive "cancer sticks" which produce a toxic mixture of noxious, lung-clogging chemicals when burned. Yet they continue to be sold in great quantities worldwide by people who work for some of the world's most profitable, and morally bankrupt, corporations. And teens who are all-too-eager to grow up continue to flock to tobacco like flies to manure, while millions of smokers and their passive victims die annually due to the effects of smoking this manure by another name. It seems to me all too obvious, that for the sake of one's health, one should not stand around breathing in the smoke from a forest fire, which is essentially what smokers are doing. However, people will create all kinds of delusional reasons to sell a product, or to justify their use of one, especially an addictive one.
Thus, we are left with the remarkably ironic tale of tomatoes and tobacco, a tale caused by the naivete of unwitting immigrants who promoted the use of a harmful product over that of a healthy one. Of course, that was a long time ago, right? Those events happened 300-400 years ago, after all. But think about it -- a few hundred years is just a drop in the bucket compared to geologic time on this earth, or for that matter compared to what will hopefully become the span of human history. We still have something like 5.5 billion years for our progeny and other life to continue living on this earth, God willing, and if we don't destroy the planet. I wonder what, a few hundred years from now, will be our legacy of rediculous and clearly wrong beliefs, not to mention what our distant descendants, perhaps poring over earth's history from the safety of some younger planet, will think of their distant ancestors. Perhaps they will consider us to be naive, gullible, superstition-prone, greedy, morally lacking, and just plain stupid. Let us resolve not to let this be the case. Let us gather and evaluate plentiful and various evidence before jumping to conclusions, and let us proceed wisely, deliberately, cooperatively, and with a love and respect for all life.
In any case, the widespread use of tobacco, and how to stop or limit its use, is a legacy of colonial days that we all still live, and die, with.
May 20
Flowers Are Sexy
This Sunday afternoon Eunice and I went to Big Bear Lake, a lake in the local mountains (San Bernardino mountains). Since it is springtime, and since we had reasonably good precipitation this winter, we saw many native plants blooming on the way up. There is some sort of legume (bean family) plant which was covered with bright yellow flowers we kept seeing on the way up. Farther up, near Big Bear Lake, there were many plants with lavender colored flowers. They appeared to be lupines. When Eunice saw all these flowers on the way up, she lamented that she forgot to bring the camera. (We usually don't bring the camera, actually, unless we are going on a multiday vacation. But this time, Eunice apparently had wanted to bring it.) It is definitely flower time in the wilds and in people's yards, including ours. When we were at Big Bear Lake, we went to an area where a stream called Boulder Creek enters the lake. In the lake just after the creek enters it, I saw about a dozen large Rainbow trout (around 14 inches and 1 pound each) chasing each other all around the areaa in pairs.Two of them even went upstream, into shallow water, and splashed aound noisily for several minutes. Apparently, this behavior is the trout version of dating. I tried fishing for them without really having my heart in it, since they were spawning, but they would not bite, obviously too busy engaging in their pairing off process. Yeah, I love eating pink-meated tasty trout like these; in fact, catching pink-meated trout was our main objective in going to Big Bear Lake, but catching the trout during their spawning rites seemed rather rude, and the lake could really use the natural boost in population that sucessful spawning would provide. I went to another nearby spot for awhile, then returned to the inlet area. When I returned, strangely enough, there was only 1 pair of trout left there, and they were clearly in the midst of the spawning process. The lighter colored of the two repeatedly vibrated its body while turned with its side facing the bottom, displacing gravel and making a round nest on the bottom for the eggs, that was awash with oxygenating current.. I think it was the female, but I'm not sure. The other one, the apparent male which was darker but with stronger coloration and white-edged fins, followed the pale one closely, watching its every move. I had never seen trout so intimately involved in the spawning process before. I hoped they would spawn successfully and have lots of baby trout. Eventually, we went to another spot where there was no creek, and wound up catching a single beautifully-colored male Pumpkinseed Sunfish in spawning colors between the two of us. (I caught it, but it was totally by luck.) Oh well, that's better than nothing. Meanwhile, we could see the mountains to the south of the lake still had a surprisingly heavy covering of snow on them, but I am sure that will melt in the coming weeks. By the way, I became allergic while up at Big Bear -- too much pollen in the air, I guess.
All of these experiences reminded me how attuned by nature (i.e., evolution) so many species are to the seasons. Spring is breeding season. Various kinds of plants and animals are busy trying to reproduce while the conditions are good. Humans are the exception, since any season is potential spawning season for us. However, as gardeners, people often have a tendency to think of plants as "blooming for us." That is very far from the truth. I concede that maybe plants do have some kind of sentience, and perhaps they do want to please us. My own mother talks to her plants to encourage them and thinks that they do respond to her. How do we know what really goes on in the life of a plant? Granted, they lack any sort of nervous system. The salient point is, that the basic biological purpose of blooming is for the plant to reproduce. Every flower has seeds, pollen, or both. We like flowers that bloom a great deal, since flowers are pretty. Basically, we wind up rewarding plants for putting a great deal of effort into reproduction. We want our plants to be sex maniacs, sexual addicts! Plants which only make a modest effort to reproduce once in a while are not very beautiful or interesting, by and large. When I think about it, attracting animals by making the reproduction process beautiful and interesting is all part of the brillliant reproductive strategy of plants. Perhaps plants are smarter than we give them credit for.
The fruit which plants produce are a further step in this process of attracting animals and utilizing them to help the plants reproduce. Fruit are basically something the plant makes for the purpose of allowing animals to eat it, resulting in the desemination of the seeds contained therein. When I think about it, much of our diet consists of fruit, not necessarily prototypical, colorful, sweet, round fruit, but fruit nonetheless. Tomatoes, eggplant, avocado, bananas, melons of all kinds including cucumbers, peppers of all kinds including "hot peppers," squash of all kinds, are all fruit. Additionally, there are literally hundreds of other, more prototypical, types of fruit which people eat including all types of berries, the "p" fruit including, peachs, pears, plums, persimmons, pomegranites, and papayas, as well as various tropical fruits such as mangos, and of course, "apples and oranges." We can view these fruit as gifts to us, but I find that to be a typically egocentric way of thinking which unfortunately seems to dominate conventional human thought. Actually, the relationship between animal and flower, or animal and fruit, is more of a symbiotic one. We give plants the gift of life as well by pollinating and planting the seeds of flowers and the seeds of fruits.
And you probably thought this post was going to be about how men romance their beloved wives or girlfriends with gifts of flowers.