Back with another episode unveiling the mysteries of where out common food comes from let's
get into this.
Blackberries have been adapted to grow in all corners of the globe with examples like
the himalayan blackberry.
Since it grows everywhere it’s hard to identify where it came from but we can narrow it down
to North or South America, Europe or Asia which is still a very broad area.
The Greek and Romans used blackberries medicinally, Native American consumed them as food, used
as medicine and to dye animals skins.
With more than 2000 species of blackberries such as the thornless which is great for backyard
growers, the majority of development was done is more modern times in America.
Wild blackberries haven’t changed in size all that much but their taste has been improved
along with the creation of other hybrids.
A relative to the blackberry, the loganberry was created by Judge Logan and introduced
in 1880.
The thornless blackberry was developed in 1921 but lacked flavour, further cultivation
in the form of the Triple Crown berry has brought it’s taste back but kept the thorns
off.
Other creations like the boysenberry we see here is a mixture of a blackberry, loganberry
and a raspberry.
I should note these do taste notably different from a blackberry if you’ve never had one.
My personal favorite blackberry hybrid is the tayberry which is a mix of the blackberry
and raspberry.
These are twice as long as a blackberry and have a truly unique taste.
Documented in 1696 as being used to make wine and other liquors the blackberry has been
a pie filling since the pioneer days.
This berry was thought to ward off bad energy and protect people against spells you know
before science was a thing.
The brambles thick with massive thorns were planted around European villages to offer
protection against dangerous wildlife or ones looking to eat their crops like deer.
Today we have new unreal blackberry varieties like the Tupi Floricane Brazillian Giant Blackberry
which can be as big as an oblong baseball.
Originating from the wild mustard plant, or scientifically Brassica oleracea comes not
just 1 of our common foods today but six.
Early forms of this vegetable were grown in close proximity of several compatible undomesticated
relatives.
The domestication process of these vegetables hasn’t been fully clarified, the initial
location is still up for debate and it’s progenitor or founding species.
The Brassica oleracea our best guess where all these vegetables came from is only found
on West European Atlantics cliffs in Britain, France, northern Spain and the German Islands
of Helgoland and --. It is hypothesized that the first domesticated forms were done so
on European Atlantic cliffs and brought to the Mediterranean.
In it’s uncultivated form the wild mustard or more commonly called wild cabbage is a
hardy plant with high tolerance for salt and lime that doesn’t compete well with others.
For this reason they were pushed to grow near limestone cliffs where other plants don’t
want to grow such as the chalk cliffs on both sides of the English Channel and the windswept
coast of the Isle of Wight This tall biennial plant or one that flowers
every 2 years, forms a rosette of large leaves in year one.
These thick, fleshy leaves are much more robust than other brassica species out there which
is an adaptation that allows it to store more water and nutrients in the harsh environments
they grow.
In year two they use those stored nutrients to produce a flower spike 3 - 7 feet or 1
to 2 meters tall with many yellow flowers.
They are rich in vitamin C and linked to reducing many types of cancers.
From the leaves of the brassica oleracea came kale, collard greens and chinese broccoli
or gai lan.
Not much is known about this process, showing up in Greek and Roman texts we believe these
brassica family vegetables had been domesticated long before then but there is no concrete
evidence of that.
Theophrastus the successor to Aristotle mentioned three kinds of rphaphanos or brassicas, curly
leaved, smooth leaves and wild type.
He expressed his utmost disdain of cabbage and the grape vine which is in reference to
the idea that cabbage was grown near grape vines and impart the taste of the grapes with
cabbage.
Domestication increased the size of the leaves likely creating kale and collard greens first
which are thought to be the source of the other varieties created being gai lan, cabbage,
kohlrabi, cauliflower, broccoli and brussels sprouts.
After the creation of these vegetables different varieties of kale have been created like dinosaur
kale, red russian and my favorite thousand head kale.
Collard greens haven’t strayed far from their progenitor but others have been created
like southern favorites like Morris Heading collards and Georgia Southern with the frilly
leaves.
Gai lan varieties aren’t all the different, they vary in size and stalk length.
Recognized as a domestic vegetable since the 12th century, cabbage comes from the terminal
bud.
Farmers of ancient times retained large leaves of their newly developed kale and dedicated
their energy on reducing the internode length and increasing the terminal bud’s size.
Arising from the shoot are a cluster of immature leaves which formed the cabbage.
A cabbage is essentially an extremely large terminal bud wrapped with tightly packed large
leaves on a short, stout stem.
White cabbage, red cabbage and savoy cabbage are the three distinct varieties recognized.
Savoy cabbage you’ll notice has outer leaves that are dimpled much like lacinato or dinosaur
kale, coincidence I think not.
The basal stem of the plant was bred to be enlarged forming the kohlrabi since the 15th
century as far as we know.
Meristem tissue located on the sides of the stem is what allows the stem to grow outwards
making the creation of the kohlrabi possible.
The stem was cultivated over the years to enlarge the base of the plant which at first
would have been kale transformed to have a bulb which we call kohlrabi.
Within this bulb is parenchyma cells that store nutrients and chemicals synthesized
by the plant but also offer structural support.
