Surely I’m not the only one that thinks of their study organism in terms of fictional criminal geniuses?
Wow, sorry folks, I’ve been slacking, and that whole PhD thing is a sorry excuse! Let me tell you a little natural history about a plant called diffuse knapweed (Centaurea diffusa), the Dr. Moriarty to my Sherlock Holmes.
The basic recipe for beer goes something like this.You take starch from a cereal grain (the fruit of a domesticated species of Poaceae, or Grass family), use enzymes to convert that starch into sugar, feed the sugar to a microbe capable of fermentation (such as a yeast or bacteria), which then poops out alcohol and carbon dioxide. It’s a beautiful process. You see the barley – brewer’s yeast – hops combo all the time. But why be so predictable?
Some things about coconuts blow my mind.
Tasty Ptelea trifoliata
Hops are great, but they aren’t the only tasty thing out there. And having beer can be a matter of life and death.
Soy is everywhere. But how does it get there? And how did we figure out so many things to do with it?
Sure, tequila is delicious. But we all pay the price for it.
Agave tequiliana Weber var blue. Photo from Wikimedia Commons by Stan Shebs.
Female hop catkins: the flavor maker.
Fun plants are fun. For example, Humulus lupulus, also known as hops, is an extremely interesting plant. Continue reading
Ok, go with me here. I used to be in Asian Studies. But really, I just wanted to nerd out over ethnobotany, and I took every chance I could to do just that. Below is a critique I wrote of A Time for Tea by Piya Chatterjee, an ethnography of women and labor practices of tea plantations in India. It is an interesting if frustrating read (half of every chapter switches from ethnography to the script of a symbolic play… if you can imagine that). In my critique you can tell that I’m really a positivist scientist in wolf’s clothing. But it is a healthy exercise to look at the intersection of humans and plants from the fluid, messy, relativistic, human side of things. For a change.
A Time for Tea by Piya Chatterjee
Perhaps you have heard, wine is really important to the French. Can you imagine a France without wine? That could easily have happened 150 years ago, all because of an invasive species. 
When times are hard, and supply lines are uncertain, you do what you can to conserve and extend what you have. Especially the small comforts of life, the really important things: the morning cup of coffee. During the American Civil War, Southern soldiers and citizens alike never knew when the next shipment of coffee would make it up from the Caribbean. So they made do with what is now a regional favorite. The root of the chicory plant, now, as then, a common roadside weed, was collected, roasted, ground, and brewed along with coffee, to keep supplies lasting as long as possible. Chicory, while itself containing no 
caffeine, adds a distinctive and, in my opinion, enjoyable, mellow taste to the typical brew. This practice, of extending coffee with the addition of chicory, wasn’t new – it was done in France during the French Revolution as well. But people became so accustomed to the adulterated coffee that what was once done out of necessity, became adopted as a cultural hallmark of French descended peoples in North America (Acadians, Creoles, and Cajuns). It is now produced in the US on a large scale, and is easily available at your friendly internet coffee purveyor. What was once inflicted by the hardships of war, has become beloved. War leaves it’s stamp, even on the beverages we drink, and the plants we grow, hundreds of years later.
Alien Plantation 