New parenchyma cells originate from the meristem tissue mentioned earlier which allowed for
rapid expansion of the bulb outwards yet maintaining structural integrity.
Over the years these plants have developed huge bulbs like you can see here in my past
few years of gardens.
What’s interesting about kohlrabi too is if when young a bite is taken out of it by
a worm or bug the kohlrabi will continue to develop around that bite and seal off the
so called wound.
They will still get to full size just look completely mutant like this specimen I grew
2 years ago.
There have been other varieties developed beside the typical purple kohlrabi, like this
giant white kohlrabi I grew this year and a few other varieties of white and purple
ones that don’t look all that different.
Back in the 16th century according to the earliest written records broccoli was growing
in Italy.
We don’t know if cauliflower and broccoli were domesticated independently, there are
indications that the early work shows wider genetic basis for cauliflower which would
imply to us that broccoli was selected from cauliflower.
A demonstration by Tonguc and Griffiths in 2004 showed that cauliflower was lower in
diversity suggesting broccoli was domesticated first.
Cauliflower was likely developed from one of the italian varieties of broccoli as they
are both exceptionally large inflorescences or flower clusters a top a thick stem.
This means if you leave a broccoli or cauliflower head past it’s ripe state those flowers
will open and turn into a bouquet..an ugly bouquet of flowers.
This sometimes happens when broccoli is left too long in the fridge.
To get these vegetables so dense with flowers, cultivars bred a highly dense inflorescence
cluster or meristem.
Prolific or almost mutant level amount of inflorescence meristems were developed and
packed in so tight that it started to form a head.
Now cauliflower heads are white because they are devoid of chlorophyll, clever farmers
would wrap the cauliflower leaves around the heads so when they grow, they wouldn’t receive
any sunlight.
This in turn doesn’t allow chlorophyll to develop keeping the head white.
The reason for this is the chlorophyll will add a bitter taste to them, which is what
happens if you expose a cauliflower while growing, it’ll develop a green head but
also be bitter.
This technique is also used when growing white asparagus most notably in europe.
Other varieties like romanesco, purple and orange cauliflower have been developed as
well as early purple sprouting broccoli which we can see all the flowers easily and Rapini
Broccoli.
Rapini broccoli or broccoli rabe is an italian broccoli with a small head of broccoli which
was most likely a middle stage of domestication of broccoli from a few flower buds of the
Brassica oleracea origin plant to the full broccoli heads we have today.
Brussels sprouts, a weird vegetable one not like any other are enlarged axillary buds
off the main stem of the plant.
They are like tightly wrapped tiny cabbages, if you leave them to continue growing past
their ripe ready for harvest state, they would develop into short, thick branches.
In fact you can see this if you cut a brussel sprout in half, the short stem inside that
is very much like you’d see in a cabbage core.
Between this stem and the tightly packed leaves are miniature axillary buds.
We don’t know a lot about the domestication about this veggie either but we believe it
was developed in the 13th century in Belgium.
The lime, lemon’s green friend we all enjoy the juice of on Mexican food.. dates back
to.. well we don’t know exactly.
The precise origin is unknown, we do know have come from Southeast Asia and Indonesia.
The lime comes from the wild lime or scientifically, citrus hystrix, or commonly called kaffir
lime which was transported to the Mediterranean region and North Africa by Arabian traders
around 1000 CE.
In the 12th and 13th centuries Crusaders returning home brought back the kaffir lime to the western
Mediterranean which ended up going with Christopher Columbus to the west.
Columbus likely took the seeds which became widely distributed in the West Indies, Mexico
and Florida.
Spanish missionaries tried to grow lime trees in California but they didn’t survive.
Citrus like the wild lime was an important fruit back in those times to prevent scurvy
during the 19th century.
British sailors were issued a daily allowance of citrus, like wild lime or citron as we
covered in the previous episode.
Believe it or not because scurvy was a widespread problem of the time, citrus was a military
secret as it allowed ships and sailors to stay out at sea for extended periods of time
thanks to the fruit.
British sailors were given the nickname “Limey” because of their use of limes.
After limes made their way to North America, miners and explorers demanded them to prevent
scurvy so they were imported from Tahiti and Mexico during the mid 19th century when stock
was low.
This small thorny evergreen shrub or tree produces these lumpy round citrus fruit that
are cultivated in Central America, Africa and the Hawaiian Islands today.
Not only are the limes edible but so are the leaves.
Kaffir lime leaves are much more popular than the fruit itself, the leaves taste like lime
which are added teas and are finely cut up and added to salads, cooked dishes, soups
and curries.
The kaffir lime itself has a lemon scent to it with a very strong sour lime taste that
is bitter and soap like.
The rough outer skin is ground up and added to Thai dishes or used as a substitute for
lemon zest.
Since the development of the common lime or the key lime, there have been multiple other
limes developed like the Mexican lime, finger lime, and Persian lime.
Before you go, see if you can answer this riddle of a food covered in a previous episode:
“Remove the outside, cook the inside, eat the outside, throw away the inside.”
If you want to support my channel my patreon is linked in the description, now why check
out another video like my episode on carnivorous plants, and until the next one have a good
one.